In common with all shooters, I am stunned by the awful killings by Derrick Bird in Cumbria yesterday. As people who use guns for sport and competition, we feel particularly horrified by these terrible events. It’s an appalling tragedy, and my thoughts are with the victims, families and many others affected. In due time, answers [...]

Sitting in the CPSA’s boardroom the other day, waiting for a meeting to start, I was idly gazing at the rows of massive silver trophies when I spotted some bound copies of Shooting Magazine, "The Official Magazine of the Clay Pigeon Shooting Association", which in those days it was. The book fell open at this [...]

Today I went over to my parents’ place, to see what the trail camera had picked up over the past week. It had snapped a roe deer and a fox, but with so little activity in the entire week it was clear the fox family had moved out. I was fairly sure I knew where [...]

High on a Welsh hillside, with opera legend Andrea Bocelli singing his heart out from the truck stereo, I shot a mouflon at 440 yards. It was a surreal moment. The quality of this soundclip is pretty awful, but it gives a sense of the atmosphere. Not a real mouflon of course. This was a [...]

Cripes! The Raptor Persecution Scotland blog is incandescent at the news that some licences may be issued to kill some buzzards in Scotland. The author betrays a degree of chip-on-shoulder syndrome with the phrase: It’s about time Roseanna Cunningham got up from her knees where she’s been busily licking the greasy balls of the rich [...]

There’s a fox den in the woods near my parents’ house – most years it produces a litter of cubs. I’d planned to get some film of the cubs when they first started to emerge, but with one thing and another I wasn’t able to get over there until this weekend. I think I may [...]

The Lead Ammunition Group website is up and running – so we can see the workings behind this small band with the power to deal shooting a crippling blow. The first thing that struck me was the devious, misleading tone of the sh*t-stirring letter that RSPB and WWT sent to Defra in October 2009: That, [...]

The Vinci comes in a good choice of colours including black, brown, green or Realtree Today was the official UK launch of Benelli’s new semi-auto, the Vinci – a ‘revolutionary’ new design, we learned – held at the excellent West London Shooting School courtesy of importers GMK. My experience of Benelli’s shotguns is limited; I’ve [...]

It’s not just in the field of lead shot that everyone claims science is on their side. Check out this post about the latest study on mobile phones: depending on your preference, mobile phones do, don’t, or might cause cancer. And while there’s the slightest element of uncertainty, you can guarantee that someone will be [...]

Just William had one, Dennis the Menace had one, and like thousands of country kids I had one too – a catapult. Mine was a posh Milbro jobbie from the local sports shop (we were the posh kids in the street) but for real cred you had to make your own from a forked branch [...]