Fieldsports Britain - Barney White-Spunner first TV interview + bull breaks pigeon shooter's rib

[Music]
Welcome to Fieldsports Britain.
Coming up:
Well, forum logins at the ready all you keyboard warriors,
we have some of your favourite characters.
It's Ian Harford of Team Wild TV.
It's Oliver Power.
First, the first television interview with the new chief executive of the
Countryside Alliance, Barney White-Spunner.
To the untrained eye, we're at a gorgeous point-to-point in
the heart of the shires. This is Badbury Rings in Dorset. There are foxhounds
from the Portman, beagles from the Pimpernel, and all
the hilarity of terrier racing, stalls, dogs, children and
country people having fun.
But don't be fooled. It is fifteen years since the British
countryside held the biggest political rally the country had ever seen
in London's Hyde Park.
It is ten years since they beat that record with around half a million
people marching against Tony Blair's plans to ban hunting. Blair ignored us.
Now, England expects the new chief executive of the Countryside Alliance
to be the one who gets the hated hunting ban repealed, puts the countryside back
into the hands of people who live there and who fights of the
threatened death by a thousand cuts that some people in Government want
to administer to shooting.
We are so lucky to have someone of Barney's calibre prepared to step
in at what is going to be a very, very crucial few years for the Alliance.
What's crucial about it?
I think we are coming to the crunch time on hunting,
I think the countryside has an enormous need for a champion on a great
many things: planning being one to ensure that there are homes for
rural people, to ensure that businesses can flourish because there
is better rural broadband, all the things that actually concern people
who live and work here as opposed to the many, many organisations which
champion people who visit the countryside, but that's not quite the same.
What we want is to keep the distinct countryside way of life going and
we are the only organisation that actually does that.
As an ex-army man I kick off by asking Barney about his role in the Countryside Alliance.
Countryside Alliance is a marvellous mixture of strategists and street fighting tactitions.
[Laughs]
That's a very good description.
Well I like to think I have come on a journey because in the military we all start at the
bottom and work up and I think one of the good things
about the army is that it gives you a bit of experience
at all levels, if you see what I mean, so I've done
the street fighting bit, I enjoyed the street fighting bit,
nothing I like more, equally I think what people want from
me now is more to chart a course and be clear as
to what we are going to do.
So the big question: the ban on hunting with hounds and other
sporting dogs. Surely this is a priority?
Yes, of course it is, absolutely.
What have you got planned?
Well, repeal of the Act and that will happen The Hunting
Act will be repealed, it's a bad law. It's not supported.
It's a law as we know brought in because the Government
didn't like the people who did it rather than didn't like
what they were doing. How we get there is going to require
us to be alert to the opportunities. We know we've
got a lot of support from the Prime Minister. You probably
heard him on Countryfile the other day. He said very clearly
that it is not an issue for the criminal law. There are people
who say to me why bother to repeal it, you can say that
if you are a hunt follower, but if you are hunt staff you
can't just leave hunts which are in that position trying to
hunt within this badly framed pernicious illiberal law. We
will get there and we will do it and I am absolutely confident
of that, but people have got to stick with us and not think oh well
it wasn't repealed at the last election, I am in a grump that's
what we hoped for. That's naive you have got to stick with
the campaign.
Among the party faithful is ace flyfisher Charles Jardine
who, thanks to the support of the Countryside Alliance Foundation,
is educating children all over the UK with Fishing For Schools.
Absolutely thrilled with Barney's appointment. He's a man who
understands fishing for one thing. He does fish, he has
got, I think the Axe, so he knows first hand the problems
and the areas that concern anglers and that's a breath of fresh air
for me. That's not to say we didn't have an angling interest
before. We always have, but to have somebody who actually knows I
suppose the issues and grasps those issues that's important
for the overall Alliance balance.
I really do, I think we are in a new age. We really are. I'm thrilled.
Fishing for schools is a cause that's really resonating with Barney.
One of the critical issues is really to further the Foundation
and the Foundation is a wonderfulthing. It really does two extraordinary,
valuable programmes: education - getting children out into the countryside and
Fishing For Schools which Charles has just been chatting about. We have
got to get better at our education and that is why
the Foundation is so critical.
Barney is here to talk to people, both face to face and in groups.
Everyone wants to hear him. He has only been in the job for a
few days but he has had to hit the political landscape running.
Even in the short week I have been there we have a bill introduced to
introduce a closed season for hares in this country and we
also - which you probably know, there's only a closed season for
selling hares at the moment - and we also have a quite well
supported private members bill trying to ban children from
using shotguns. Two things just since Christmas which maybe don't
hit the headlines, but the sort of things the Alliance on a
daily basis is fighting on your behalf.
