Charlie’s combination rifle

Charlie buys a Winchester combination rifle from Gibbs Gunmakers (12-bore and .243, £1,500) and sets out to see whether it is the all-round gun he is looking for. With the help of some of Fieldsports Channel’s gang, it’s a journey that takes him from duck and red stags in Sutherland to fallow bucks and squirrels in the South-West of England.
For more about Mark Crudgington’s guns for sale, visit GibbsGunmakers...
For Rifleman Firearms range and shop, go to RiflemanFirear...
Tom Davies’s Dartmoor Deer Services is at DartmoorDeerSe...
Contact Abbey Ling via www.LingShooti...
Book stalking and duckshooting with John Dodd via ProHuntLtd.co.uk
Ollie Wiliams runs CornishSportin...
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Why shoot deer?
There are more than two million red, roe, fallow, sika, muntjac and Chinese water deer in Britain’s countryside and semi-urban areas, the highest level for 1,000 years. Numbers have doubled since 1999, according to the Deer Initiative, the UK government’s deer agency.
Deer are an attractive and an important part of our wildlife. However, they have no natural predator in the UK so numbers must be sensibly and strategically managed to keep them in balance with their habitat and to prevent damage to crops, trees, woodland flora, gardens and other wildlife.
Deer cause £4.5 million-worth (Forestry Commission Scotland) of damage to plantations and other commercial woodlands in Scotland. Crop damage is estimated at £4.3m a year according to DEFRA, with the greatest damage on cereal crops in east and south-west England.
More than 8,000 hectares (Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology) of woodland with SSI status is currently in ‘unfavourable’ or ‘recovering’ condition due to deer impacts such as browsing and fraying. Deer can also influence the variety of wildlife in woodlands and other habitats by altering structural and plant species diversity. According to the University of East Anglia’s Dr Paul Dolman, that has resulted in a 50% decline in woodland bird numbers where deer are present, impacting particularly on nightingales, blackcaps, chiffchaffs and warblers.
Deer are susceptible to Bovine TB and may be responsible for the transmission of TB to cattle. They are also the likely driver behind the UK’s increasing tick population (Scharlemann et al 2008).
Happily, venison is a delicious meat. It is wild, natural and free range, and - almost fat-free - it is one of the healthiest meats available today. Results from research commissioned by the Game-to-Eat campaign (Leatherhead Food International Research 2006) suggest that there are real health benefits to eating game. Venison is high in protein, low in saturated fatty acids and contains higher levels of iron than any other red meat.
Why shoot wildfowl?
Wildfowling is a trade that goes back centuries. In the last 100 years, the wildfowling clubs and shooting organisations of the UK have turned it from a business that depleted duck and geese populations into a conservation effort that ensures healthy populations of waterfowl. Almost anywhere you find duck and geese, especially around the UK’s coastline, you will find wildfowling clubs, with conservation plans and habitat management strategies. Without them, the UK wouldn’t have the waterfowl populations it does.
Catherine Collop, a PhD student at Bournemouth University, conducted a study on Poole harbour in Dorset, which found that walking causes 100 times more disturbance than wildfowling. Furthermore, that wildfowling accounted for just 0.04% of the disturbance activities on Poole Harbour and that the impact was deemed so low that research predicted that there would be no impact on the survival of birds even if it was increased by 25 times. Catherine’s full PhD can be found here: eprints.bournem...
Catherine’s research shows just how low an impact wildfowling can have, and also, importantly provides some general information on assessing the likely impact of wildfowling. We are now building on this success and have sponsored a follow-up study looking at how the findings from Poole Harbour can be generalised to any site.
We’re proud to promote enjoyment of fieldsports and the countryside. There are three guiding principles to everything we do on Fieldsports Channel:
▶ Shoot responsibly
▶ Respect the quarry
▶ Ensure a humane, clean and quick kill