Shooting Times & Country Magazine
A CLASSIC SERIES REVISITED
Simon Garnham celebrates the arrival of winter swans, bags his first foreshore teal of the year,and thinks about fat ducks for the table
An inland creek near Brightlingsea with gravel pits on the north side and a millpond at its sluice has been productive this season. Several corn-fed mallard have found their way into the gamebag, mainly on a rising tide at dawn.
I’d argue with anyone who says that this is not the finest of meat. At a smart restaurant in Southwold, duck is on the menu for £37 per portion with fat chips. Wildfowling is about so much more than something for the pot, but it’s a bonus if what we shoot costs a small fortune for those who don’t get out of bed and get muddy. A pair of plump mallard is always a satisfying reward for an early start and that’s before you factor in the sunrise, the glowing samphire, flights of curlew and a satisfied dog after a swimming retrieve.
Exhilarating
On the backwaters, club reserve areas with fresh water are proving to be a draw. The long, hot summer has left ponds cracked and dry. There are strong flightlines into any that still hold water. Local geese have bred well. Near Mistley, Canadas blacken the sky each night, flighting back from fields. On the Naze, skeins of greylags are making the most of over-winter stubble. For an enterprising fowler, tucked into the right place, there can be no more exhilarating experience than wondering if that V-shaped inky line is going to hold its course and provide the chance to take home a family meal. How these enormous birds can be missed seems impossible. But I’ve already
“I waited too long and my heavy steel load ripped into the sky with no effect”
reminded myself this season that they can. Like grouse, they need taking well in front. I waited just too long and they crossed in a rushing of pinions; my heavy steel load ripped into the dawn sky with no effect.
Pintail seem to have had a good year. On a blustery north wind, in the region of 150 were counted on a tide flight by two club mates of mine. Natural England is not playing nicely with permissions on Crown land. We’ve had further restrictions and the existing limitations on pintail continue on the Stour, unfortunately.
The arrival of Bewick’s and whooper swans on the estuary this year seems to have special significance. I can hear them now on the breeze. The Bewick’s are yapping to each other like excited dogs; the whoopers are old-fashioned car horns. At night, their calls float across the expanse of mud and water. This morning I was close enough, crouched in a gutter, to identify the difference between the two wonderful birds. Had war in Ukraine and bird flu affected the Bewick’s on their epic journeys from the Russian tundra? I was glad to be there to welcome them.
Fowlers have more in common with trainspotters than we might care to admit, with our Thermos flasks, sandwiches and waterproofs, huddled in lonely spots trying to identify rare and fast-moving wonders. For me, whoopers and Bewick’s are a challenge. I know that one is larger and one has a faster wing beat. But I wouldn’t stake my mortgage on which one was which at more than 100 yards. The Bewick’s tend to arrive here after an early-morning North Sea hop. They won’t linger and will be on the move again shortly — probably to the Ouse Washes, running on silent wings.
As the sun rose across the dark estuary this morning, I was treated to a spring of teal and I scrambled down a single bird, my first foreshore teal of the season — hopefully the first of many. I then met the RSPB’S turtle-dove lead warden for this area, a good man called Mark. We plotted next season’s feeding and habitat plans.
Wigeon have been earlier arriving than I’ve recorded in years, the whites of their undersides seeming to shine as they whistle overhead. I look forward to dusting off the decoys and finding a suitable spot for some November sport very soon.
Simon Garnham left the Royal Marines after 10 eventful years. He now combines managing the family’s small farm in Essex with teaching English, as well as wildfowling and running a highly informal shoot.