Invasive Deer Sika A First Attempt.

You can see just how much use the Peli Air has had, it arrived about two weeks before the first lockdown.

40% lighter and easily swallows two guns, or a bow and a gun. Been collecting dust ever since.

Here's one I wrote a while back 

Heading North of the Wall SBW?

Are you going to tell us about an enthusiastic stalker who wasn’t allowed out?
No. That would be too predictable
Did you manage to take on some Sisyphean task, in the name of so-called “bargain” transportation?
No. Nearly but it bounced off the bar.
Are you going to tell us about Scotland’s apex predator? 

Did you have trouble leaving the house? 

Will you blame ‘work, that curse of the stalking class’ ?

You know me so well. 

SBW: We’re on our way!

Ahab: What are you talking about you cancelled!

SBW: No I told you one dropped out. We’re literally on our way, like in the van, almost in Scotland 

Ahab: I'll ring my missus and call you back!

A quick primmer, Sika: where they are seen and how to say it.
Cervus Nippon aka Sika a medium sized deer, from Manchuria, and more famously Japan. Hence the name. 
There are released populations as far afield as Ukraine and New Zealand, Eire, and the USofA’s Chesapeake Bay. Travel to Ukraine being somewhat curtailed, NZ being a multi week commitment, so I'm going with Scotland. I’ve never shot or eaten a Sika, so when I ran into Captain Ahab online and he told me he was guiding in the highlands I booked a slot in the un-pressured opening days of the stag season. Most people don’t want to shoot deer still in velvet, and will wait until September or October , I have a pressing reason to, but that we’ll come to later.

Its been said that Sean Connery [wife beater formerly of this parish] had a Scottish accent, but not one any other Scottish person ever had. it’s easily learned as whole chapters of Irvine Welsh’s social commentary Trainspotting are narrated in the inner dialogue of one of the characters Simon aka Sickboy, as an imaginary conversation between himself and Sean Connery - 'precisely Simon' becomes “Pershishley Shimon”. Circuitous route I know, but now we've gained a fair facsimile of the correct Japanese pronunciation 'Pershishly, it'sh pronounshed “Sheeka”'. 

All I need now is that second most powerful hunting talisman, a newbie. 

I've had great results with taking new people, they see deer but never get a round off, I see three and shoot two. The Sika trip also represents my first chance in a while to add a Red Stag to the menagerie of deer I’ve shot. That’s going to need some powerful ju-ju, an absolute beginner…..

Super Plumber seems like the perfect candidate 

I've actually managed to take someone more angsty and superstitious than myself, a man who sees imminent downfall in every puddle, and fundamentally believes it always rains on him. 

The first stalking clothes. Always a hard choice for the newbie stalker: your boots are too short, and your walking clothes are more park than hill. In Scotland there are all four seasons, if not every hour, then certainly every other hour, and to make matters worse the only shop still open in Inverness is a hardware store which only stocks the noisiest waterproofs yet devised. 

Super Plumber is one of those friends you’ve  had for years, talk with on the phone, but rarely actually hang out with. So the 8 hour drive represents a good chance to catch up and do some shopping for  junk food, a car, ammunition and a rifle. 

With our meet up now hastily arranged we drive though the charismatic Scottish countryside, staying in radio contact. After a while a heavily laden estate car hooves into view. Ahab pulls into a lay-by and enthusiastically jumps out, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. The car's hand [parking] brake isn't engaged, as he strides towards us the car rolls away, as it rolls over a bump it's now steering itself back into the road. A look of blind panic crosses his face, and he dives, somewhat heroically, through the door of the car and overts disaster. needless to say Super Plumber are in stitches 

After my own bloody baptism, where the first time I fired a centre fire rifle it was at a living being, I hope to do a bit better for others. 

I’m from the “buy an air rifle and shoot it” school of shooting advice, but there’s a strange anomaly to living on this island, I can own a sub 12flbs air rifle and lend it to anyone over eighteen. But I can’t take it to Scotland where it’s a licensable firearm. It would need a licence I don't have . Fortunately I’ve got a reasonable hoard of 22lr Super Plumber  can practice on until he’s comfortable. 

My posh 22lr doesn’t have any glass and it was either the trip or the glass so it stayed at home, the trick 10/22 will have to do. Who amongst us didn’t start out with a 10/22? I've received a bit of coaching and watched much much more. There’s one central piece of advice thats the only piece of the puzzle worth starting with. Natural Point of Aim, by the time I’d heard of it I’d already developed the bad habits that have marred my accuracy all these years. 

Sphagnum moss, used as field dressing during WW1, twice as absorptive as cotton, can hold up to 22 times its own weight in liquid.

Which also means you're never more than a stride away from disappearing up to your knee, hip, or even neck in icy water. You may get your boot back. 

Mistaking myself for a version of myself from 20 years ago I hop nimbly, or so I thought at the time, over a ditch. My landing foot plunges into the muck, my ankle bends, my calf stretches beyond its tearing point and I plummet backwards into the ditch, which has been generously appointed with sharp sticks and cold water. Can’t say it would have been my first choice of landing spot. 

