Fieldsports Britain - DIY night vision + flying hawks on pheasants (episode 163)

[Music]
Welcome to Fieldsports Britain. Coming up Andy Crow is so impressed with Roy's homemade
night vision last week that he is trying out his own one this evening.
That has got a dead rat.
He has and all.
We are going pheasant shooting in the Blackdowns and we are meeting the founder of a new website
that is devoted to shooting.
First they call the goshawk the cook's bird for its ability to fill your freezer. Well
nobody told Roy Lupton's Goshawks. He is out after pheasants with the plangeres of the
shooting world.
This is a young goshawk. A few 100 years ago she was the equivalent of ocado the perfect
predator to put food on the table. Hares, rabbits, pheasants. She was a vital part of
any kitchen's utensil drawer. So today we are off to God's larder to see what she can
get her talons into and what we can get our teeth into.
Today we are going to be going out and seeing if we can get a few bits and bobs for the
pot. We are hoping for may be a rabbit and hopefully a pheasant or two. We have got Jordan
out with us today as well flying his red tail. Jordan is my apprentice. He came, or he started
coming down and we got him doing all the mucky jobs, clearing out and doing all the normal
things we get apprentices to do for a year. At the beginning of this season he started
off with his red tail. For a ginger he is definitely not doing to bad. He has worked
out quite well. He is turning into quite a good little falconer. I say little he is actually
huge. Have you seen the size of the boy's hands.
Relevant.
I don't know. Girls beware. Anyway we have got Jordan is out with us with his red tail.
We are going to give Jordan first dibs to try and catch a rabbit, but a lot of people
don't bother flying red tails off the fist at pheasants and feathered game, but she has
done very, very well so far on feathered game. So if we do get a slip on a pheasant hopefully
we will get one for Jordan. We will see if his red tail can perform on those as well.
Roy's issues with red heads and men with big hands coming to the fore there. Where were
we, oh yes falconry. Another essential part of the shopping trip is ferrets. Roy has brought
along a few bright albino flavours. With young birds it is best to have these amazing feisty
little creatures looking as unlike a rabbit as possible. The first set of burrows is tricky
to manage as there has been some hedge trimming so we move on. Now many people start their
falconry career with a harris hawk, but Roy commends a red tail as a starter bird for
Jordan. It will be a bit more work but there are some long term benefits.
I think it is a shame that apprentices don't start off their falconry careers with birds
like red tails, because they are little bit more difficult and take a little more understanding
that the harris hawk. So for an entry level bird, your first bird you can learn and gauge
a lot more from them. That is with all of them. A lot of people will buy a new bird
and then move straight on after a year or two to something else. Whereas they are all
fantastic birds and they will all last you a good 15 to 20 years of a hunting career.
We have more success at the next spot. But the fences are a real problem in this part
of the world and the rabbits are neatly evading the wire which could easily kill or end the
career of a bird.
Unfortunately when you are flying here in this area of the country we are hounded by
fences and fences are something you have to be very mindful of and very aware of because
your hawk can get badly damaged on them. I was hoping the rabbits were just going to
come out or maybe go across to that hedgerow over there, but they are just weaving their
way down. So we have just got to be a little bit careful with this earth. We will lift
the ferrets up and move on.
Moving across the fields, Roy's other shopping assistant Atos looks like he's on point..
It could be our first pheasant flight so we all get into position.
The hen bird flies along the ditch and manages to find cover... and the goshawk runs out
of room. Roy feels it's a case of a fast pheasant and a young gos with a confidence issue...
but on we go and Jordan's red tail gets more of a dive than a flight - incredibly the bird
is strong enough to keep hold of a bouncing bunny with a very sharp toe.
That is the advantage with a red tail, they are so robust and so strong, she had hold
of that with one leg, but she stopped it from running down the hole. But hopefully we will
get some better flights.
Well at least we won't starve - there's a rabbit in the bag and moments later there's
another opportunity for the gos - she's a gnat's earlobe away from making contact...before
a second dive - nice effort but still not off the board yet!
