Fieldsports Britain - Roy's rat hunt (episode 174)

[Music] Welcome to Fieldsports Britain. Coming up reaction to our head-shooting film - we gauge the response. The CLA game fair 2013 - This year we want it to be bigger and better and nobody more so than stand holder Fur Feather & Fin. We've got news stump - with the weird and the wonderful, hunting youtube with the sublime the ridiculous and a new social media series called Hallo Charlie. First - high definition Night vision is giving us a whole new view on life. Let's join the Pied Piper of Pellets, Roy Lupton, on a chicken farm with a rat problem. Now we might as well be honest about this - there's not a great deal of substance to this film. However there is some fab night vision shots of rats, lots of rats, going about their business, while the neighbours try to get some shut eye. This working farm yard is busy by day and busy by night, but it's rearing the wrong type of livestock. The rats are treating it like a funfair - stuffing their faces and playing on the rides, although it's more like the tea cups than the corkscrew. To help sort out this brown rat bonanza is Roy and his sub 12 ft/lb Webley and a smidgeon of night vision expertise. He loves rats - not! Well we have been invited tonight to come and shoot some rats on the chicken farm and as we have been standing here the wretched things have been running around and by the looks of them they are not rats they are the size of cats. And as you probably know they are the one animal on God's earth that I am absolutely petrified of. So I am going to make sure I can get up somewhere high and shoot down on them. I am certainly not standing on the floor. I think we are going to be in for a bit of a good time tonight. So I am hoping we can have a bit of fun as long as I am up out of the way that is all I care about. Oh God! It's easy to forget that this place is pitch black and you wouldn't be able to see your hand in front of your face in the shed itself - however, with the Nightmaster infra-red illuminators atop the scopes we're sitting pretty - well, sitting high up in Roy's case. The chickens don't seem to care that rats are dropping down dead all around them. Rattus norvegicus is plentiful here. Darren tells us that in the first few hours of darkness, and even after one of the team gets a pellet, they're prepared to run the gauntlet far sooner than they are after midnight. After the witching hour, it looks like they have had their fill and are not so keen to break cover. The rats keep falling - and eventually with frost forming on the cameras we call it a night. Roy has to face his demons. Give me anything else, but just not a rat please. Oh God. We have got a bit of a pile of rats down there now and there is still a load more in there and I am most certainly not going and picking them up. I should have brought a little picky uppy thing because I certainly can't handle them. There are a couple of other friends here who will pick them up, it just sends shivers up my spine thinking about it. What absolute fun. You really can't have any more fun on a freezing cold night in an old farmyard with an air rifle it is brilliant, brilliant fun, superb sport. And obviously doing a good job. We are relieving the rat problem here and allowing the chickens to sleep a little better at night. Rats, and being close to them does funny things to people. Rat shooting for some reason, dare I say it, is funny. I know that respecting your quarry is imperative but seeing a rat on what could conceivably be a merry-go-round makes you smile. And what about this for the circle of life: here's a farm cat having a munch - just remember this image next time Tiddles wants to give you a lick. Roy Lupton there showing that it's OK for a grown man to cry. Right last week we did things a bit differently. We uploaded a film age-restricted with images we thought were too graphic to show to under 18's. If you are watching this on Youtube and you are logged in and you are over 18 you can click on the screen to go through to that film. We always enjoy hearing what people think of us apart from the dodgy sweary antis who issue death threats of course. Even if you weren't keen on the film thank you for posting. The vast majority of you felt that film was a worthwhile exercise. So it is up to us to decide what is decent and put it up and what is tasteless and either age restrict it or not put it up and it is up to you to tell us. It's by no means the first time we've shown slow-motion shots of birds and animals being shot. We of course have the air rifle shots and we were surprised the rifle shots in our long-range high-impact films didn't get more of a negative response. We are learning all the time about the sort of content people want and enjoy. YouTube is an amazing phenomenon and we want to make sure we continue to produce the most entertaining and informative films on hunting, shooting and fishing films available. And on that note it's probably best to cross to David on the Fieldsports Channel News Stump. [Music] This is Fieldsports Britain News. A $50 bounty to control the