The pain and cold water that's gone down my neck provide a powerful incentive and I spring out of the ditch like a champ. gaining a sudden anatomical understanding, I could tell exactly what I'd torn. To my great surprise the money pit’s barrel wasn’t knotted like a pretzal and the whole rifle was bone dry. 

It's a long,  slow, and indeed agonising walk back across the clear-fell. `fortunately as im within shouting distance of the road I see Ahab's car crawling down the logging road. he and Super plumber hear me and I'm rescued.  


I confine myself the high seats for the rest of the trip. Sika are heard, but not seen or shot 

Super Plumber nails a Red and sanguine we make our way home. 

More sonn

your pal SBW

If You Stand Very Still....

 

Drive to Ahab's without getting lost. Harder than it sounds.



Ahab has no mixers, so we slam neat Gin for a while, uncharicteristicaly I'm allowed to sleep until 8am.

Head north. Cross the border into Scotland - receive abusive phone call from an angry ginger motorist who has tried to stop us merging, photographed the phone number on the liveried wagon, and is now triumphantly announcing he'll CC us into his email to Police Scotland. An email which never comes.

There's a lay-by we always stop at to let the dogs have a run around, we're joined by a cheerful German chap in a motor home who is exercising his offspring. Ahab's dogs are amazingly well behaved (especially for a cloud of spaniel) and mill about playing with the kraut kids. For a reason that's never adequately explained we also have Ahab's sister's dogs with us, one is fine, the other is completely useless, it has none of the attributes you might want in a dog. The crap dog somehow slips its lead and skedaddles into the forrest, hotly pursued by a raging Ahab. The German chap, in a fantastic display of droll, deadpans "Basil Fawlty in cameo". Which was the funniest thing to happen that day, until from a thicket Ahab screams "It's not fucking funny!! I've lost this dog before" which kills me and the German.



On arrival its such a nice evening we decide to go for a walk. The drumlin remains the perfect vantage point so we crawl up onto the top where we're joined by some natural cover. You've not lived until you've had your rifle licked by a cow.

The morning dawns at about 4am and the first client arrives, is escorted up on to the hill, where he makes sight of a Roebuck, and has has to lie very very still for a couple of hours whilst being savaged by wee flying beasties. To his massive delight he shoots what comes to be known as the Bottle Opener Buck

Couple of days later the next team of guests rock up. I've seen the aphorism attributed to Richard Prior "You can stalk deer in a white shirt if you make use of natural cover" this week it was tested to the max.

It seems this is how stalking clients dress these days, her Hubs wasn't dressed much more appropriately.


We've got some more ground, it's not as good looking, but it teems with deer. This is incredible ground.
A thick forestry block is surrounded with wildly over optimistic and ineffectual deer fencing, which separates it from a lush meadow. We split up, I get Hubs. It's great to have someone to carry my rifle.
Hubs gets an incredible introduction to stalking; we see deer, we see deer vanish into dead ground less than 50m away and reappear as if by teleport 200m away. Only to hop the fence and disappear again. He gets the perfect lesson in natural cover.


There's a fortuitous hedge where the farmers get a grant to plant, but as neither neighbour trusts the other with the maintenance, and the grant money depends on the hedge being maintained the hedge is planted between two fences, leaving us a perfect approach. we find a smashing spot. So I give Hubs the binoculars to keep him occupied, roll up my jacket, and lie down to wait for sun down.


Hubs: you having a nap?
SBW: do you like Lou Reed?
Hubs: Yeah! I do
SBW: 'He's never early, he's always late. First thing you learn is you always gotta wait'.
SBW: Bet you didn't know copping horse and stalking deer had anything in common?




I'm wrested from the arms of morpheus by wee flying beasties sucking my blood, the wind has dropped, provoking a feeding frenzy, and then has the temerity to change ends, putting an end to the bites, but blowing our scent into the deer's obvious exit point.

Hubs gets that bit where the deer stand looking directly at you, unsure of whats discombobulating them. Tentatively going back to feeding. Wind changes and boom! They're off.

With the wind blowing over us into the plantation the deer have extra reason to head to the meadow, as we round the corner, as predicted, there they are. Gloriously milling about, in season and unaware we're there. This is the hard bit. Standing completely still watching three become eleven. Waiting for twenty two eyes to face away simultaneously. All the time my skin throbbing with Midge bites. All feeding. Viper sticks set up. Wait. All feeding. Resist urge to claw at my own face. Rifle on top of Viper sticks. Wait. All feeding. Hubs and I swap places. All feeding. The long long wait for Hubs to shoot his first deer. All feeding and still we wait. My skin crawls. Hubs whispers "nothing is happening". Push the safety off for him. Wait. All feeding. Wait. Bang-thwack-thump-meat on the ground. The sheer orgasmic joy of being able to scratch my face.

More soon
your pal
SBW

Occasionally, Just Occasionally, Deer Stalking Is Very Exciting.

