Another Safari In Scotland

Been a while since I've been north of the border: Elfa wanted to go, the kids are on holiday with their mum, we are as usual snagged on freeholder connect at the job site, and sentimentalist that I am, I've had an Andy Richardson shaped hole in my life since the last visit. So this missive comes to you from the rolling fields, and sand dunes of Fife.

As is so often said, holidaying brings out  the worst in people. We've served each other with divorce papers several times before we make it on to the train.  One drama leads to another but eventually we're off and I fall into a fitful sleep as the train shudders northwards. Somewhere nearer to London than Edinburgh, and nearer to sleep than wakefulness, I was idly daydreaming of the great days of steam when I realised the huffing and puffing was intact the Evil Elfa still expressing her displeasure. Reluctantly, I open my eyes to find that she actually had a valid reason this time, her face is swelling up. She looks like she's saving a gobstopper for later. I am ,by nature, quite a caring person. Annoyingly Elfa, by nature, is the worst feckin' patient ever! Really, you know those stories where the nurse went mental and shoved the hospital trolly, patient and all, into a laundry cupboard and left them there over the weekend? It turns out there is a limit to human endurance, I can now see why nursey would. [But not why nursey would come back after the weekend]. Within the hour the gobstopper is the size of half a golfball.

One for the Tackle Tarts

Andy has it that we should investigate the mouth of the Eden, and armed with lures so secret they shall not be photographed and the obligatory over-priced slices of Mackerel we leave the truck in the golfers car park and walk down the dunes to the estuary. For some reason Elfa has elected to follow that rule of fieldsports observers - she has waterproof boots [bought for the trip] but wears trainers. WTF?

Flounder tactics are the same up here; tiny strips of sushi [sorry bait the price confused me], small hooks and barrel-shaped weights that roll along the bottom. Cast into the tide and allowed to bounce their way across the sandy bottom.

 The score at half time: we did see some one very impressive Sea Trout jump and several smaller splashes, I landed a couple more Flounder. Next time I fish this mark I'll bring a crab rig as my bait got chewed a few times by little fellas.

More soon
your pal
SBW
PS For Me and Andy's adventure with the TV people click HERE

Unboxing Heavy Cover's Titanium Canteen

I have wanted one of these since the first day I saw one mentioned on BB. So here it is in all it's 'Tec-tro' loveliness. Hmmmmm Titaniummmmmmm.
Full review to follow shortly
SBW

Johnie's Passion For Deer

My old mate Johnny McGee has been has been up to his old tricks, shooting shooting in the UK. Johnny's films and photography are really top notch, with incredible attention to detail and a colour balance that shows the difference between the pro's and video-lummoxes like me. He's just posted Part 1 of A Passion For Deer where he accompanies Shavegreen Shooting Services stalking in the New Forest. This is just what woodland Deer Stalking in the south of the UK looks like. Minus the inane banter and bickering. Still with parts 2 to 6 still to come I'm sure that can be addressed.
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Your pal
SBW

A-Salt Weapon For Fly Hunting

Ohh yes! I first saw the Bug-A-Salt on Indigogo, a crowdsourcing site, but they weren't shipping outside the US of A so I didn't order one. Months later the inventor wrote to me and asked if I'd like to review one, Hell yes!!

As regular readers all know I'm a complete retard with a shotgun, really the moment they breed a pigeon the size of a barn door I'm going to be lethal, until then if it wasn't for rifles and the fact that pigeons can't feed and fly at the same time, I'd be vegetarian.

Like all dad's everywhere I am beset by a nagging fear that my children will not surpass me, I've set the bar pretty low but I suspect they're from a pretty lacklustre generation of couch potatoes [evidence here].
Start 'em young and keep it fun. Anyone can learn anything as long as they don't know they're being taught. The London Poacher told me how his dad had set him on the road to the sniper skills he later developed by having him hunt snails in the back garden with a spring air rifle. Could Bug-A-Salt be that teaching aid?

Last weekend Bushwacker Jnr and I tried some patterning with tin-foil [aloominum foil in the US]. The salt is certainly coming out fast enough, but in a cloud. We searched his mum's cupboards but the only salt she had in the armory proved a mis-match between the force of propulsion and the weight of the projectiles. We need coarser salt.

More in part 2
Your pal
SBW

Review: Vargo Titanium Grill

here in the 'burbs spring is springing, buds are budding and your pal SBW is taking the season as the reason to overhaul his camping kit. After my recent round-up of titanium camping gear it seemed like I should do some field testing. Stuck in town all weekend The Littlest Bushwacker and I set ourselves up in her back garden. My childhood bushcrafting began in suburban back gardens, building camps and observing whatever fauna happened to be passing. I'm still enthralled by the wonder of the natural world poking its head up from between the stones people lay to keep it out

Chad from Vargo has been releasing cool titanium ultralight backpacking gear for the last few years, I first became aware of his company when looking for an alcohol stove less crushable than a 'pepsi' and lighter than a Trangia burner. Since then Vargo has grown its offering, and brought out some very cool stuff. like this portable fire-basket and grill. Perfect for nimble bushcrafting, suburban garden popcorn making, and Vagabond-style fishing.