coyote population in Utah has got hunters licking their lips. It's got environmentalists crying foul and state wildlife administrators stuck somewhere in the middle. Coyotes prey on deer fawns and the state has paid out on 6,000 coyotes in the last year, but that's only a tiny proportion of the US$2.3 billion the state makes from deer hunting Don't shoot hares in England from 1st March to 31st July. That's the party line from the new code of practice for brown hare management in England. Written by BASC and the GWCT, it is supported by the Tenant Farmers' Association, the National Gamekeepers' Organisation, the Moorland Association, the CLA and the Countryside Alliance. The Thame Country Fair is all set for a great Easter weekend, with the site build well under way, ground conditions are good with no lying snow. With all the recent bad weather around the country, Thame Showground in Oxfordshire has not seen a snowflake. Visit LivingHeritageCountryShows.co.uk Do you have an iPhone, and Android phone and pressing need to record where, when and what you shoot? The Game For Everything Mapping Application (G4EMA) is your online gamebook. Developed by our own Mark Gilchrist and priced at just £2.99, the app keeps a record of where you have been and what you have shot (while out hunting), caught (while out fishing) or even seen (while out birdwatching). When you have finished, simply press sync data, go to the G4EMA website and view. Fancy some free kit well Schools Challenge is running a free competition to win £350-worth of shooting goodies. Click on the link on the screen to see details Animal rights groups are becoming more violent. In the week the Surrey Union saw one of its sabs fined for his offensive behaviour, a hunt master in Herefordshire found his pet dog killed, mutilated and dumped on his driveway. Lee Peters of the Ross Harriers says his dog was battered to death and an Animal Liberation Front slogan scratched into his car parked nearby. Meanwhile, hunting activist Nick Maffia from Surrey was fined £150 with £350 court costs after pleading guilty to the charge of using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour to cause harassment, alarm or distress', this took place at the hunt kennels in Ockley, Surrey, in 2012. And finally - are you struggling to find a good dentist well we might have the answer for you. Here's Rodney the pet tawny owl and a younger brother with a wobbly tooth - the boys clearly want to make a quick buck out of the tooth fairy and Rodney is obviously in for a cut of the action. It's a job well done. You are now up to date with Fieldsports Britain News. Stalking the stories. Fishing for facts. [Music] Thank you David - now, it's your turn. Please show us the wonderful places around the world where you hunt, shoot and fish. We want to see what you are up to. We've created a special part of the programme called Hallo Charlie. Using your mobile phone and no more than one sentence tell us what you are doing and how you are doing it. Then share it with us using any of the internet' big, free services: Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, or email charlie@fieldsportschannel.tv using Facebook, YouSendIt, you name it we will do the rest. Just make sure it is one sentence. Here are a few examples. Gooday Charlie and crew at Fieldsports Britain, Pete Kennedy from the New England area of northern New South Wales in Australia. At the moment this is my back yard in the northern table lands area. In the last couple of days the fallow stags have started to rut. There is one croaking over to my right as I talk and I am just out doing what I love to do being in the bush. Thank you Pete. Back in England Roy's hanging out with the chicks - the dead chicks. Hello Charlie, Roy here and we are currently preparing food ready for the birds. It is breeding season again and I am just about to go into hibernation. Now, one of the most straightforward, unsarcastic people you will ever meet. Hi Charlie, David here in rural Kent just mentally preparing for News Stump. Just wanted to tell you that you ... me. David is so uncomplicated Next up, it's Sporting Shooter editor Dom Holtam, leading the tough life that shooting magazines have to endure. Hi Charlie hope everything is ok with you. I am not going to lie to you. I have had a terrible week this week. The weather has been awful, I haven't got the content covered ... at once. Worst of all I have been stuck doing boring four wheel drive tests. Dirty job, Of course Dom it helps to hold the camera this way up and not this way up. We want you to be as creative as possible send us a five-second establishing shot showing where you are if you like. This is an establishing shot. The most important thing is that you start it Hallo Charlie. Now to the greatest outdoor event in Europe in 2013 it is the CLA Game Fair. Let's get geared up. You would hope that a company like Fur Feather & Fin would live in some quaint rural hamlet surrounded by rolling countryside ... and it doesn't disappoint - the company, which started in a stable, has grown-up and into an ancient barn and courtyard