Atos once more smells a nervous pheasant and we're away again - but this super fast gos
needs a bit more practise on these flying feasts.
Our last chance falls to Jordan - with so many holes from where a fleet-of-foot rabbit
will dart, running for its life, it's pretty hard, especially when there's a small tree
in the way - the head start means the red tail has too much ground to make - but it's
still a spectacle.
Not quite the day we were looking for. Unfortunately only a couple of pheasants kicked up there.
So we have got a few invites towards the end of the season on a few shoots so we will get
on there and see if we can do a little bit better than that. It was the first time this
hawk has been flown on pheasants and the first time she has seen pheasants. She flew one
reasonably well, but obviously the first time you show them, they are not overly confident
and then taking a young hawk out at this time of the season the pheasants are all very fit
rather than starting at the beginning. I am just getting my excuses in quick here. Obviously
we had a very short one with Jordan's bird and it was just the luck of the bolts, because
we obviously had a couple of fantastic bolts that went right across the open field for
us, but it was just a combination of being in the wrong spot and not seeing them. I think
the moral of the story for that one is must try harder.
It is a really exciting way to spend an afternoon even if you have just got one rabbit to show
for it. Roy is now determined to put on a show before the end of the season.
Well that is enough chasing after the birds. If you want to watch more of our falconry
films you can click on the films appearing in the sky behind me and go straight through
to our falconry play list.
Now something for the birds to chase after themselves. It is David on the Fieldsports
Channel News Stump.
[Music]
This is Fieldsports Britain News.
The booming population of British roe deer appears to be having an impact on woodlands.
That's one conclusion of a new study by Durham University and the Food and Environment Research
Agency. Researchers found that sites with the highest abundance of the native animals
had the lowest shrub layer vegetation cover and a lower number of birds, though they haven't
ruled out that roe deer might just like that kind of ground.
News coverage and comment continues about the RSPCA's vendetta against the Heythrop
hunt and in particular huntsman Julian Barnfield. Julian has now retired after a distinguished
career hunting the Bramham Moor, the Worcestershire and the Cotswold before the Heythrop. There
will be a special meet of the Heythrop hounds in February for all Julian's friends from
far and wide at which a cap will be taken for his Testimonial. Contact Heythrop Joint
Master Nessie Lambert on nessielambert@hotmail.com
Fidel Castro, OJ Simpson, Osama Bin Laden, America has a new hate figure and he's British:
Piers Morgan. The CNN star interviewer has taken a strong anti-gun line since the Sandy
Point school shootings. The American public is slating him for his ‘rudeness' to pro-gun
guests. More than 100,000 Americans have signed a petition calling for Piers Morgan to be
deported.
Good news for sea fishers who have reported greater numbers and larger sizes of bluefin
tuna in British waters. A 500lb bluefin tuna has sold in Japan for a record sum of £1.2
million. It went to a sushi restaurant owner at a Tokyo fish market's first auction of
the year, setting a new price record - nearly three times the one set last year. Market
officials say that this fish was caught off the coast of north-eastern Japan.
And finally, a deer surprised shoppers at the Christmas sales in a town in Essex. A
woman was injured after the animal went charging down Chelmsford High Street in Essex. It was
caught on CCTV.
You are now up to date with Fieldsports Britain News. Stalking the stories. Fishing for facts.
[Music]
Thank you David. Now to the Blackdown hills of Somerset, which for those of us who live
in Somerset know are called the Blackdown hills because it always rains.
The weather is not looking promising as guns assemble at Trickey's Farm in Somerset. The
drizzle only stops to make way for downpours. Everybody is delighted to be under cover of
the buildings.
12 people are shooting and sharing the beating today, from young to old and none of them
live more than 20 miles away.
The boss, gamekeeper, farmer - call him what you like -gives the safety briefing, paying
special attention to the local horse-owners on a neighbouring piece of land who don't
like shot raining down on their four-legged friends.