Deerstalking and Cricket are like marital sex. Occasionally it's very exciting.

 

Usually it's a game of patient observation, sitting in the high-seat listening to birdsong, waiting and watching for a brown and grey thing to move amongst the green, grey, and brown things. Its a pastime for people happy in their own company, who don't mind sitting very still in all weathers. 

Just occasionally it's unbelievably, heart-poundingly, exciting. 

When the glacier retreated north it left behind the range we know as the highlands, to their north, the relatively flat bits, the lowlands of Sutherland. With their fertile flood plains and estuaries. It's a geology teacher's field-trip dream, like standing in geo-history's giant footprint. 

This farm is also a giant fieldcraft textbook, called Red Deer and Where to Find 'Em. As the steep side of the valley drops away there's a deep drainage gully full of gorse and birch where the deer bed down, it leads to another area of gorse that overlooks the fields where our friends are growing hay. I've spooked Reds into and out of them both. The deer can see for miles, and hide for days.

Meanwhile back on the geology field-trip: Drumlins, from the Gallic Droimnín [little ridge], are  teardrop hills, composed of glacial debris, they formed beneath a glacier and like aerodynamics in super-super slow-mo they are aligned with the direction of the ice flow. Ours is about 20m high and has a bloody big rock on top. Technical term for the rocks is 'Erratics'. 

I've learned my lesson, or at least one of them, so I don't approach by the road. I manage to cross the burn without falling in or renting a hamstring. I start the ascent and about half way up there's a slight terrace on the east side of the Drumlin, which I crawl along working my way left to overlook the gully. Of course my rifle is still across my back when I pop my fat head up and the guard matriarch and I are eye to eye. I proper freeze. 

Oddly she remains interested, but gives the situation the benefit of the doubt. My heart's in my mouth. She keeps me fixed in a steely glare but lets the family keep feeding. Kneeling I wait, like a frozen Meerkat, I defocus my eyes and wait and wait and eventually I out-wait her curiosity. Unconcerned she leads her little troop out of view around the Drumlin. 

Quickly. Back onto all fours and speed crawl back the way I came , there's only one place I can be, and I can only be there if I'm there first. I'm sweating like a Racehorse, and wheezing like a divorced Walrus. Up at the top of the mound there's the bloody big rock, on the right hand side facing north, there's the surface that 'catches the weather' just like that one window frame on your house that needs painting before the others. As they blow down the estuary from the Isle of Skye, the wind and the rain have abraded the earth and left an uncomfortable-sized divot under the Erratic

In my divot-fox-hole I'm now doing mortal combat with a long-legged and deeply unpleasant bipod, I've said a lot of bad things about the Harris bipod design, this is some kind of awful unbranded Harris Clone,  I've spent a lot of cash on bipods, none of them are with me, clearly I've angered the bipod gods. The bipod lacks the much needed forty five degree position. It only has 90 degrees, legs up and legs down, they are supposedly adjustable for length, but it all seems like a cruel parody of what could be. Finally, flattened behind a tuffet,  I have half a semblance of a shooting position. Wiping the sweat from my eyes either the deer have gone back around the way they came or about to appear. Another stress inducing mystery. If I bet on one, I will surely blow the other. If only I could stop wheezing.  

Just before I'm ready. Bold as brass. The Hinds saunter into view, and start the umpteenth meal of the day. A quick squint through the scope. I've never been one for the calculation of cosine on the fly, but hash one is 200 yards, hash two is 300 yards. I opt for hash two. Ping!! Goes the .243. A hind drops to the 100gr bullet and the rest of the crew high-tail it away. 

Occasionally, just occasionally, Deer Stalking is very exciting!

more next time

your pal

SBW

Scotland : A Thrilling Encounter With Big Boy

 Morning is dawning the sun plays on the self seeded field of xxx pine. `I'm in the highest sheltered from the wind with my back to one block, a ride to my left and the fence line falling away infant of me. 

Ive seen the little Roebuck break cover and cross the ride a while back, but now only the wind in the trees, the creaking of the dead lower branches, and a terrible racket coming from behind me. The way the seat is it's not easy to turn around that far. 

Ahab is a notorious, and compulsive practical joker so my first thought is this is yet another of his practical jokes. The thrashing and cracking continues. Twisting my head there's defiantly something there.

There's only one stop where Ahab could possibly get out of the close-planted block, I'm not going to point even a de-cocked rifle at the spot. I'm just preparing a witty retort for when he steps out when a Red deer with a neck larger than my waist tears his antlers free of the branches and steps into the gully where the ride borders the trees. As I shoulder the rifle he hears something of my movement and spins 180 disappearing into the forest block. Never to been seen again. Easily one of the two biggest Reds Ive ever seen in Scotland 

Every dawn, and every dusk, for two or three hours a time  for the next five days I sit there. Not a sausage. 

Every day I stalk up the ride to glass the fence line, every day I find hooj deer turds, steaming a couple of times, big foot prints, but I never see him again. 

