Monday, November 30, 2009
Update on The Hunting and Shooting Gazette
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Different Types of Hunting and Shooting Part 4
Lamping Rabbits
Lamping invloves walking through fields with a good high powered spot lamp and battery pack searching for rabbits. There are to main types of rabbit lamping and they are lamping with dogs and lamping with guns usually rifles. Were going to start with lamping with dogs. When doing this kind of hunting sight dogs are used such as lurchers and whippets. These types of dogs are fast and have very good eye sight and are the best to see the rabbits when the light is shun on them. What you do is walk through fields at night scanning them with a spot lamp searching for the rabbits. When the rabbits are found you realese the dogs and they chase the rabbits trying to catch them while you keep the lamp on the rabbit so the dog can see where it goes.
Lamping rabbits with guns is similar to going with the dogs but not as enjoyable as watching the dogs chasing the rabbits. You walk around the fields scanning them for rabbits and when you find the rabbits you steady your gun and shoot them. Rifles, Shotguns and pellet guns are used but the main one would be the rifles. Usually low powered rifles like the .22 or the .17HMR. Now a days people use pick up jeeps or quads for this kind of lamping as you can cover more ground. Also with the jeeps you can see over the ditches alot easier. When lamping from jeeps there would usually be a team of three people. One driving, one using the lamp and the third shooting. The people lamping and shooting are usually up on the back of the jeep so they can have a 360 degree view of the fields.
Thats all from me today and on the different types of hunting and shooting for now. Please check back again in the next day or two and hopefully i will have a few reviews on hunting gear and a few recipes for your game. Hope to see you again at the Hunting and Shooting Gazette.
Yours in Sport,
The Hunting and Shooting Gazette
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Different Types Of Hunting and Shooting part 3
Pigeon Shooting
Pigeon Shooting is a great way to practice your shooting in the summer for the duck and pheasant seasons so you wont be getting rusty but it can be done all year round. There are three types of pigeon shooting that i know of and they are Decoying, Flight shooting and Roost Shooting. In Ireland the wood pigeon is knowing as a pest to the farmers because of it eating their crops so this is probably the main purpose for shooting pigeons. But they are also shot for game purposes too as they can be eaten. It is probably one of the more demanding types of hunting and shooting as the birds are very acrobatic in the air making them hard and challenging birds to shoot.
Decoying is probably the most common type of pigeon shooting. It involves building a hide near where they feed and laying out decoys. The hides can be built from many materials such as camouflaged nets, straw bales and natural cover. The idea is that you cant be seen as pigeons have very good eye sight. The decoys are used to draw the pigeons in close enough to be shot. You can use artificial ones that can be bought in most good hunting and shooting shops or dead birds can be used to save on money.
Flight shooting is growing in popularity these days but still not as common as decoying. this involves shooting the pigeons on there flight lines. The gun would be hidden in a hedge or at the edge of a wood and the pigeons would be shot as the fly past.
Roost shooting is more common in the winter months of the year when the days are getting shorter. The gun would be positioned at the edge of a wood and shoot the pigeons when the going to roost. you will need a fairly good hunting dog for retrieving the shot birds as it will most likely be dark wen you are finishing up.
Hope you enjoyed reading the post and hope to see you back part 4 at My Hunting and Shooting Gazette
Monday, November 23, 2009
Different Types of Hunting and Shooting part 2
Duck Shooting
Duck shooting in Ireland where I'm from starts on the 1st of September and finishes on the 31st of January every year. Duck shooting is totally different from pheasant hunting its more of a waiting game in my opinion. You don't walk around after ducks or usually use dogs to flush them either. When after duck you would use camouflaged hides on wetlands or beside rivers and lakes. The best part of the day for hunting ducks would be early morning before the sun comes up or late evening before the sun begins to set. Now a days hunters use decoys and calls for luring the ducks into shooting range instead of just waiting for the birds to come in. The best type of dog for duck hunting or shooting would be the Retriever as the dogs would only be used for picking the birds of the water and from around the wetlands and these types of dog love the water. the most common gun used is usually the semi-automatic shotguns for shooting duck as the ducks usually fly in small groups and these kind of shotguns can usually fire up to 5 shots. These guns would be the better option for duck shooting instead of the double barrel shot guns. If your a patient hunter and like the water you should give duck shooting a try. Well that's all from me at My Hunting and Shooting Gazette for now make sure and check back again soon.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Different Types Of Hunting and Shooting
Pheasant Shooting
Well to me there are two main types of pheasant shooting which i do every year and they are Rough Shooting and Driven shooting. Today I'm going to talk a little about both of them. Ill start off with Rough Shooting which i do mostly. Rough shooting is the most common form of Pheasant hunting in Ireland and the UK. Pheasants are usually found on the ground in ditches and heavy cover in rough terrain such as bogs and woodland so this is where we get the term Rough Shooting. This type of shooting involves walking thru fields and bog along ditches with the use of gun dogs for hunting the cover to find the pheasants. When the dog finds the birds it then flushes them from the cover for you to shoot them. Now driven shooting on the other hand is not really that common in Ireland as it is in the UK. Driven Shooting is where you have 8-10 gunmen usually lined up at the edge of a wood or cover which the pheasants are in. Instead of using dogs to get the pheasants up a group of people which are called beaters that beat the cover with sticks to flush the birds out over the gunmen. This kind of shooting is for the more upper class people which don't like the aspects of rough shooting and don't mind paying for the shooting. Driven shooting is found on big estates around the two country's which rare thousands of pheasants a year for this purpose.
Well that's all from me today. Check back again tomorrow to the Hunting and Shooting blog and ill have another post on the different types of hunting and shooting there is.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
What The Hunting and Shooting Gazette Is About
I started with the Hunting and Shooting Gazette for one reason and that's because I love it from walking the fields on a winter’s morning after pheasants to shooting a few clays in the summer evenings or even just going for a stroll with the .22 after a few rabbits to decoying pigeons over a field of rape. It’s one of the best feelings in the world for me to be out in the countryside with my gun and my dogs hunting the ditches and cover.
Well as you can see I'm in the very early stages of making the site so there's very little on it at the moment. So at the minute I'm just going to go thru what my hopes are for the Hunting and Shooting gazette.
My hopes for the gazette are that it will be a place for me and other people to tell my experiences out hunting and tips about hunting and shooting in general. I have a few ideas about having a few articles about different types of hunting. Like lamping for rabbits with lurchers and whippets pheasant shooting, duck shooting and so on. I’ll have another section to the blog that I will be reviewing all the accessories for hunting and shooting from scopes, knives, and lamps to guns, ammunition and gundog accessories to use for training your gundog. Another aspect I am thinking about for the reviewing part of here is hunting clothing from boots, wellies and socks to jackets, jumpers, shirts and trousers.
Another idea I was thinking about was having a little section on the cooking aspects of hunting like skinning and preparing the game. Then I will have recipes for cooking the game like rabbits, pheasants, woodcock, duck and much more. There may even be a few surprising recipes for animals that you didn’t even know you could eat. Anyway that’s enough for today on the subject my fingers are getting a bit sore now from all the typing so I hope u are all looking forward to the blog being up soon like I am. If anyone has any suggestions for the blog please feel free to leave comments about it and I’m sure we can get something going on your subject. Thanks very much for looking at the Hunting and Shooting gazette and hope you will be back again very soon.