Hunting Firsts

People say that you always remember for your first real love, but it’s true for many more things than that. Throughout my hunting trips there have been a few things that have really ‘stuck’, not least all those personal firsts.

My first pheasant was a beautiful cock bird, shot crossing in front of me at what seemed like 90 miles an hour. This was the Keepers Day on my local shoot, my very first driven day at the end of my first seasons beating. After a couple of blank drives I drew the peg of walking gun, outside the wood on the right hand side. Now what you need to understand is that my introduction to shooting came through clays, so I was full of the habits and behaviours of the clay shooter. Loaded down with a cartridge bag full of 30 cartridges, my gun slip, hat, coat and game carrier I lined up with the beating line to try and keep pace up a gentle hill of separate fields.

So imagine the scene. As we get half way across the first field, a cock bird breaks from the wood flying along the hedge line at a good safe height. Up comes my Miroku over and under - bang – and almost immediately the second barrel – bang. The bird folds and is down. I am elated. With shouts of congratulation and encouragement from the beaters who had witnessed it, I am off up the hill to get my prize.

Pleased as punch I’m carrying the bird along with everything else as I get to the top of the first field – to be met with a ditch and hedge to try and cross. Eventually I find my way through but I’m behind the beaters now, so with gun broken for safety I am practically running up the hill; loaded down and trying to hold my hat on. I catch up, gun ready again just as the whistle blows but I don’t care. I stand there proud as punch and don’t care who knows it.

My first pigeon had been year earlier on a farm in Leicestershire, my first outing on live quarry. It was with my Miroku again, my first gun with fixed chokes at full and three quarter; a great pigeon gun but not very forgiving when your accuracy was off. At the time I hadn’t bought any decoys or hide and just expected the birds to line up for me. Sat in a dry ditch, behind some long grass and reeds I waited a couple of hours without firing a shot. A few birds had come across but usually from behind and by the time I saw them it was too late.

Then, in the distance, I saw a bird flying straight towards me from about a quarter of a mile away. I froze – unable to identify what it was yet, but determined not to spook it just in case. Slowly I closed the gun and slipped off the safety as it came nearer, careful not to put my head above the cover. At the last minute – up and bang – stone dead in the air. For anyone that’s not shot live quarry, they hit the ground with a surprisingly heavy ‘whump’. That was the only one that day but my first hunted food. I took it home and rather amateurishly removed the breast and ate it fried.

Rabbits have been much more recent thing for me, having managed to arrange some local permission round a large house on the edge of the countryside. Shotguns are out of the question here so on my first trip I had a mooch with my .22 air rifle. It was the middle of the afternoon in spring and there were none about where the residents told me they ‘always are’. I was about to give up, when standing on a high bank and looking down through a gap in the bushes, I spotted an old buck sat basking in the sunshine in the field. When you’re shooting fast and sudden birds there is no time for nerves – but this was completely different. Classic buck fever hit me full on – heart raced, image in the telescopic sight wobbling like mad. I dismounted the gun and sat back on the floor – I didn’t want to miss this opportunity but knew I couldn’t take a shot like this. I let myself calm down and then looked again – he was still there ! Slowly I took aim again and squeezed the trigger. Crack – the rabbit jumped up and there was a short thrashing in the undergrowth, then nothing. I scrambled down the bank and after a brief search I find him – shot clean through the head at the base of the ear. Another first for the pot too.

There are other firsts that stick with me just as strongly but which will have to wait for another time; my first ferreting trip, my first snared rabbit, my first rat in a live catch trap, first magpie shot raiding nests in the garden, first evening roost shooting, first day beating and the first time I dressed a pheasant to name a few. But what is so exciting is how many more first that there still are left to look forward to; my first night’s lamping for rabbits, my first dawn on the shore for wildfowling, my first fish! Firsts aren’t just for the youngsters!

Hunting experience is always special and while firsts might be landmarks, every trip stays with you. Until you’ve done it, you’d never understand.

Keep Hunting.