Should I have pointed my de-cocked rifle at the gap? No. Should I have sat still and waited? Of course. 

Hunting, not shopping. 

more soon

your pal 

SBW

Scotland 2021 pt4. A Roebuck, A Mob Of Goats, And A Catalog Of Errors

The road south 

If you want to make Artemis laugh tell her about your plans for the hunt.

At last the bit I’ve been looking forward to. 

During that perfect summer of the early pandemic South Side D and I had ventured north of the wall to hunt goats with our guides Alan and his son, the eagle eyed Bryce. It was a great trip READ ABOUT IT HERE I had high hopes of doing it again. Yeah. Right. 

The drive down the west  coast was as stunning as ever, the Irish sea as flat as that northern light that washes over it. The roads are refreshingly clear, unburdened by the library and blacksmith’s shop the van really picks its skirts up. The road is lined with speed cameras  The van lowers its skirts 

Truth be told I’m really starting to feel proper battered I stop for a sarnie and take an involuntary nap  in the van. Stranraer is the closest point between Ireland and Scotland so its also the ferry terminal between the two. The roads are winding county roads, the trucks are international road haulage  

Allan’s joint is usually self catering but his mrs has taken pity on me and included me in family dinner time.  After a substantial feed I slope off to my bed pausing only to marvel that not many london hotels have water pressure like that. 

Goatland, a bit different to our hedgerow stalking in the south. My happy place  

Dawn, goatland

I’ll not make excuses, this is what really happened  

Allan’s thermal binoculars were in the shop being serviced, we scan and scan, there are no goats. 

Allan hops into the truck and drives off up the coast. Bryce and I follow the unbrowsed grass fringe along the cliff tops. By crawling and hiding, crawling and hiding we manage to put the hustle on a handsome Roebuck  Did I mention I’ve lost my annoying Harris bipod? Well I have. 

Bit more crawling and I’ve got the Money Pit balanced on top of a fence post. Chip shot.. 50 yards. Max  High and right clean miss.Round sails over the Roe’s back.  Bryce gives me a look that says ‘I don’t remember you being this shite last time” Obviously the Roebuck and his two pals have now skedaddled and are jeering from a safe distance.  Probably 51 yards.

Bryce is growing up fast, from mumbling teenager to Highland Profesional. His dour Ghillie quips are coming on too “Its not awful, I prefer my Tika, scopes not too bad. I suppose “

It gets worse

We make some headway along the cliff tops and elect to go under a fence, even though the Heym SR30 is a german de cocking safety design I elect to pass it to Bryce without anything in the chamber like a good safe sport.  Bolt won’t extract the round. 

Here’s for why. while I’ve always intended to shoot 108gr lead free bullets from the Money Pit I've not finished developing the load, so I tested with everything I had, and found the 140gr SST load from my old barrel on my Tiktac gave excellent performance and being SST’s are guaranteed to mash up anything they hit. Where I was remiss is, I’d put a couple into the vbull, but I’d never cycled one through the action. 

The SST load has a COAL of 2900 up from the factory 2800, Heym’s chamber is much closer to the lands than the Tiktac , I beat on the bolt and extracted an unfired case and mess of powder, its clear I’m at literal jam, and the bullet is still in the lands. Interestingly after checking the fired cases, I later fired the last three rounds from that batch, all accurate AF and no pressure signs. My policy of loading hunting ammo to the lower node is a good one.  

We shan’t dwell on how I cleared the obstruction with a piece of fencing wire, but I was glad to have a VFG pull through with me just for a little reassurance afterwards. Allan’s mockery ringing in my ears we move goatward  

We’re now on to the goats, up on a bluff overlooking the shoreline where they are feeding. We’re at 300ish yards, and trying not to silhouette. They can clearly see something is afoot, they eventually settle, we’re not getting any closer without moving back into sight.  I take a hail mary off a rolled up jacket, the goats vamoose and that’s s all she wrote  Bah!

Hunting not Shopping, Proper preparation prevents piss poor performance, yah de feckin’ yah  

Sadly thats not all folks

See you next time 

Your pal

SBW

Gun Jesus of Forgotten Weapons has done a review of the SR30 

 

Scotland 2021 pt3 Hoarding A Spectator Sport.

  

East Kilbride late one night . light rain  

A few roundabouts off the ring road we find our way to a street of post war housing, Not built with the expectation of car ownership proving as popular as it’s become , I know this as a certain fact, as I've inched a panel van down it. Despite WCC’s characterisation of the area lots of tradesmen seem to live there. Their bastard vans are double parked the length of the street.  

We finally find somewhere to park and start ferrying the shooters to the flat.

TheViking rented the flat sight unseen over the internet, its ex public housing, somehow it never occurred to him to ask which floor it was on. Third floor. No lift.  