He's worried about stopping children from using shotguns. I wonder whether
the antis should be worried about Barney being a much bigger weapon.
Your role as a guided missile
[Laughs]
Guided missile, where did that come from?
[Laughs]
Where are you going to land?
The whole point about guided missiles is that they can be
guided in flight. If I was dumb missile I would choose
where I was going to land and fire myself. The whole point
about being a guided missile is I can control my flight and I will
control my flight depending on where we are going to have most effect.
[Laughs]
For more about Barney and the Countryside Alliance visit
www.countryside-alliance.org.uk
Well, repeal of the hunting act that would be news. In the meantime
let's make do with David on the Fieldsports Channel News Stump.
[Music]
This is Fieldsports Britain News.
The National Trust is starting ban game shoots at its properties,
They include Polesden Lacey in Surrey and Wallington in Northumberland.
So what can shooters do? Professor Caroline Tisdall is both a council
member of the National Trust and a trustee of the Countryside
Alliance Foundation.
Every bequest to the Trust with a major estate at some point
entailed the planting of hedgerows and the whole tradition of shooting,
a major part of countryside tradition, and to betray that would be to
betray donors' wishes and the aspirations of all sorts of people
who live and work in the countryside not just visit.
Popular West Country shooter, novelist and clay coach Rod Brammer has
died following a battle with cancer. A former naval commander, Rod
was well known for his trenchant views on wildlife management, which
often landed him in the newspapers, calling for magpie and grey squirrel
culls. His son Matt takes over the Shalden Shooting School in Devon.
visit www.shaldenshootingschool.co.uk
It's one of the trickiest stands in clay shooting. At the Shooting
Show last weekend, Pat DIckman, here pictured on the right with
Browning's David Stapley, scored 19 out of 20 to win a Browning
525 in the Browning Rabbitmania.
And finally noone really cares for antis. But it takes an
American to really get to them. We are in North Carolina where
a group of antis called SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness 'SHARK'
launched this radio controlled helicopter to try and film pigeon
shooters. The American pigeon shooters respond the only way
they know how... and down it comes.
You are now up to date with Fieldsports Britain News.
Stalking the stories, fishing for facts.
[Music]
David there, more clerk from Kent than Clark Kent.
Now to a real super man. It's Ian Harford from Team Wild TV
[Music]
This farm in Fife is plagued by pigeons. I have
already had success during the day, but to really get on top
of them we plan a night time assault. The reason I am wearing
a mask tonight even though there is no light here, there is a
full moon, but even then it is faint, we are going into the
sheds and is going to be completely black, is that
when I switch the illuminator on to this Nite Site and it
shines on my face it does provide some reflection.
I do have shockingly white skin, so I am covering up my hands,
covering up my face anything which is going to be around
the screen which will help to break up the light so that they
won't even know we are there.
So that's the plan.
This is the size of the problem. There are literally hundreds
of pigeons in here. The mess on the floor is pretty bad. You
can just see from the shear numbers they have no concern
of the fact we are here, no idea that we are here. This
Nite Site really is an incredible piece of equipment.
Look at those. I will zoom out a second here and give
you a full picture. Look at that.
The barn is full of cattle and we only have the one
centre aisle from which to shoot.
[Music]
There is a couple and I have had to take two shots there.
There are a couple I have given hair cuts to.
There's still plenty more, in fact I would say there
is about at least 300 pigeons in here. So by the time
I have finished there might be another 50 less. We will
see how we get on. In a second I am about to reload
and I shall have to go and get some more air. This rocks.
I think I have run out of air. Back to the car reload
and bring in a spare magazine.
So, we have had to reload, we have had to put some air
in the gun. This is intense. It is probably the most insane
pigeon control exercise I have ever done in my life. There are
simply hundreds and hundreds of pigeons
in there and they have absolutely no idea we are here. I have
actually taken my face mask off now because even with the
light on full illumination, they are not even bothered, they are
not even looking at us. We have probably got about fifty, fifty-five
on the deck at the moment. I'm taking body shots mainly
as you will see from the footage a little bit later.
Head shots, neck shots on pigeons in a barn like this,
they are not advisable really. There is plenty of penetration
with this .177 12ft/lb Air Rifle.
If you stick it up near the head and you miss you are
going up through an asbestos roof and causing damage and
that's not what we are here for. We are here to keep
these winged menace under control and we have done
a pretty good job so far.
So loading up, spare magazine, more air and we are going
back for more.
[Music]
The Huntsman and nightsight combo is incredibly efficient and the
birds keep falling. The only problem is having just ten
shots in the magazine.