In the past I've always used an old food storage pot with some holes drilled in it as my fire-pot, wonderfully cheap, but bulky to pack. Vargo's grill packs better and opens up a few more cooking options. Just the thing for the traditional hunter's meal of a deer's liver fresh from the Gralloch. Eating them pulled from the fire covered in charcoal had worn a bit thin.

While we were breaking a few twigs off the dead apple tree we discovered some Turkey-Tail fungus in bloom. Boiled for an age it makes a strong liquor, rumoured to have various health benefits, but the flesh is proper chewy. Chewy like boiled boot leather. Not really a 'starter' foraged food. So I didn't brew any up for my daughter. She's had fun picking Blackberries, tried Nettles and said they're OK, so I'm thinking Mussels, which I already know she likes, gathered from rock pools to break the monotony [to her and peace to me] of a fishing trip.

The percussive delights of the lightweight popcorn rig!

More soon

SBW

Alternative Career Plan?

Jolly Swagman. I could do that. As job titles go it's got quite a ring to it doesn't it? Just yer swag [aka Matilda], billy and a tucker bag. 

A Gentleman of the Road. Dining on Jumbuck Kleftiko, sleeping in haystacks, harvesting Crawdads, tickling Trout and muttering incomprehensible fly fishing metaphors to tourists for drinks. 

Great job, got its own theme song.  

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong

Under the shade of a coolibah tree,

And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled:

"Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda, with me?"

Down came a jumbuck to drink at that billabong.

Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee.

And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag:

"You'll come a-waltzing Matilda, with me."

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SBW

RIP Clarissa Dickson Wright

Low fat, Nope. Pre-Packaged. Nope. Free Range and Full Flavour. Hell yes.

We never met but I'm going to miss you. The world just got a little crappier.

SBW

PS
Grace Dent's Obituary in The Independent

It’s with sadness I note the passing away - the final flan, the last lattice pork pie - of formidable culinary figure Clarissa Dickson Wright. Clarissa was a peculiar entity on British television, a woman resolutely untamed and non-preened and the opposite of winsome. A tremendous, often fierce yet terribly funny, mud-spattered, gun-toting movable mass of womanhood. Clarissa loved the Countryside Alliance and was one of the only two women in Britain to be part of the Guild of Butchers. One might not have agreed with her views, but Clarissa's flagrant disregard for other people’s offence - in a world full of demanded apologies - I found frankly appealing.

She achieved fame as one of the The Two Fat Ladies, a jokey, albeit slightly cruel title which painted the likes of her and her companion Jennifer Paterson - women without a thigh-gap or a spin-off aerobics DVD between them - as wobbly outsiders. But the stalwart, indomitable likes of Clarissa could be seen - and still can - at country fairs and farm shows the length and breadth of Britain. She was more the typically British rose than the likes of Liz Hurley or Lady Di. Lumpen, often livid, the sort of woman who could whip up a running buffet for 17 plus dogs in the time it would take Cara Delevinge to choose lip-gloss. Yes, perhaps slightly “fat” but wow, what a lady. 

Weekend Reading: Caretaker & Killer?

I've just read this piece at The Atlantic and thought some of you might find it of interest. Friend of the blog, coiner of the expression Adult Onset Hunting, and probably the most interesting and articulate 'hunting' writer of the last few years, Tovar Cerulli contrasts the public perceptions of 'Hunter' and 'Conservationist'.

"Fourteen years ago, I stood in the snow, struggling to digest what I had heard. A group of us, gathered to learn about monitoring and protecting wildlife habitat, had just discovered that our instructor—Sue Morse, founder of Keeping Track—was a deer hunter. I found the news disturbing. How could she work to safeguard the homes of animals she described as “neighbors” and then turn around and shoot one of them? I found it inconceivable that someone could be both an environmentalist and a hunter, a caretaker and a killer. Today, I, too, am both." READ MORE HERE

 If this piques your interest I cannot recommend his book The Mindful Carnivore strongly enough.  The journey from vegan to hunter is, like so many great change-of-heart stories, an informative one.

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SBW

Lucky Shot: Gift's For Gun Nuts

Big shout going out the the lovely people at realbullet.com who sent me some of their Lucky Shot range of bullets recycled into; a .50 cal pen, a pair of 9mm cufflinks, and a .308 bottle opener. The pen is MASSIVE! Bushwacker Jnr. is currently doing his homework with it, anything that feeds a young chap's enthusiasm for his studies has to be a good thing.

More soon
your pal
SBW