I didn’t mention this before but its worth mentioning now. There was a club in central london, where one night a very famous ballet dancer, so famous that shes the only ballet dancer I could name, sat on his lap and played with his beard. He is both proud and nostalgic of this high water mark in the history of his adorableness, as he should be, shes as fit as a butcher’s dog   The covid pandemic has done for the club, and they auctioned off loads of furniture  Hes bought a bed, its massive.  Possibly too massive to make it up the stairwell. There is another problem 

Somehow when I’d left him and his pal  packing the panel van it never occurred to me to enquire as to the order of disembarkation. Its certainly not a conversation they had in my absence. Theres now the content of a blacksmiths forge, a significant collection of swords, pikes, and a restorers library, between his bed, his household chattels, and the vans only door.    

We let ourselves into the flat, its newly done up. By chumps. We put our rifles and the great menagerie of shotguns into the cupboards and head back to the van for our travel kit and sleeping bags.

On our return to the flat, what’d ya know  the front door handle is so cheap that it gives up the ghost on second use.  We’re locked out. It goes without saying that the letting agents have cashed the deposit are now out on the town spending it buying gin and tonics for inappropriate milfs. straight to voicemail  

Back at the pannel van I’m pissing myself laughing as the poor Viking blunders about by the light of his phone looking for a tool chests he last saw 400 miles ago before the seismic collapse that’s  taken place during our last near miss with a Karen in an Audi. Howls of rage and invocations of dark dark ancient gods punctuate the wait  The rain has slowed to a drizzle  

Suddenly he reappears, jaunty and seemingly unconcerned “lets get the door fixed shall we?”

Time an motion being what they are I’ve inflated my Thermorest while he was fighting the door, so once back inside its a very short trip to collapse . Its been a long day  

The dawn comes, bringing with it a charming light drizzle which lends an air of bleak northern shite hole to the area  you can see roundabouts from the window  lots of them  

A quick tour of the property reveals some spectacularly substandard renovations, piss-poor water pressure, inarticulate setting out of the tiling and its never occurred to the renovator that securing the floor boards usually takes place before carpeting the hall. Its warm, dry, and by london standards, massive  

We find the van, despite what people say about East Kilbride, exactly where we left it.  With all its wheels  

After another breakfast of indigestible shite, under the Golden Arches, we’re off to meet The MAA.

Enter the dragon.  

Every saga needs a dragon, sitting on his horde, in an impregnable fortress.  the Master At Arms, the Viking’s friend and  boss. A sniper rifle aficionado, and field artillery enthusiast  

MAA has an industrial unit where he runs several businesses and fights against a tide of collections. he has the kind of floor space Londoners can only dream of. 

We stand in the rain drink espresso while the Viking tries to re organise the van’s contence onto pallets to be forklifted to the far reaches of the warehouse .  Part of deal seems to be ‘You store, I torment’  

Having made my contribution, i stood in the drizzle drinking espresso, missing cigarettes and taking notes  

MAA:

Did it not cross your mind that this wasn’t the ideal opportunity to get rid of loads of this shite?

Do you imagine you’ll ever read those books again?

I’m getting the district impression that there may have been some consideration given to the london end of the trip but feck all for what might happen at this end  

Hold on, I recognise those  [cast iron plates weighing about 40lbs a piece. Twelve of]  they're yer girlfriends, did she not want them at her own hoose?

Once the goods, books, swords, a stuffed boar’s head and assorted chattels are off loaded we head out to a clay ground  

Its a pleasant drive through the rolling hills where wind farms line every ridge sadly there were no picturesque highland cattle.   

 

The clay ground is an everyman sort of affair, no walks through forrest glades but plenty of launchers so each stand has several lines of flight from doddle to fiendish  the last stand is fantastic, two of you stand in the bay and the other has eight buttons to hammer at launching flurry after flurry  

The relentless tick tick of my schedule means we don’t have the option of a proper lunch so I bid the boys luck and head goatward.  

See you next time 

Your pal SBW

Hunting Goats In Scotland. Stalking Roe In Scotland.

An adventure in the Lowlands of Western Scotland featuring: your pal SBW, and South Side D a target shooter and sportsman who dives an electric taxi. 

Work, that curse of the stalking classes: 

Covid 19, overly emotional Milfs, air travel diminished by 97%, clients putting off having repairs done, annoying offspring, the range will be closed for the foreseeable, theatre-land may never reopen. A shortage of primers. I think its fair to say that your pal SBW and South-Side D are beset by difficulties on all sides. 

SBW: This is bullshit, shall we sack it off an’ go stalking?

SSD: Not doing much else.

SBW: Do you have a midge net?

SSD: What’s that?

SBW: Your only defence against Scotland’s apex predator.

I once read that the Scottish tourist board had conducted extensive market research. Scotland is a popular destination for all the reasons you might imagine; Whiskey, Salmon, Deer, Ginger Birds. 

The last two questions proved more illuminating: 

Will you be coming again next summer ? NO 

Why not? MIDGES!!!

Been a while since i made it North of The Wall, to the land where you can hunt Roe Bucks with a 22 centerfire, Mars bars are served fried, sausages are called Lorne and served skinless and square, Tablet is a cause of diabetes rather than yet another iProduct .

SBW: How much would it cost to go to Stranraer in a Taxi? 