The shooters have their own animal buddies - the dogs, an unusual collection, not all
of them Kennel Club-registered - but they are united in looking forward to not just
shot, but birds raining down on them.
On the first drive, we join farmer's son Chris. So what is his father trying to achieve with
this shoot?
I am a stockman through and through. I milk the cows seven days a week and I rear the
birds. I don't shoot myself, but I enjoy the day and I enjoy rearing the birds and I enjoy
working the dogs as well.
So as a game keeper have you got a view about the weather.
Yes, it is atrocious this year. Absolutely. The only good thing is on a day like today
the birds are around the pens. Whereas on a bright sunny day they tend to be scattered
far afield.
Just tell me a bit about the Blackdown hills. Which is where we are. What sort of shooting
country is this?
It is primarily brilliant shooting country. There are hills, valleys, woods, common land.
It is just a brilliant area to shoot in. The only snag being, because it is a brilliant
area for shooting, it is a brilliant area for vermin and that is the only snag and we
do have to work hard in keeping the foxes down. That is primarily the biggest killer
of the pheasants. Primarily when they are poults just out of the pens.
This shoot is providing excellent sport today and both the guns and the dogs are getting
exactly what they want.
One of the guns today is Sam Clatworthy. Sam is making waves in the world of shooting with
a new website.
Well basically it is a site that allows anybody to register whether you are a commercial enterprise
looking to sell days or whether you are on a syndicate such as myself and you want to
swap with somebody else to shoot or fish anywhere else. The beauty of it is, you don't necessarily
have to pay, you don't have to pay to be part of a syndicate, you can have access to pheasant
shooting for free and if you wanted to trade that day to go and shoot somewhere else it
doesn't actually cost you any money. You could trade to do something that would cost you
money that is the biggest point of it. It is just to get people to move about a bit
more hopefully.
And does it have to be pheasants or fish or could it be any kind?
It can be literally be anything. If you wanted to put a day out ferreting. If you have access
to go out and do some really good ferreting, why not put it on there and see what trade
offers you get sent really. You get pigeon shooting, deep sea fishing, trout fishing.
It can be anything.
And if you have pigeon shooting for other people does that mean you look after them
when they come to you.
Basically, yes. It stipulates that you have to host on the day. So if we were to exchange
a day you would be there with me for the day and then I would go with you for the day.
That is kind of what it is like. It is just basically trading days out really, especially
if you can do it for a nominal fee that is what it is about really.
It sounds like an on line dating agency.
It could well be that, but plenty of realtree I expect that it what it will be.
So Sam may prefer his pigeon shooting or his deerstalking to a day on the pheasants, but
the guns are united in liking this kind of a pheasant day, where everyone is friends
and all muck in together.
Now Somerset is prime shooting for prime pheasant shooting country, you could turn this into
a commercial shoot.
You could possibly, but that doesn't interest me that side of it. We are a dairy farm. This
is my hobby and that is as far as it will go. I enjoy the crowd that we shoot with.
It is a regular crowd of people. I wouldn't be happy with a load of strangers coming in
every day and I would feel pressure having to provide birds. Whereas because it is a
small syndicate, if we don't shoot them today they are there next time.
Trickey's Farm Shoot is run, as shoots should be, for fun. For more information about Sam's
website, visit ADayToTrade.com
Next Andy Crow has got his hands on some night vision. Look out wild life.
Last week we brought you Roy getting to grips with night vision in his bathroom - well Mr
Crow also has a big problem with rats at the moment... AND a problem with the quality of
Roy's footage.
Roy's was a waste of time.
A faulty door on a new straw barn has left Andy's bales exposed to rat attack and it
needs sorting.
There have been other bales parked here. This is where they started chewing it. They chew
through the net wrap to get to the corn, because there is no feed. The only feed is in these.
This one here - you can see this look, they have chewed all this into it. This is rape
straw, we have got rat poison in here, but why do they want to go for the rat poison
when they can chew into these bales and find the odd bit of grain in there.
