Wildfowl

If I had to choose one category of shooting above all others, I would unhesitatingly pick wildfowling. It has all the components that I love about nature and the countryside. It takes place in weather that keeps the rest of the nation firmly indoors and in areas that have remained unspoiled, remote, isolated, and untainted by civilization. I love the stark mysterious estuaries where the wild migratory birds come to winter, the ozone smell of the sea, the wide horizons of forbidding gray skies, the bitter cold of pre-dawn mornings, and the music of sea birds—the call of the wild. Above all it is the challenge of pitting my knowledge of nature against those elements that influence where wildfowl may be at a certain dawn or dusk—the position of the moon, the tide, the temperature, and what available food source there is in certain areas. The success of all fieldsports depends upon careful planning, preparation, and understanding of the behavioral pattern of your quarry; wildfowl take this to another dimension with the vagaries of their movements, and part of the fascination is that one is so rarely right.