in West Sussex. We love being here and also we are opposite a great pub. The Fox goes Free which is a brilliant pub and everybody loves going there so it is great coming to work every morning. It even hosts the gathering of the local hunt. From here the mail order catalogue company sends those cups, dog leads, books, games, clothes, cushions, socks that make that birthday, Father's Day, wedding and Christmas Day all the more special. It was all started by Angie Simmonds and her husband. You can add a quirkiness to a product. We have developed cartridge lighters. We have developed all sorts of things, glassware with all sorts of designs on. Labradors are a great favourite so anything with a Labrador ... we go all over the world looking for ideas. We might not find a product, but we might get ideas and then come back and develop it. Although people can come along to try stuff on, it's not a shop. The face to face interfacing tends to happen at fairs and shows and in particular the CLA Game Fair. We have lost a lot of our agricultural country shows and the Game Fair really brings everybody back together in one big show and I think that is clear from the number of people who turn up and from the quality of products on sale really and then it is the perfect opportunity for us to meet our customers. You don't get that on mail order you only hear them or talk to them over the phones and the beauty of doing it at a game fair is that you actually get to see them, talk to them, find out feedback directly from the customers and that is priceless. For exhibitors and punters, the cancellation of the Belvoir Castle game fair last year was a huge disappointment. But the conditions were extraordinary - we went to see for ourselves. It was so bad that it was clear the only option was to cash in the chips and start looking ahead to 2013 and Ragley Hall. And here we are, on a site visit with the guys who are going to make it happen, come hell or high water - isn't that right Nick? Obviously sadly we didn't manage to stop it last year. We are not like Kinkton and Newton trying to stop the waves coming up the beach. We put a huge amount of contingency plans in, things like trackway, things like bark chip, monitoring the traffic flows, monitoring the lorry flows and that is all you can do. You just have to hope you are going to get a dry one. Also on site today is Ed de la Rue. if Nick's job is to make sure you glide in and out of the site with minimum fuss, it's Ed's job to make sure you dance round the game fair. The site is wonderful. Unlike a lot of our other sites which are very flat, here you can walk around the showground and see the furthest bit of the show ground. You can stand on the top of a hill and see Bond street going all the way down. I think that gives a different element to what we have always put on as a show and for me it is definitely one of my favourites. To be honest we must be mad to even consider an event of this kind in the UK, where three major weather fronts merge, but we do ... and whether we are into gundogs, apiary, tractors or wind turbines it usually works. It's the outdoor experience that matters. The CLA really is certainly of its size and nature the last remaining nomadic outdoor country event and it just gives you that uniqueness and there is something special about walking amongst the great exhibitors that we have. The whole shopping experience with green under your feet and blue above your head. Back in West Sussex, Rob is dealing with yet more orders. It's steady this morning, but it's not flat-out by any means. The crazy times are Christmas and of course the CLA Game Fair. There needs to be plenty of stock - packed and ready to go. Complete chaos. We have new staff at that point ready for the start of the shooting season and ready for Christmas and a list will come in from the office saying Rob this is what we are taking. There are other staff here that help out. But I basically just do the game cover on my own so that I know what they have ordered and what they have got is right. One thing Fur Feather & Fin does well is tweed - and just as well considering the plans afoot for the CLA this year - let's talk fashion. We are looking to develop a fashion village. Tweed currently seems to be dirigir on my way in and out of London every day there are more and more people wearing tweed and I don't think they have seen the countryside. So there is an appetite for it. We are looking to help that because obviously it is actually our exhibitors who are selling to those people. The CLA game fair means different things to different people: it's a party, a shop window, a meeting of minds, a family holiday, a shopping spree, and it's now a catwalk. What ever you want from it there's a very good chance you'll find it. The CLA Game Fair 2013 is on 19th - 21st July at Ragley Hall, Warwickshire. Whether you are a standholder or a visitor, go to www.gamefair.co.uk and see what it can do for you. Now from a great country show to great country companions it is the latest in our series of expert tips on gun dogs from Skinners Petfoods. Steadiness is