End of the season – 24th January 2012
Not a great deal of dog training has taken place over the last week, not just because of a lack of any real spare time, but because the weather hasn’t been very appealing. On a few occasions it has been as much as I could do to stand upright in the forest so any planned sessions out on the hill has been postponed. Both dogs are looking reasonably fit though so I have no concerns over the coming spring count. This time of year seems to be more about catching up than anything else – catching up with e-mails; catching up with moorland owners and keepers to confirm count dates, catching up with friends to rope them in on the counting, and so on. The luxury of being ahead of the game is not something with which I am that familiar.
I spent last Thursday in Wiltshire, on the shoot I mentioned earlier. It was a great day out. It isn’t often that I get to spend any social time with colleagues, and to spend that time shooting is a first. I have to say that I use the term ‘shooting’ rather loosely as I genuinely don’t think I have ever shot so badly as I did that day. So badly in fact that I felt it necessary to apologise to the beaters. No one seemed to mind that much and whilst I only managed two birds the value of the day stretched well beyond the shooting. On Saturday I took two of my boys and one of their friends clay pigeon shooting; not just for the fun but to try to work out how I managed to miss so many birds the week before. I still can’t understand it as I managed a hit rate of about 85% and this was in high wind where the clays dipped and rose, curling out to the sides in a reasonably unpredictable fashion. I am sure its a psychological hurdle I need to get over.
The idea I had over a co-ordinated approach to moorland management in this area seems to be gathering pace. I am not sure what the collective noun for keepers is, but a gathering of keepers and moorland owners will be meeting with officers of the local authority towards the end of February to discuss opportunities and options. I will be chairing the meeting and it will be a challenge. It is not commonplace for these two distinctly different groups to come together and whilst I am not so daft that I haven’t briefed both groups separately, if we get through the evening without just a little friction I will be pleasantly surprised. I am optimistic though for a number of reasons not least the fact that both groups seem willing, in principle, to move things forward.
We have our last shoot day on Saturday too. I am tempted to spend the day beating based on last week’s performance but we shall see. No more beating on the estate either. The season has passed quickly; too quickly really and the two shoot dinners I will be attending over the next few weeks will really mark the end of a winter that never really came.
I was up in the forest a few days ago and looked up at the heather. My eyes were drawn to the ridgeline by the sound of a vehicle. It was a tractor cutting swathes in the heather. The area within which it was working was full of rank senescent heather clinging onto the hillside despite the best efforts of heather beetle larvae. This can only be a good thing. I look forward to seeing how this patch recovers. Considering the fact that Grace is now 6 years old and when I started training her up there, with every intention of counting grouse, there was no management and only slightly more grouse. Things are moving on, confirmed I like to think by the rainbow. Onwards and upwards.
