Remembering the Air

After several months of lethargy I finally quit smoking a couple of days ago. Today, to my surprise, I discovered a keen wish to go out in the fields - so out I went (at about 2.00pm).

I zero'd for about half an hour and then thought, 'Well, it's a wee bit chilly, but maybe I'll just stay out - since it's such a nice day - and wait around till dusk, at about four-ish, when the rabbits come out?'

So I did just that: I sat around, looked up into the sparkling, leafless trees, took pictures of the landscapes around me, sipped coffee from a tiny flask and squeezed my little lighter-fuel-powered hand-warmer in order to try and keep my fingers from freezing.

Then I walked across the snowy, rabbit-track-covered field...

...to the orchard...


...where I sat on a log while I peered out at a motionless, snow-crowned hedgerow. Half-a-dozen little grey wagtails dipped and flitted along it towards me. A flash of red above me - a woodpecker? Black, white and red? I must look that up when I get home, I thought.

All very pleasant and interesting; but I got colder and colder.

A pigeon landed above my head; I tried to raise the rifle silently and slowly - but it saw me and clattered off into the frosty sky.

More time passed by; the coffee ran out, my hand warmer went out and it was still nowhere near to going dark. I was beginning to think that, willing as the spirit was, my poor shivering flesh might well petrify before dusk.

A while longer and I though, 'actually, I'm so cold that I'm starting to not even feel cold any more'. Spooked by this, I creaked to my feet and started for home.

Walking back, my hands began to hurt so much that I was emitting misty blue clouds of earnest cursing as I padded across the fields; it was certainly the coldest I've ever managed to get when out hunting - but, swearing aside, I enjoyed it: it was a great relief to be out in the air again after months of fags and fug.
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Tags: winter, hunting, photographs, rabbits, smoking, air rifle

Thanks!

I've just come back from spending a snowy Christmas with friends near Newport on Tay where I had the joy of seeing, for the first time in my life, hares racing about in the fields.



The turn of the year seems like a good time to send out my thanks; I started blogging here about air rifle hunting & shooting on February 9th this year and this will be post 134; the blog has received 13,832 visits and 25,117 pages views so far. I've certainly very much enjoyed my end of things - writing and fiddling with photo's - but this amounts to little compared to the pleasure I've had from all the comments, responses and feedback to the blog. So I thought this would be a good time to express my gratitude.

My thanks go in particular to:

Albert A Rasch (currently in Afghanistan), for his generous and enthusiastic support both for this blog and for the life of the Hunter-Blogger community in general.

The Suburban Bushwacker - the premier UK Hunter-Blogger! - for his links, comments and the pleasure of the conversations we've had.

NorCal Cazadora - Mighty Queen of the Hunter-Bloggers! - it's an honour to be on y'r blogroll, ma'am!

Mungo Says Bah! - Thanks for your links and support and the pleasure that your always-delightful photography has given me.

Thomas - I faintly suspect that, were I in the States, my voting choices wouldn't meet with your unqualified approval - but your kindness, comments and emails have greatly enlivened this blog, broadened my outlook, sharpened my knives and improved my shooting.

Fred - many thanks for that Rhino Scope you were kind enough to send me. I've been such a lazy bugger of late that - and I'm embarrassed about this - I've yet to use it in the field. But that day will come, and soon, I'm sure.

Tony of Sandwell Field Sports (probably the best gun shop in the UK) - for tuning my old HW80k - it's a different gun thanks to you and I'm very much looking forwards to the barrel work you've suggested.

Many thanks for the comradely links and support from James Marchington, Harris' Hawk blog, Wandering Owl Outside, Wildcat Outdoors, Backyard Safari, Hodgeman, Lone Star Parson and Murphyfish.

To those that have hit the 'Donate' button on the left: You know who you are - please know also my very sincere thanks to you.

To those who've clicked the ads on the blog: Google Adsense quite rightly forbids me from encouraging you, but it can't stop me thanking you!

Thanks, cheers, and a Happy New Year to you all!

The Hackney Farmer Karma of Hubert.

Joy! After months of relentless lurking in charity shops I finally landed myself an authentically smelly, wrinkled and grubby fake Barbour Jacket! Hallelujah! The search is over: with my new jacket, straggly beard and filthy flat cap I am, at long last, the very image of a bona-fide Hackney Farmer.

A Hackney Farmer? Just so: one who affects the full trappings of rural work-wear and yet can be seen to do nothing but lounge around all day in Starbucks with a Mac on their lap, cradling, in their moisturised, callous-free hands, naught more burdensome than a de-caff soya latte.

C'est moi! I might now look like a scion of the rural working community, but I've been nowhere near the fields for... well, for what seems like months.

Anyway, now fully outfitted for appearance in the country I, of course, headed straight for the city (with the ever-lovely Mrs. Hubert)...


...and strode around proudly in the crowded streets, resplendent, so I felt, in my new-found, very becoming, son-of-the-soil, rural garb.