So what's to be done - well Andy's brought in an old friend to tackle the problem and
to have some seriously good sport. Dave, like so many of you out there likes to use a bit
of initiative, or in other words ebay, to open up new air rifling opportunities and
he's agreed to talk us through it.
Ok well I have bought this old camcorder off ebay, but you must make sure you use the night
shot mode ok. There is a lot of camcorders out there but you must make sure it has got
this night mode shot on it. I basically got....there is a thread by the front of the lense and
I bought this adaptor which is like a filter wheel or something like that and araldited
it on to this old lense cap. So that then screws, if I line it up, yes it does screw
onto there like that, screws on there. I just put that around there, pop that on that ok.
This is a hawk scope. Now slightly crude this piece of plastic and this very important piece
of cardboard goes in there to sort the height out. I will make the proper thing one day.
Courtesy of the Post Office, elastic bands, put around that battery and that camcorder
as crude as it is, is actually is now nicely on there and that is not going to fall off.
Ok now it does have its own infra red illuminator on this side here which you would use if you
were filming people if you were
standing two or three metres away from them. That is pretty much as good as they get. Now
obviously if we do this in there it just gets lost and you can see it is tucked behind so
much stuff here it would never get out there. So then you obviously introduce this which
is an infra red laser it works off this small battery pack here which are four AA's, it
has this on off switch which I put behind this rubber band here and you just squeeze.
I would do it this side actually if I was left handed, just squeeze that like that on
and off and as I say I haven't done a lot of this yet, but it seems to be as you know
it seems to be getting the results we need.
Better than Roy's.
I don't want to be getting involved with anything like that to be honest. So yes, that is pretty
much the set up. A lot of this you can see is home made but in a way that is the glory
of how cheap this sort of stuff is now to buy.
Yes, it is not three or four grand.
Old scope mounts knocking about......
So how much do you reckon this lot has cost you?
Well obviously we know the rifle is not cheap....
No just the night sight bit.
Got this for £70, the rubber bands I got off the post man at Christmas.
Good man, good man.
Packing plastic from my house. Filter wheel I think literally £2 off ebay. Old scope
lense, old scope cap, some araldite so we are still not up to a lot of money. This I
think, I would have to look, they are about £100 I think. It is an infra red laser. There
are lots on Youtube. A lot of airgun people doing this and you can see them. They have
got similar set ups, but people just change it slightly to what they want really.
So we're looking at about 200 pounds for Dave's set-up but after last week's programme we
had a few emails, about night vision bargains including one from Stephen Stubbs from the
PigeonWatch forum who made his set-up for 52 pounds... If you are watching this on YouTube,
click on the link on the screen to look at his videos of how he did that. If any one
else has some cost saving tips, night vision or otherwise we'd love to hear about them.
Back to rats and Andy's not just here to look pretty and shout encouragement in the dark.
He's the Goose to Dave's Maverick, guiding towards the intended target. Talk to me, Goose.
I spot them with this. It is like a binocular just look through. I look right round the
shed, find the rat and then David, he has got his spotter on the top, but when he puts
that on it it is bright and I can see where it is in the shed and I just talk him in right,
right, right, left, left, left and he goes onto it. And as soon as he is on it because
that is so tight, as soon as he is on it he can see it on the screen. Gets the cross hair
on it, smack, dead.
Now, although what follows is a fine example of precision pest control - at times it might
sound as if pilot and navigator are strapped in to different aircraft.. let's start with
a bit of rat on rat action and then Dave and Andy can take it away....
There we go....I told you there were two there.
What the hell....that has got a dead rat.
He has and all, he has.
Look, look.
You have got to kill that. You are recording it as well.
Ssh.
Where has he gone....there he is .......
Look at that.
Where has he gone....
I turned the switch off.
Yes, well shot.
Look at that, so clear.....
Right, right, right, uppy, uppy.......uppy, uppy a bit.....righty, righty...
Oh missed it....
That went straight through that ........