SSD: Where’s that?

SBW: west coast of Scotland, south of Glasgow, for stalking purposes.  

SSD: £ LOTS, each way. But to you SBW, for stalking purposes, we can split the juice.

SBW: I’ve found this guy on the internet… 

SSD:  I need to sort out someone to look after the dog

SBW: No worries my ex wife would love to help me out, I’m the only person taking her side against the kids. 

A long time ago: I was making idle chit-chat with one of the guns at a shoot, as we fell to discussing a sportsman's travels he said ‘ ah yes the Scottish stalking experience, I’ve been, you spend all day crawling through very soggy ground, shoot a deer, then the walk back to the cottage turns out to be 200 yards, I bet you love it” 

That very morning a member called Gallowaycountrysports had posted on the Stalking Directory that he had availability and accommodation. A few days later we were on our way north. By london black taxi.

The first six hours pass in a pleasant re run of: the calibre debate, chewing over the  design stratagem of Porsche 1967 to 1992, the latest outrage(s) perpetrated by my daughter against her long suffering family, and the lack of strategy being deployed by our lords and masters at this most difficult of times.  

Somewhere just the other side of the wall the roads narrow and out pace slows considerably. We pull into a Shell service station where we were surprised to lean that the sad-arse sandwiches they serve are now ‘By Jamie”.  Yes that Jamie Oliver the fat-tongued deceiver himself, has sunk so low that he’s now shilling for the sweat shop where they fulfil service station sandwich contracts.  

At the service hatch a bleached, shivering whippet of an Emo is manning the till. His stupid haircut reflected in the luminous glow of his pasty skin. 

SBW What kinds of sandwiches do you have? 

Having seen Jamie Oliver’s fat face I was expecting some kind of mangling of the cuisine of several nations, Jerk Chicken with a Mediterranean Herb Crust, and the like.

The Emo: What’s this the feckin’ Krypton Factor?  

South-Side D: Think of it as a job, what’s in the meal deal?

Some crappy sarnies, indistinguishable from crappy sarnies not ‘by Jamie’  later. 

Alan calls

‘So yer nearly here? oh aye what’s yer vehicle?’ 

“We’re In a sherbet” then I remember to translate “a black cab, a london taxi”

“Slurhh feckin’ heel, what’s that cost? Poond-a-mile?”

SBW “Nah South Side D is a cab driver it’s his whip”
SSD “tell him it’s £LOTS to Glasgow ’bout £X a mile.

The rest of the drive passes without incident and were soon following Alan’s seemingly vague but surprisingly accurate directions through the village. By the time we arrive Alan has gone to bed leaving his lad to welcome us to the self-catering accommodation end of the business. Alan runs a great outfit, or I suspect Mrs Alan runs a great outfit, and Alan fronts it. 

If you’re thinking of heading north I’d warmly recommend Galloway Country Sports, they have something for every kind of visiting stalker or Gun. Alan is dad-shaped and around 50, a fantastic host and an experienced rough shooting and goose guide. His lad is built like a racing snake with the eyes of an eagle. Between them they provide some fantastic days afield. The beds are comfortable and the duvets reassuringly weighty. I sleep the sleep of the self-righteous.

The following morning 

Alan’s birds have just arrived so he’s out looking over his pen and feeding them up. We stumble out of our rooms to find glorious sunshine, a neighbour enquires as to our well being, we ask after his. “sumingz rang, dez ner water fal-in from the sky” 

The village has no shops so we head into town, all of three miles, to look for a charging point and some breakfast. With me enthusing about the Scottish breakfast experience. Sadly no Lorne sausage is available but we do get a Tattie-Scone. It’’s a lot like the backing board for tiling. Which is a shocker as they are easy to make and usually delicious. 

Ingredients: 

mashed floury potatoes

an egg

some flour  .00 is best 

teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda 

perhaps a little cream or milk - emphasis on the little, the dough must be firm

Method:

mix into a dough

roll out and cut into pleasing shapes

Either fry or bake at a moderate temperature

Serve lathered in butter. Unsalted is my preference.  

SSD has asked that the record show that our visit to Stranraer was also the occasion of my saying the most Middle Class / English thing ever.

SBW “Is there a Marks and Spenser here? I need to buy pants”

Under-crackers un-purchased we return to the house in time to meet Alan and do my laundry in the wash basin. 

Wisely Alan wants clients to confirm their rifles and marksmanship, he tries to be as polite about this as he can, I suspect he’s had some resistance from clients before, and seems a little surprised at my enthusiasm. 

I’m keener on shooting a confirmation than the in-house photographer at St. Ursula’s.  

Here’s for why. 

Having survived [just] the shame of having a loaned rifle where the scope wasn't moored to the rings and missing the first five deer on a previous trip to Scotland, to say I’m keen never to have it happen again, is what is known north of the wall as a feckin’ understatement.