Out for a meal at my brother-in-law's place in the city, the three of us were just finished with the first bottle of wine each and, swaying somewhat, I struggled into my new coat and went out into the garden for a smoke.

As I left the warmth, my brother-in-law elected to bring his fluffy and adorable pet rabbit into the cozy, wine-and-roast-chicken perfumed snug of his lounge to warm up a wee bit. All very nice.

Fag finished, I came back inside, dropped everything and said 'yes please!' to another glass.

The rabbit ate my bloody jacket.

In a flash, in the space of a minute the damn thing put about a dozen holes in it; big holes, not little nibbled scratchy marks, dirty great big inch-across holes.

Now, I'm very happy to pretend I'm a farmer but I'm less happy, far less happy, to appear like someone who lives in a bush and talks back to his voices (obviously, since this is actually who I am, and the whole useful and enjoyable point of costume is putting on the orthopaedic mask of someone that you're not). So the hole-riddled jacket went on the peg in the hall and stayed there for a month while I contemplated it in passing every day with a grumpy scowl on my face.

Pedalling back from the giant charity warehouse on the outskirts of the town where I live the other day (where I'd gone to try and find a cheap fridge, since my old second-hand one has chosen this helpfully chilly part of the year to finally break down) I spotted a mouldy green lump in a ditch which, on inspection, turned out to be another filthy fake Barbour.

Joy! (and thanks, God.)

I cut the less mouldy strips of the waxed fabric from the discarded wreck of the coat and, over a few nights, stitched them onto the rabbit-wrecked remains of my own.


Job's a good 'un.
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Tags: Hackney Farmer, rabbits, hunting, clothing, thrift, humour

Winter draws on.

Winter has come to the West Midlands; the first flakes of the season's snow fall invisibly through the late afternoon's darkness, glitter for a moment in the yellowy-orange glow of the street lights and shiver down finally onto the lawns, the roofs of parked cars and the piled-up, wind-blown remains of Autumn's long-fallen leaves.

Do they fall on Hubert, hunkered in a field somewhere, one boggling eyeball frozen to end of a scope?

Nope; no-sirree; no they don't - for Hubert is inside: crouched in the weak field of warmth that's grudgingly given by the ancient storage heaters in his near-Arctic flat; long-john clad, duvet-wrapped, chain-smoking roll-ups and dreaming of summer...

(Still learning how to write verse so only) Four Autumn Pictures.

I've decided that I'm going to write all further posts on this blog in verse. So there will now be a small pause (of some years, probably) in which I learn how to write poetry.

(Also it's damn chilly and wet in the sodden, autumnal West Midlands and lying under a dripping hedge at dusk with an iron-sights rifle seems about as attractive to me as ... something very unattractive.)

Meanwhile, I send my most hearty congratulations to Holly on the occasion of her first deer.

Drug abuse, idleness and mobile phones.

Today, nostrils crammed with snuff and my head spinning pleasantly, I lay on the grass of a cool Autumn field and gazed up into the branches of an oak tree; leaves - one or two at a time - fluttered down to join me.

Later, lying in a another field, I heard someone shouting; a large man appeared with a mobile phone at his ear and a red and white spaniel at his heels. He advanced into the field, lay down himself and continued his conversation while his dog raced around him. The call finished, he stood up, hitched up his tee-shirt and - baring his generous white belly in the act - scratched his shoulder at some length. This done, he greeted me with a cordial wave and left the field followed by his dog.

Pausing to exchange a series of whimsical text messages with my wife, I mooched in stages down a fence-line free of rabbits.

Dusk fell and the snuff ran out. Wholly unburdened with game as I was, a vision of cocoa and cheese on toast easily carried me home.

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Tags: photography, snuff, hunting, shooting, humour, UK

At work in the fields

I crawled through a hedge yesterday, like you do, and found myself under a tree. I took my rifle out of its bag, popped in a pellet and lay back against the tree. A flutter - and a wood pigeon landed in the branches above my head.

The times I've cooked them in the past, I realised last night, I've overcooked them; they don't need long: twenty minutes in the oven yesterday and this one was superbly tender and delicious.

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Tags: wood pigeon, photographs, hunting, shooting, England, UK

(S)Canned Veg

Scouring the 'reduced' shelves for food as I do, I'm often struck by the way that price tags and labels have come to dominate the appearance of the items on sale. Here are two fine specimens from my recent expeditions:

Brrrrrr!

• A bracing, heart-expanding Autumn evening; I stride briskly to the fields at dusk and sit motionless behind a stile for half an hour. In the distance, I can see scampering brown blobs but, near at hand, nothing stirs.
  

• I get up and walk down the fence line; a cold mist is rising off the fields; it is, I realise, damn cold.

• I shiver and - ninja-like, except for copious nose-blowing and snuff ingestion - continue to edge down the field.

• I shiver more and realise that I am actually on the brink of hypothermia. Striding vigorously about and admiring the Autumn is all well and good, sitting motionless on the ground in a field is another matter entirely.

• Rather than perish in a chilly field I elect to knock hunting on the head and go home to get warm.