Wildfowlers are usually very clever people. They learn their craft from others and by observation. Many have self-taught skills to make their own equipment, whether it be game bags, duck calls or decoys. I recall visiting one wildfowler’s shed to see him carefully peeling back and examining the muscle and tissue below the feathers of a dead ducks head. He needed to understand the layers in order that he could carve accurate duck decoys by hand. A common piece of handywork was a wigeon whistle that wildfowlers would make out of two old cartridge cases. I have even met two separate wildfowlers that used their engineering skills to make their own guns from scratch. One sutch gun was very shiny as it did not benefit from the “blueing” that often creates the protective black or dark coloured outer of a gun barrel. It was, however, a wonderful piece of engineering with the barrel milled by hand on his lathe. He had it successfully proofed at the Birmingham proof house so that it could be owned and used legally and safely.
Wildfowlers with larger bore guns generally do not enjoy the ability to buy from a range of off-the -shelf cartridges. In Spalding we are blessed with a long established gunsmith Elderkins, who have in the past, made specialist loads for larger bore guns. However, many wildfowlers choose to load their own shotgun cartridges and such shells carried many stories. One popular myth that I can dispel is the use of nuts and bolts and scrap metal in a cartridge. Such metal would damage a gun and potentially kill or maim the shooter. However, I did come across one “joker” who would load no shot in his cartridges and then invite unsuspecting people to try them out. The resultant kick from a cartridge without shot can be very violent and the bag very loud with no kinetic energy being used in the propulsion of shot resulting in both a bruised shoulder and a ringing in the ears. It is the legend of home-loaded cartridges that prompted the following tall tale from the 1960’s:
It Could Only Happen with Reloads
One evening last season I was walking along my local river in hope of a shot at duck. Suddenly, I a big cock pheasant walking along the opposite bank about 35 yards away. I quickly dropped down behind a bunch of long grass and quietly called my bitch to heel. It was too good a chance to miss so I ups the old twelve and lets drive, slipping and falling backwards to get the shock of my life. I can just recall seeing out of the corner of my eye two mallard approaching from my right and two partridge rising slightly from my left heading towards the old cock. I came round after about ten minutes to find a big bump on the back of my head and the old bitch sitting there looking wet and very pleased with herself. I turned round to find an old hare lying there stone dead but freshly killed, the only conclusion I could find was I had killed it in my fall. Just then I thought of the old cock and turned forward to see if the old bitch had retrieved it, and found laid there in a row two wild duck, two partridges, one cock pheasant , and a trout weighing at one stone three pounds. Not bad for a cheap old reload. I’ve often wondered since what else I would have got had I been buying new cartridges.
Of course wildfowlers are very fond of their dogs and these too can be the subject of tall tales such as this:
The New Dog
A wildfowler took his new dog onto the marsh for the first time. He sat down in a creek next to the river and waited. It wasn’t long before a duck flew over, he lifted his gun and shot it dead. The duck fell the far side of the river. He immediately sent the dog to retrieve the quarry. However, he was amazed to see that when the dog reached the river instead of swimming it walked across the water, picked up the duck, and walked back across the water to his owner. Time passed and the ‘fowler shot another duck that fell the far side of the river. Again his dog fetched the duck by walking on the water.
Driving home he resolved not to tell anyone for fear of being laughed at, but instead to take a fellow wildfowler on his next trip to witness the dog’s behaviour.
A few days later he visited the marsh with his dog, accompanied by a friend. It wasn’t long before a duck was shot. As before, it fell the other side of the river, therefore he sent his new dog to make the retrieve. As on the previous trip, it walked on the water, picked up the duck and walked back. His friend watched the dog but made no comment. Walking off the marsh they chatted, but no mention was made of the dog’s great achievement.
Driving home the tension got too much for him so he asked his fellow ‘fowler, “Did you notice anything about my dog?”
“Well,” his friend replied, “seeings you’ve mentioned it I did notice something.”
“Yes, what’s that?” he enquired eagerly not expecting the following reply.
“That dog of yours,” he paused, “He can’t bloody swim!”