like obedience, but much, much more. Here's how top gundog trainer Ricky Moloney keeps his gundogs steady on a shoot day. For steadiness we are going back to what we have been doing really from eight to ten months of age. So I have laid my foundations. Coming out into the shooting field now I am expecting such likes as Den, Cuba to actually at this stage know the job. Den did run in today, he did actually go. I have been sending him quickly for wounded birds, as a side effect he decided that he was going to go before the command was issued. Not a problem with that. As soon as I growled he knew he had done wrong, he stopped and he looked at me. That is my side effects, I have created that, I will overcome that. I want him to be sharp on marked game. The quicker I have the dog off on a bird especially when it is running, the quicker I am going to put it into the bag. The longer you delay the more chance that bird has. So you let Gemma pick that bird. The dead bird on the side of the wall wasn't going anywhere. I said to Gemma is it dead. It was so really it was an opportunity for me to show my dogs they can hang on and wait because there is another dog. Not every retrieve is going to be theirs. Ricky Moloney runs Ribblesdale Labradors. This series on gundog training tips is brought to you by Skinners Petfoods, maker of the Field & Trial range of gundog feeds. Visit SkinnersPetfoods.co.uk Thank you Skinners. Let's go to the wider world of hunting, shooting and fishing on Youtube. It is Hunging YouTube. This is Hunting YouTube, which aims to show the best hunting, shooting and fishing videos that YouTube has to offer. Now this should have gone into last week's IWA Special Hunting YouTube. It shows what happens if you make the lads from Jack Pyke come in too early to stand on their stand at Europe's biggest gun trade show. The Devil makes work for idle hands and, before long, they are doing the Harlem Shake. Of course, being dressed in Jack Pyke, they are completely invisible to the naked eye, so you will have to take my word for it. Now let's get out into the field. Have you ever dreamed of shooting over a field trial champion spaniel ? Well during this film you will get a first person point of view as we join Andrew Robinson of Whaupley Gundogs high up on the North Yorkshire Dales in the UK putting Meadowsedge Shooting Star or "Dizzy", as she is called, through her paces on rabbits and pheasants. With the roebuck season opening in the UK on 1st April, now's a good time to watch Deer Stalking - An Introduction from BASCFilms. It's got hows and whys and wherefores as BASC deer officer Lewis Thornley shows that woodland stalking is a vital method of managing the UK's expanding deer population as well as providing excellent venison. Moving to fishing and, by rights, Ali Mufti should not be able to use YouTube because he lives in Pakistan, where the website is banned on religious grounds. Ali is a fisherman - indeed he is a leading light in the Pakistan Game Fish Association - and he has found ways of smuggling his fishing films out of the country, including this one, called Vertical Speed Jigging in Pakistan On to carp fishing and there are now so many carp channels on YouTube, it was only a matter of time before one of them went 3D on us. You will need red and cyan glasses to watch this in all its glory, and see carp up to nearly 50lb in eye popping style. Now, widely regarded as the hardest-core hunters in the world, NZ Pighunting Hard Core Hokianga by kawez17779 does nothing to dispel the myth that Kiwis are more fearless than a San tribesman after an eland or a Makah spearing a whale. Pighunting is, as they eruditely put it, 100% grunt. Now for something infinitely more boring yet still compelling. Roger Jackaman uploads this film about Agron Mala, who is one of the top airgunners in Kosovo. It is a character piece and it is part of a short series of films profiling Kosovo and its people. Finally, we're back in the UK where a dreamy, Ry Cooder-style soundtrack by Flook is the tune that carries you through this charming film called Boxing Day Shoot 2012. 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 Another good film for you to watch is the latest from Schools Challenge TV. It's the event we've been waiting for. The first Schools Challenge clay competition of 2013 takes place at the Oxford Gun Company. Kids from schools all over England are here to take part in a festival of clay-smashing designed partly to find out who's best and mainly to have a fun day they will remember. Click the link on the screen to watch it. Well we are of course back next week. If you are watching this on Youtube then don't hesitate to hit the subscribe button which is somewhere on the outside of the screen there or go to our website www.fieldsportschannel.tv where you can click to like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or best of all scroll down to the bottom and pop your email address into the constant contact form there and we will constantly contact you about our programme which is out 7pm every Wednesday UK time. This has been Fieldsports Britain.