Thread: EBs hunting woodcock in France

They're deceiving, but I didn't think they actually flew all that fast.

They don't, fly all that fast. Over heather they are a relatively easy mark but they have a capacity to get behind any available protection and surprisingly a single ash plant can deflect a very high percentage of shot. I don't know why but i always take seven cartridges with me. One day shooting with Ian Whiteside near Dromrore in Co Tyrone we had half an hour to kill and we did about thirty acres of what had been open bog but now had a hazel plant about every five yards. We fired in the region of fifty shots, had twenty six head of game and my contribution was six timber doodles and a snipe. That sort of thing doesn't happen that often to me.

Ladies read no further. Later that day I had the shit scared out of me. Almost literally. It is hard to explain how the brain works when you are in a terrorisy controlled area. Feeling the need to relieve my brains I tied the dog to a tree, unloaded the gun and rested it against the same tree retiring a few feet to prevent the dog form becomming involved with the proceedings. Imagine the scene. Desi witht the molies round his ankles removing the pomp and pomposity from man (polite way of saying having an outdoor crap) just ten yards short of a stand of bull rushes. My eye falls on a particular clump of rushes and I decide I can see something that looks like an eye. (at times like this the fact that the eye has a particular hazel tinge and is about twice the size of a human eye doesn't make it's way into your coretex) By the time I decided I could see two eyes I was metaphorically and literallt shitting bricks. Deciding I wahet my gun I nonchantly completed my toilet and as I stood up the deer erupted form the rushes and made off across the field. I wasn't right for about half an hour afterwards.