http://www.airgunshooting.co.uk AIRGUN WORLD 39Dave Barham reveals a new 800-acre permission that
has everything a hunter could want
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HUNTING
S
ometimes you just get lucky. I’ve had small
permissions up here in Lincolnshire in
recent years, with not a lot to go at – maybe a
few pigeons or the odd rabbit, but nothing on
the scale of what my friend Roger and I have
just secured!
FRIEND OF A FRIEND
As with most things in life, it’s not what you
know, it’s who you know, and that is certainly
the case when it comes to my latest permission.
I’ve known Roger for a few years now and
we regularly fish together. More recently he’s
got into his airgunning, and we soon got round
to the subject of shooting rabbits and pigeons.
“I know a great lad. He’s a farmer and he and
his dad own loads of land around here,” Roger
explained to me one afternoon in the pub.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was
music to my ears.
It turns out that Roger knows farmer Alan
from his drifting days (I’m talking competitive
car racing, not a vagabond lifestyle). They
became great friends and have stayed in touch
ever since. It took all of ten minutes for Roger
pretty much to secure us some shooting land
over the phone, on the proviso that we pop
over to said land and meet with Alan to discuss
the finer details.
WHAT A PLACE!
We arranged to go and meet Alan the following
afternoon at the farm, which is just a 20-minute
drive from my house. As we approached the
gated access gravel track to gain entry, Alan was
there waiting for us in his van.
“We had to gate this road off, because we
had a lot of problems with hare coursers. I’ll
get you lads a key cut,” he said before I’d even
stepped out of the car.
Now in my book, a quote like that says
“You’ve got the permission,” and I was right.
As we drove through the gate on to the
gravel road, I could see just how big this farm
is; way off in the distance I could see a large
open-fronted barn, with several units to the left
of it, and they were a long way away.
We got out of the car and began chatting to
Alan, and he explained that we had two fields
depth to the right of the track and three fields to
the left, in all about 800 acres. Wow! What a find!EVERYTHING YOU WANT
As our chat continued, I learned that there
were plenty of rabbits on the land, as well as
hares – although I never shoot those.
There were pigeons flying all over the place,
and I could see at least ten fields of rapeseed
that I knew the pigeons would be on after
harvesting and also when drilling began for the
second crop of the year.
As we stood there chatting, I saw at least a
dozen pheasants, and a few brace of partridge
wandering across the road from field to field.
I could hear the crows in the trees of the
box-shaped copse at the edge of one of the
fields, and before I could even ask about rats
in the barns Alan told us they had a rat
problem.
All the while my heartbeat was increasing
and it felt like it was going to jump right
through my chest – I was so excited. Talk
about getting lucky, this land has everything a
hunter could dream of.
“Oh, there’s quite a few roe deer and
muntjac, too,” explained Alan.STAYING LEGAL
It didn’t take long for Alan to fill out and sign
the permission forms I’d printed off from the
BASC website, and Roger had already printed
a colour map of the area from Google Maps, onThe open-fronted grain
store provides decent
shooting positions from
both outside and inside.Roger spotted a rat on
our third visit as the
light was fading, but he
didn t manage to get a
clear shot.Baby rats or mice? There s obviously a rat problem here!