The sheep rifle should above all be portable, handy, and relatively light, as the sheep hunter carries a rifle a lot more than he shoots it. "Notes on the Sheep Rifle," Jack O’ Connor

There’s a question mark hanging over my .243 so I took my Tiktac. Its a wonderful target rifle, but there s something deeply un-stalking about it, its heavy, the opposite of handy, and all those sections of picatinny rail mean it snags on your clothes, Its also laughably Black Rifle.

Alan: ‘does an Afghan campaign medal come free wii that?’ 

Its way more accurate than me and has no trouble mashing up the 4 inch square used as a zeroing target. Zeros established we break for lunch. 

As Roe are best stalked at the top and tail of the day, Alan has a suggestion. 

How about we go and look for some Billies? 

I’ve met people who have been to Scotland to stalk feral goats before and none of them has had a good word to say about the beasts: they are extremely wily, live in inhospitable terrain and are pretty smelly. They often reside in places called Heart Attack Hill, Fat Boy’s End or Dead Plumber’s Gully.  

Alan explains that he cant stalk Roe or shoot Foxes on this particular stretch of coast as the landowner has a sentimental attachment to both, however he is a Juniper Berry enthusiast and as the goats eat them he’s more than happy for Alan to thin the trip. 

These are coastal goats, living where the Irish Sea batters mini fjords. We spend a while glassing the rocky outcrops, things that move turn into tricks of the light, every shadow seems to be cast by horns.  When we’re finally sure only shadows are moving we turn south and our luck improves, a trip of ten or so goats are just the other side of a bluff, we walk the long way around and begin the crawl into range. Oddly its still not raining. 

There’s something about seeing your precision rifle and its posh scope lying in the muck that’s deeply disconcerting, later I’m to learn that loosing a round and seeing your fettled Lapua case disappear between the tussocks isn't much better.  All I can do in consternation is mutter “that’s £1.08p I’ll never see again”.

With the goats only about 50m away SSD starts crawling forward and I’m trying to deploy the Harris bipod without that annoying D’oing noise from its springs. The goats are suddenly on the move, towards us. SSD is between me an them so I’m still to set up for a shot. I’ve taken all of five off-hand shots with the Tiktac all of them were over a year ago, in Norway.  Heavy is a help, but the shape and balance point are unwieldy. We both fire. Someone hits the largest Billie and it disappears down the seemingly vertical cliff. As SSD and Lad pursue it 

Alan points to the next spur, “There’s yours, can you shoot it?”    

“The mountain sheep keeps his horns as long as he lives, and on them he writes his autobiography. He records his age, his species, his good years and his bad, and his battles.”

The Stories Sheep Horns Tell - Jack O’Connor

I love it when the leaves change colour - Hodgeman

He’s right, there on the next spur, partially concealed by the dead ground, my Goat is waiting patiently for his dinner invitation. Yet another outdoorsman’s skill that still eludes me is the ability to judge distance. Alan’s call is 300 yards, deduct 10% is 270m which the muscle memory in my fingers tells me is fifteen clicks aka 1.5 milliradians. The legs of my bipod are a constant annoyance to me, off the bench they are too long, prone, which i hardly shoot,  they are ok-ish, off the tussocks of scotland they are invariably too short. The first one sails over his head, which prompts him to make the fatal mistake of standing up, so after a bit of contortionism on my part he catches the next one on the left side of his spine. While I’m still listening to that resounding TWACKKK expanding ammunition makes as it hits flesh, as if by teleportation he disappears. 

To my delight I actually find one of the Lapua cases. £1.08p up on the day!

A deer that has been shot at will go around the side of a hill a quarter of a mile away and lie down. A ram will leave the country.—"The Bighorn," Jack o’Connor

Its a long walk around the spur tops and when we get to the patch where Billy was last seen there’s a patch of frothy lung blood, and no more. Nothing, zip, nitch, nada  no sign of a trail to be seen. There’s only one way to where we were when I took the shot and we just walked along it, there’s only one way down from where the blood trail starts and stops.  The mini canyons are treacherous under foot and the drop below enough that the medics would be well pissed off by the time they recovered you, or at least your body.

Alan is ahead of me and has taken a turn away from the direction of travel, I skirt round to catch him up and squeeze past him to climb into the line of sight he’s gesticulating down. There’s Billy sitting panting under an overhang, its just the place you’d want to shelter if you were going to overnight there. I wind the clicks back off and put an SST through his neck. Another £1.08p case tumbles away never to be seen again. 

High above us and 300 yards across a mini fjord Lad and SSD are struggling with two goats the extraction looks like the 200 yards are ‘feckin vertical’. Turning back to our own situation this isn't going to be easy, especially with the long dead black weight of the Tiktac to hump along. 

On opening him up, Billy has been doing very well for himself, easily the fattest wild animal I’ve ever butchered, great globs of shining white fat around his organs. I’ve still got his dinner pate sized liver in my freezer. Gralloched he’s lighter but not that you’d know it draggin’ him along.

You can see why the locals shoot ‘em with a little Tikka Triple Two. 

As I puff along the Tiktac seems to have trebled in weight .