[Music]
After the latest recharge I take up position outside the
barn. It's another great vantage point although the cows are getting
a little too close for comfort.
So one of these cows is a new-age hippy type cow because it
was licking the end of my barrel and nearly got itself a piercing,
so I think what we will do now as we have got far too much
interest at this end of the barn, I am just going to
get down and do another little tour of the inside, reload
find a new position in the middle of the floor, probably
seated this time and then we're just going to work our way around
the rafters again.
Amazingly I am now nearing my century: ninety-six,
ninety-seven,
ninety-eight,
ninety-nine
and 100. 100 feral pigeons.
It's my personal record. I've got one in the mag so why not one for luck?
Andy Richardson is a guide with a nose for pigeons and
he has certainly delivered the goods tonight.
How did the relationship start with you and the farm, how did
you find this barn?
Myself and this particular farmer used to drink together when we
were in our teens, so it has been a thirty-year friendship.
We were in the Young Farmers together.
So what you are suggesting is that if you go down to the
pub more often you bump into cool people you get decent shooting?
That's right, yes.
I must tell my wife that.
As the night has gone on we have got bolder and bolder
throwing more and more light around the shed. Now we are
going full on and using a foxing lamp to show just
how big a problem these pigeons are.
And for my grand finale I see how many birds I can
knock down with my last full magazine.
So it's my last ten shots, my last mag and Andy
has challenged me to see if I can get ten out of ten,
so watch and learn.
One,
three,
five,
seven,
nine,
ten.
Andy says a lot of the fallen birds will be trodden into
the cow's bedding, so I start clearing up.
Looks like a lot of these fellows have been trodden
in already so I have got a bit of work cleaning up. I've spent
about two hours having a whale of a time, now comes the dirty work.
Go on, get on.
It was all going so well when one animal feels I
am invading its personal space. He looks a little shifty so
I keep an eye on him.
Aaah!
However, he's too fast for me.
The dairy cross bull puts me on the deck and I exit
the barn as fast as I can.
Are you all right?
Blimey! Yeah.
Behind the camera David offers some reassuring words.
Where did it get you? in the knee?
No, the chest.
While Andy suppresses a laugh.
What's happened here?
I lost an argument with a cow.
He rammed me against the wall.
It's OK.
Are you sure Ian?
I don't think I broke anything.
You ought to sit down, catch your breath.
I'm winded and we later discover I am nursing two cracked ribs.
But the show must go on.
Ugh.
Right.
Just explain what happened then.
Well, I was just in there trying to gather the pigeons up,
these cows look a little bigger than the other ones
and I think there have been a few half eaten around here.
I think they have been chewing on them, but I lost an
argument with a very big beef cow, one like that. In fact
that might be him right there. I tell you what: he will get it.
So, what a phenomenal night.
That has to be one of the greatest night's shooting
of my entire career. 110 birds on the floor, ten
out of ten on my last magazine and that wasn't
even the only excitement I even got rammed against the
wall by one of those huge pedigree bulls in there as
I was cleaning up the birds.
So a night I will never forget, but I will be sore
in the morning.
Ferals and Harford being hit hard.
[Music]
Ian taking no bull there - spare rib anybody?
Now, mushrooms and I don't mean any of that hippy stuff,
I mean what happens to a bullet inside a deer.
Oliver Power of the English Safari Company
is field testing the 6.5x55 on muntjac and Chinese water deer.
It's a beautiful crisp winter's morning and we're not the only
ones out stalking. There has been a heavy frost in the
Cotswolds which will make our life a lot harder as we work
our way through the woods. As the sun rises,
the English Safari Company's Oliver Power
takes up a position with a long view down a ride. Today
he wants to illustrate the performance of his favourite
6.5x55 Norma ammunition. It's not got the history or the fan
club in the UK that the .243 and .308 have, but the tide
is turning.
I notice a lot of UK stalkers now changing over to using 6.5x55,
the Swedish Mauser. It is a fantastic all-round rifle, shooting
right down from muntjac right up to red stags. It has fantastic
accuracy and on this particular rifle I shoot two weights of bullet
one being the BST Nosler 120-grain and the 156-grain Oryx. Usually
if we are trophy hunting I use the 156-grain Oryx and if I am
cull hunting I use the Nosler BST 120s. So I was asked
to go down the range to test fire this and see what type
of groupings we have picked up. All done at 100 metres, all five
shot placements on it and it has been a very consistent,
very reliable, very durable and essentially with the ripened rifle
and scope it's a very lightweight piece of kit to carry around.
Nothing seems to be interested in moving. The muntjac we know
are here will be sitting tight so maybe our crunching might
stir things up a bit.
