Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Night foxing on a budget
I’m looking to get into foxing at night. I have a .243 that I use for daytime deer and fox, but
I don’t have any night vision or thermal and my finances are a little stretched. Can you recommend a good scope-mounted lamp or any other alternatives?
If thermal and night vision is over budget, the trusty old lamp will certainly get the job done with a little fieldcraft. Before LED lamps, we used hefty batteries with trailing leads that would often blow bulbs and fuses.
There is a good range of compact LED scope-mounted torches with integral batteries and brighter, more effective beams for foxing. Wicked Light torches from Scott Country International are brilliant, with one model having three colour modes, silent dimming switch, focusing beam and adjustable quick-release mount, battery and charger. MR
FOR MOST OF US, WHEN WE BEGIN a new project we start slowly, with baby steps, as the advice invariably goes. Not so Emma Cawston. One of her first commissions was for six pieces for a Scottish country estate – the frames supplied were, she recalls, bigger than she was.
“Perhaps I was naive,” she admits, “but it turned out to be a complete success. I like to challenge myself.”
At the age of 32, Emma has certainly challenged herself, travelling all over the world to draw the animals that continue to inspire her. Brought up in Wiltshire, she has mostly learned on the hoof, as it were, teaching herself to paint and draw. She prefers to work in oil pencil, an unusual medium but one that, she says, helps her work to flow — and which is environmentally friendly, something she is passionate about.
She creates pieces using photographs she took while doing conservation work in Kenya, for example, applying 10 to 15 layers of separate colours for base and details, and will sometimes add 24k gold leaf to create something unique. And she has found that her own meticulous work with pencils has a connection with the art of engravers who add exquisite detail to fine guns.
“Engraving fascinates me,” she says, “there is something very creative about those beautiful guns.”
As a country girl, Emma enjoys clay shooting, horse riding and fishing. She has been invited on a duck hunt, which she has never done before, and plans to try fly-fishing, too.
Emma exhibited her work at this year’s Game Fair for the second year running and plans to return next year. This award-winning artist really is going places.