Where is it......it is round the back
Down, down, down, get on down, left in there, right, right, right
I can't get in there........ I have got no pellets left.
There he is. There's two more down there. They will come back out, there you go.
What on top of the .....
No, down, down, down near the camera
I can't remember where it is......
.....up, up, up there can you see it?
Yes, one, two.
Say when you are ready....
Ready.....right fast, fast, stop, up, right there.....
Right, right, right, stop there about.....there he is.
It's a beaver...
That last rat wasn't a beaver! But then again Andy doesn't take a size 5 Jack Pyke boot
either!
My feet are a size seven and half. These rats are........I would say he is about a good
18" long head to toe. We will take him home and eat him.
It's been a successful evening's ratting and although we thought night vision would spoil
the social side of shooting - this method certainly keeps everyone involved and entertained.
And remember if you have got a simple but effective way of saving your fellow shooters
a few pounds with night vision or anything else, drop me a line and we'll spread the
word - charlie@fieldsportschannel.tv
From the world of hunting, shooting, fishing in England to the wider world on Youtube.
It is Hunting YouTube.
This is Hunting YouTube, which aims to show the best hunting, shooting and fishing videos
that YouTube has to offer.
Lots of viewers want us to make wildfowling films and we haven't done it for ages so,
in the meantime, if you haven't seen it, take a look at An Introduction to Wildfowling from
BASCFilms. It is a great piece about what is involved and what's to love about the sport.
Staying with shotguns, TweedsandPheasants sends us his latest of a Boxing Day driven
pheasant shoot in Gloucestershire. He has a new gun, a Miroku MK38 Grade 5 32inch, and
it appears to be accurate!
Once in a while, it's a real joy to find a channel of well-edited films from a foreign
country where the hunting itself tells the story. This is the case with Avkulubu2 from
Turkey. And here is its latest film.
For fishing, take a look at this item in English about salmon deciding whether or not they
are in the mood to hook themselves. Salmon fishing in Iceland with underwater camera
shows salmon taking the fly.
Here's a good idea for a film. It is sunrise on the sea in Massachussetts and sunrise on
the 2013 fishing season. For five minutes you get a bloke beachcasting, but it's rather
beautiful. Worth projecting this film on a wall.
From France, ChasseWCamera shows a wild boar driven day where he shoots two. Just like
in Turkey, it doesn't need any funny foreign languages. Any hunter will understand this
film.
Now, anyone who thinks it's just well-practiced continentals who cans hoot boar, think again.
John Morgan sends us this film of three wild boar he shot in Croatia in December with sporting
agent Tomo Svetic of Artemis. Rifle is a borrowed Steyr Mannlicher Scout in .308. If I were
John, I would be quite pleased with this, so if you know John and for any reason he
hasn't mentioned this film, here it is.
Finally, anyone who wondered if a hare can swim and who enjoys their dog work will like
this from Sweden. I won't attempt to pronounce the title. All right I will then. Harjakt
smålandsstövaren Diva 1.5 år och simmande hare. Diva is the name of the dog.
You can click on any of these films to watch them. If you have a YouTube film you would
like us to pop in to the weekly top eight, send it in via YouTube, or email me the link
charlie@fieldsportschannel.tv
Well we have gots lots of stuff for you so don't end your TV entertainment just because
our show is over. You can go to Schools Challenge TV which has just launched. It is the programme
if you want to get into shooting. The Schools Challenge is a year long initiative of clay
shooting and other shooting events for kids under the age of 21 and for grown ups. If
you like to sit down or lie down for a good long read well we have got the word's version
of Fieldsports Britain that is out every week. Our newsletter is on scribbed. Don't be put
off by the name, click on the link on the screen and you can go and see it. It is an
in depth look at everything we do with Fieldsports Britain and a little bit of behind the scenes
action.
If you are watching this on Youtube don't hesitate to hit the subscribe button that
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as well as news of our programme. This has been Fieldsports Britain. Next week from the
greatest gun show in the world, we are going to Las Vegas.