The plan works and a doe dives out of the cover. Oliver takes
the only shot on offer and she is on the ground.
As always, the muntjac are buried deep in the brambles and this
doe shot out straight in front of us.
Bit of a snap shot.
What we used was my 6.5x55 chamber grid, the 156-grain Oryx
round, and she was tail pointing towards us, slightly turning her
face over her back and sometimes when you are out stalking you
can't always get the perfect shot placement, but this is a
glancing head blow to this animal with this heavy Oryx,
but it still did the job at the end of the day. It put it
down straight away, killed it out right. So you will see
from the wound channel we have got this glancing which has
lacerated everything and what I would perceive from the shot
is that, because it is such a heavy dense round, animals will die
from shock. A lot of people are not aware of this, because
of something hitting you, you can also die of the shock. It
doesn't have to be puncturing all the vital organs to kill
it. The shock can kill something outright as well and this
is what has happened with this animal.
The power of the round is clear and Oliver believes
it should be appealing to trophy hunters. It's designed
to kill cleanly without leaving a great hole that a taxidermist
would struggle to fix. To help show this, Oliver has
been invited by Zeiss professional
stalker Paul Childerley to help with his Chinese water deer cull
in Bedfordshire. There are no trophies on offer but Oliver
is going to take out a young animal with a heart shot using
the same 156grain Norma soft point.We get into a group that are
sitting tight in a dip out of the cold wind. These animals seem
happy to remain seated thanks very much. When they
finally do get a sense of impending danger, they're off.
We move across to another part of Paul's ground and, this time,
a group that have been spooked head towards us.
They stop and a heart shot is now possible.
The animal doesn't drop immediately -
adrenalin pumping she moves - but she is very dead.
Right so we have the 156-grain
Norma Oryx round which is a core-bonded bullet. It has entered just behind the
shoulder here, this is the entry wound. And if we gently
turn this old girl over, she is slightly quartering away from
the rifle and here we have got the exit wound here.
Oliver carries out a dissection and shows the damage done by this bullet.
So here we have the heart which has been totally minced
by the Oryx round, truly opened it up. And here we move across
and see some of the trauma that has occurred on the lungs,
clipping the lungs as well. It is even clearer in the
larder where ribs, muscle and organs have not forced
the bullet off course.
This is a bullet hitting bone. It's not deviated from its path
it's gone straight through, into the vital organs, into the heart,
punctured through these next two ribs, without deviating
anywhere because we can't see any bullet fragmentation
going anywhere else but through here and as it punctured
through we can see the ballooning effect of the
hydrostatic shock which is about 12cm across in diameter.
Bullet weight retention in this instance is vitally important.
Oliver shows just how good it can be.
A client came a couple of weeks ago and shot a muntjac.
The entry wound was here and the Oryx travels straight down
here in a very acute angle, mushroomed, taking out all the
vital organs and lodging itself in the haunch and we found on
the bolt of the skin the mushroomed round. Norma are
very proud about the bullet retention that this Oryx keeps
and this essentially has only lost about 9 per cent of its body
weight when passing through the muntjac. We also shot another Oryx
round into water just to show you what we would consider a
nice mushroomed round and again this has lost about -
being fired into the water - lost about 10 per cent of its weight.
For the 156-grain Oryx - the soft point ammunition - it's all
about staying together. For the 6.5x55 120-grain plastic tip
it's all about falling apart.
This x-ray of a fox shows just how the smaller plastic tip
calibres fragment on impact, and here is the 6.5 which Oliver
has retrieved from his own experiment.
We fired one of these into the water and retrieved all
the fragmentation just to show essentially how many shards actually
come away and how it literally is like a grenade when it goes off.
To field test Norma's 6.5 x 55 plastic tipped bullet we're after
another muntjac. We spot a nice medal buck and he continues on
his way. However just a bit further along we spot a doe.
Oliver shoots it in the neck.
Pleased with that?
Very pleased with it.
Next shot 6.5x55 120-grain BST at about 100 metres and down she went.
The 6.5x55 is a versatile calibre and, with the bullet options on
offer, it will perform well whatever deer species you're stalking.
Well, we are back next week when we have three deer,
one cartridge, the .308. And if you are watching this on YouTube
please don't hesitate to hit the subscribe button which is
about there on the screen or go to our website,
www.fieldsportschannel.tv, scroll down to the bottom where you
will find the Constant Contact form into which you can pop
your email address to allow us to spam you or click to
like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, same thing.
We'll tell you about our programme which comes out
from 7pm UK time, Wednesday every week.
This has been Fieldsports Britain:
more bangs than anything else on telly.
[Music]