|
I hadn’t looked for a while at the range of videos offered by BASC on their website, but there’s an impressive range of videos on all sorts of subjects, from countryside politics to simple practical tips like this one, on how to cross a creek without getting stuck in the mud.
And PS it took all my (limited) skills to get this to embed in a WordPress post – there must be an easier way!
Predictably, a local group has sprung up in one of the proposed badger cull areas, vowing to prevent the planned cull. They’re calling themselves the Stroud 100 and claim to have 1,000 acres of “no go” land already in the bag.
By the time the cull begins, the area will be swarming with do-gooders, police, protesters… you name it. And dozens of possibly infected badgers will have been spirited away and “released into the wild” elsewhere – a “perturbation” effect that the authorities seem to have overlooked.
Regardless of the scientific validity of a cull, the whole exercise seems doomed to me. This trial is being carried out in the real world, where (probably, mostly) well-intentioned people will wreck it, making any conclusions invalid and taking us no nearer to beating this horrible disease
I found this on youube – it’s well worth a watch. I wonder if I could fit a camera on a woodpigeon, now that would be interesting!
[Mwahaha - I beat the WordPress Flickr slideshow killer as explained here]
I was at Bisley on Saturday to get some photos for the next issue of the NRA Journal. Brian Thomas kindly whisked me around on his golf buggy, so I got to see each element of the competition without having to hike for miles across camp.
The events were: US NRA Match – Melville GRSB; Target Shotgun – Butt Zero S1 or S2 Shotgun; and Close Quarter Marksmanship – Short Siberia – Practical Rifle AND LBP or GRCF.
The competitors certainly appeared to be enjoying themselves, despite the cold. My own guns aren’t really suited to this sort of event, but I could definitely be tempted to give it a go!
Thought so! There’s definitely a vixen living under the shed at the end of my garden (I live in darkest suburbia in Surrey). Here’s the proof – captured with a Bushnell Trophy Cam, the HD one with ‘black’ LEDs that are pretty much invisible to people and wildlife.
This video shows a dog fox coming to visit – and taking a pee against the side of the shed. On the soundtrack, you can hear another fox calling nearby. Later on, the vixen returns, sniffs around where he’s been, then slips under the shed. I’m guessing that she plans to have her cubs down there.
Meanwhile, I’ve moved the camera to try and get some different angles and closer shots. Watch this space!
This afternoon I set myself up waiting for a fox, with the U Caller out in the field while I sat just inside the edge of the wood – the way the wind was, the fox should have cut across the field to check out the scent as it approached the call.
In fact, no fox showed up, but this chap snuck up on me from behind. By the time he came past the tree, he knew he didn’t like the look of me, but he couldn’t quite work me out – hence all the head-bobbing, love it when they do that.
Not long after, it became too dark to film, so I gave up and went inside for tea and rock cakes!
Two of my shooting friends are suffering from chronic Lyme disease. At least, I believe they are; they believe they are; and they’re showing typical symptoms, following exposure to potentially infected tick bites. Once healthy, active, outdoor people they are now crippled with a range of horrible symptoms including numbness, joint pain, blinding headaches, dizziness and chronic fatigue.
The NHS, however, is giving them the runaround. An endless round of visits to the GP, hospital appointments, tests and scans, inconclusive results, more tests. Meanwhile they get no treatment, and their symptoms get worse.
The NHS website says all the right things:
…diagnosing Lyme disease is often difficult as many of the symptoms are similiar to those of other conditions. Blood tests are useful and important in acute infection but don’t always confirm diagnosis.
Diagnosed cases of Lyme disease can be treated with antibiotics. Your course of antibiotics will depend on the stage at which your Lyme disease is at, but you will usually need to take them for two to four weeks.
All true – but read that again:. It’s difficult to diagnose, but only diagnosed [my emphasis] cases can be treated with antibiotics. You could die – literally – waiting for the professionals to provide that diagnosis. The NHS will only provide an unreliable test, with a 90% ‘false negative’. In other words, if you test 10 people who have the disease, only one of them will show up as positive. Nine of them won’t get treated.
The National Audit Office has just released a report criticising our health service for failing people suffering from neurological conditions. On 16 December NAO boss Amyas Morse said: “Services for people with long-term neurological conditions are not as good as they ought to be, despite a large increase in spending. Progress in implementing the Department’s strategy has been poor and local organisations lack incentives to improve the quality of services.”
The report focuses on high profile diseases such as Parkinson’s, MS and MND. But if they’re failing in those areas, how much worse are they failing sufferers of Lyme – a disease that has a much lower awareness among GPs and other health professionals?
So how big is the problem? The fact is, no-one knows – because we have no idea how many people are walking around undiagnosed, and no-one has even done the research to discover how widespread the disease is in ticks in the UK. The Health Protection Agency estimates that there are 2,000 to 3,000 cases of Lyme disease in England and Wales each year, of which about 15%-20% of cases are picked up abroad. That’s a wild guess – they have no idea.
What’s certain is that tick numbers are increasing throughout the UK, and they’re active earlier and earlier each year. As shooters, stalkers, gundog owners and the like, we are one of the highest risk groups – it’s hard to think of a better way of getting bitten than crawling around on hands and knees in the undergrowth, in areas frequented by deer and other wild mammals.
The best advice is to take sensible measures to avoid tick bites, check yourself over for ticks after a day outdoors and remove them properly (with a tick remover), be aware of the symptoms and if you suspect you may have Lyme disease get along to your doctor and don’t take no for an answer.
More info and awareness campaigning at Lyme Disease Action and BADA-UK.
Brilliant – but includes rude words so use headphones if there are kids around.
I’ve been reviewing the latest Scottish government figures for ‘Animal poisonings’ available on the SASA website here. The latest data covers the first three quarters of 2011 – and shows a welcome drop in the number of cases of deliberate poisoning of birds of prey, a trend that’s welcomed by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association here – the SGA has played a significant part in helping to stamp out illegal poisoning, doing real practical work with PAW and others as well as taking a robust public stance and expelling for life one member who was convicted of illegal poisoning.
What really strikes me in the data, though, is the vastly greater number of cases of poisoning by rodenticides. If, as the RSPB like to suggest, the figures represent the tip of the iceberg, then this indicates a massive threat to birds of prey in Scotland. Even birds that died from something entirely unrelated seem to be showing background levels of rat poison. Quite simply, there seems to be hardly a bird of prey in Scotland that isn’t suffering from rodenticide poisoning to some degree.
At the very least, this should be ringing alarm bells – where is all this rat poison coming from, how are the birds of prey getting it, and just how many birds of prey are dying as a result? To what extent does this explain the much vaunted ‘missing’ birds?
Sadly, the RSPB (and others’) obsession with gamekeepers is diverting attention from what may well prove to be a much bigger threat to birds of prey. A cynic might wonder if a campaign against rat poison is less effective at whipping up publicity, membership and donations.
Going through some old files, I discovered this photo of me with my first duck. Walking in the Highlands with my dad, we crept up to the edge of a hill loch and peeped over the peat bank. This mallard flushed from the reeds and flew out across the loch; I brought it down with the 20-bore (borrowed from my mum if I remember right). The dog refused to swim for it, and I remember Dad saying: “Either it stays there, or you go and get it.” Well, I wasn’t going to leave it behind! If I don’t look sufficiently chuffed, bear in mind that a) the water was colder than expected and b) Dad kept making me go back and walk out again so he could get the photo with the duck strategically placed!