A couple of words about Alan’s place

If you want to go shooting with a few pals and make a few days of it, you’re the customer alan had in mind when he set up shop. He has his own pub that you can stock yourselves. Being only three miles out of town you can call in a takeaway delivered or, you could copy a team from France who bring their own chef and use the fully equipped kitchens.  

A Galloway Roe Buck 

I’ve been having a run of luck, lucky for me not so lucky for the new people. At my gun club we have an unofficial hunting committee - if you express an interest we’ll hook you up with some stalking. 

I know a couple of people who I regard as as near to dead certs as its possible to be. We go to their ground, I tell the guide ‘this a newbie they need to shoot a deer’, they see deer, I shoot deer, they don’t. Sometimes I shoot more than one deer.

Lad and I hop out for the truck and as soon as we’ve negotiated the first fence we have a doe under observation. Not doe season but every night is ladies night, girls get in free, so it wont be long until a buck shows up. Sticking to the hedgerow we make out way up the field conveniently into the wind. About 30 feet in front of us, there’s a bustle in the hedgerow as a Roe fawn makes several frantic attempts to first ram and then jump the fence. We wait patiently until he thinks better of it and turns, sprinting across the field. Stooping down we do a bit of glassing. Lad is all over it, doe one, doe two which I could see but then the Buck which is both standing between them and invisible to me. Trying of suppress the hateful doioiing of the Harris bipod’s springs and get set up, I even had time to dial the zoom in a bit. The Buck stands at three quarters, Buck helpfully turns broadside, takes a step or two, I take up stage one of the trigger, one more step, “stay right where you are” and pop-TWACKKK. Lad awards me the accolade “Feckin’ textbook”. Buck runs on about 20 feet and slumps into the dead ground. The girls are now nowhere to be seen. We saunter over. he’s never going to win a medal but has  pleasing symmetry. I couldn't wait  to take him to dinner. 

In that great tradition of Scottish stalking, instead of dragging the deer across the field back the way we’ve come, we amble down a tarmac road that was just the other side of the hedgerow we’d crawled along. 

SSD is yet to score a deer.

About half of our trophy stash

Unlike most of the places I go stalking Alan has full food processing and vacuum packing facilities. I spend the last day in the chiller doing the butchery and caping the Billy and Nanny SSD shot. To my surprise, in a moment of wild profligacy, SSD commissions not one, but two rounds of taxidermy. I get the feeling he’ll soon know how the punters feel when they get out of his taxi.  

More Soon 

Your Pal

SBW 

Bushcraft Napalm And How To Make It

Quite a few of you probably pride yourselves on your skills with fire by friction, and I salute you for you dedication. This stuff is for the times when you actually need a fire blazing NOW!

Perfect Example: When Mr Grendel and myself were dropped off by The Ghillie at the lodge and told "there's a wee stove make yerselfs a fierr" sure there was stacks of wood, in the kind of sizes you'd use as props to hold a mineshaft up, but no axe and we only had skinning knives with us. It was snowing, we were soaked from hats to gaiters. Without any kindling to speak of we had to rummage about a bit to get a blaze on.  A few bits of cardboard from the bin and a couple of candles from a kitchen drawer, and we were soon drying out. As we were huffing and puffing the fire into life I'd remarked "I wish we had some Bushcraft Napalm this would be a piece of piss". 

Mr Grendel enquired "WTF is Bushcraft Napalm?"

I've not made any Bushcraft Napalm in ages, but as I promised him I'd do a How To [about eighteen months ago], here it is. 

Bushcraft Napalm is cheap soap and petrol, mixed into a paste, and here's the clever bit, stored in an old toothpaste tube.

You need a bowl you can heat up, without causing an outburst of rage to intrude on the peace of your dwelling.

 You need the cheapest soap you can get - this was three bars for one Great British Pound

 Chop the soap up a bit

 Chop the soap up a bit a bit more. It would be even better to use a cheese grater.

Soften it it in the microwave - our microwave has lost the facility of the number one button, two mins and twenty two seconds was way too long, twenty two seconds not long enough. Your mileage may vary.

As the soap softens its time to start adding petrol, the great thing about using the microwave is its much less likely to burst into flames than using the stove top. Don't ask.

In preparation you'll have carefully sliced off the sealed end of your old toothpaste tubes, soaked and washed them until clear and clean, then left them to dry out.

 When you can let the mix cool but still remain a paste, you'll know you've got the soap to petrol/gas mix right. Milage will vary. Spoon the gloop into the tubes, trying to keep the cut edge gloop free.

It helps to use a bit of brown paper to stop molten plastic from ruining the iron. Don't ask.
I've also had good results using a old pair of pilers heated in a gas flame.

 Heat seal the cut end of the tube, with an iron. Pretty soon you'll have sealed the end of the tube, thus.

Probably a good idea to label the tubes to avoid accidents.

 A little squidge is all you need

Spark it up with your ferro rod, and it smells like VICTORY

More Soon
Your pal
SBW

PS My favourite Spark Stick/Ferro Rod reviewed HERE