Some of the best “tales” of wildfowlers are simple observations of wildlife. The kingfisher that rested on the wildfowler’s gun barrel as he sat in the dawn of Kirton marsh. Indeed, several times I was lucky enough to see kingfishers on the marsh, a most unexpected treat. Similarly I have seen both rabbits and hares swimming across creeks, something I would have never have thought possible until I have seen it. Similarly I have seen pike successfully traversing across Earith Wash in only three or four inches of water. I have had short-eared owls dive bomb me as I’ve walked along the sea wall from the Hare and Hounds on the south bank of the Welland outfall. I have watched Herring Gulls knock blackbirds out of the sky near Sutton Bridge to descend on them, kill and devour them. I have seen flocks of starlings croos the marsh in such great numbers that I could feel the draft from their many wings as they flew overhead. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was a fine practice of shooting sportsmen recording what they observed, sadly I feel this is greatly reduced nowadays, possibly as a result of social media, or reduced activity. We are also in a world that if people cannot see a video or a photograph they do not believe what is witnessed. I recall as a young ornithologist receiving an imperious letter from the RSPB after I had reported a cuckoo in my parent’s garden in the middle of winter telling me that this was impossible and I must be mistaking it and it was possibly a mistle-thrush. Two weeks later it hit the press that a cuckoo had been seen in Norfolk only about 50 miles away. This really hacked me off…..not that I hold a grudge! Have we lost the concept of “the countryman” or is it a sad fact that the pace of life and the demands on country people so great that many do not have the ability, resources or time to record their observations.
There is a type of elegance in the observations of the Victorian sportsman, and whilst “off patch” in Scotland I find this account by E.T. Booth whilst punt-gunning in 1869 so charming I felt compelled to share it:
“ While waiting quietly under the shelter of the bank on the south shore of Loch Shin, the bows of the boat just touching the stones, a white hare came slowly down the moor to the water-side. After a few minutes she approached the punt and smelling it carefully, hopped right onto the deck. Here she appeared perfectly at home, turning her head from side to side and regarding us with the greatest unconcern. Having indulged at length in a sniff at the muzzle of the big gun, the scent of powder evidently proved distasteful, and a rapid retreat was made to the bank. Still puzzled by the aspect of the punt and its crew, she refused to quit the spot; and when at length we moved further west, she accompanied us on the lochside, stopping from time to time to gaze intently from the bank while the craft continued in view.”[i]
One of the great sportsman and observers of wildlife was George Henry Caton Haigh who died on February 11th 1941 at the age of eighty. He was an estate owner having inherited large agricultural estates in north Lincolnshire as well as property in North Wales and Yorkshire. He lived his life at North Cotes in Lincolnshire and made a great many observations of migratory birds that he both recorded and published often in the reports of The Lincolnshire Naturalist Union. Each autumn he would make a through and diligent search of hedgerows that bordered the sea banks near North Cotes not far from his home , Grainsby Hall and recorded many rare passerines such as Yellow-browed warbler (1892); the the Greenish Warbler (1896); the Radde’s Bush Warbler (1898); the Lanceolated Warbelr (1909); the Eversmann’s Warbler and Barred Warblers; as well as such waders as the Yellowshank and the Buff-breasted Sandpiper. He had a large collection of taxidermy as was the nature of recording species at that time with bird photography only just starting to take over this practise. Just before his death he donated his skins to the Natural History museum.
His sporting activity was recorded in his obituary: “ He was shooting up to the last year of his life, although for the last ten he was so crippled by arthritis as to have to go about on crutches. Although he enjoyed a good organized shoot, his chief delight was a very rough evening after Wood-Pigeons and nights on the Humber side flighting geese, at both of which pursuits he was an adept and very successful. He detested any unsportsmanlike action and was greatly perturbed recently by the wholesale and unsporting method of killing Pink-footed Geese, which was being practised in his neighbourhood.”
These last words are at the heart as to why Hull wildfowler and naturalist Stanley Duncan formed the Wildfowlers Association Of Great Britain and Ireland in 1908 and its development of the Wildfowling Clubs in the post WW2 period. I have already quoted some of Caton-Haigh’s observations, but the following one from 1923 describes what has become a scourge for many sea birds in the last two hundred years, pollution:
“On November 9th, a great slaughter of Pink-footed geese took place all along the south side of the Humber from the Trent Outfall to Goxhill. These unfortunate birds had their wings soaked with fuel oil, and were almost unable to fly. A few were shot, but many were caught by dogs or knocked on the head with sticks. Altogether, I calculate that quite two hundred geese perished. Although this is a common event among the sea ducks, divers and gulls, I have not previously heard of it happening to Grey Geese.”
In 1987 I watched samples being taken out of the River Nene at Sutton Bridge by an officer of what was then the Nature Conservancy Council and cheekily I asked him, “How bad is it?” He paused and said, “I can’t say?” I persisted with a cheeky. “Go on.” He eventually turned to me and said, “ Its like this, this water and the mud below it is so badly polluted, some of it old stuff from Victorian times that we do not understand how anything can live in it.”
I like to think it has improved in the last thirty years. But with a third of England’s water draining into the Wash estuary it possibly has not. However, I take comfort that the otter, an apex predator, has returned to the River Welland in Spalding as a common sighting, something that was a rarity in my youth.
[i] Rough Notes on the Birds observed - During twenty-five years shooting and collecting in the British Islands E.T. Booth 1881
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