We have been watching HBO’s new series “The Crown” Episode 3 scene with a Shooting Party at Lord Mountbatten’s estate, day after King George's funeral.

Dickie Mountbatten was shooting beside a fellow using a Model 12 with a Cutts Compensator. Looks and words exchanged were priceless. Won’t spoil it except to say Dickie stormed off rather than shoot with a Pump.

Boats

Well I guess that's why I'm having trouble selling my 1950s vintage Model 12 in excellent condition complete with a Cutts!
Jim

Are you trying to sell it to Lord Mountbatten himself. He was mentioned in shadow in the 1957 movie classic- "The Bridge On The River Kwai" and more recently, shown in character in the action movie with Jason Stathem-- "The Bank Job"-- Dickie- dickie my arse..

Quote from a chap named Bernard Law Montgomery "You cahnt trust Dickey Mountbatten"

In that day and within that class of sportsman, a pump would be poor form.

Lord Mountbatten was and is like many in high politics through history liked and criticized, camps for and against at the time and today.

At his level of politics there are different rules and many critics

He was trusted by many and genuinely loved within the family

Harumph...I doubt it...

My mistake now corrected, its Netflix.

I thought I was going to suffer through it while my wife watched but already 3 shooting scenes, Driven, Rough and Punts after Ducks. African scenery and Treetops lodge too. Attention to detail cars guns airplanes amazing. Read its the most expensive TV series ever.

Boats

You should have better faith in my knowledge of history and politics. However, you are entitled to your opinion.

Netflix is a tv channel???

How??? Where???

Wasn't Montgomery pretty much envious and jealous of just about everyone?

Hey, I saw that scene, but to nit pick it, Kaiser Wilhelm II did not shoot a Model 12 like they said in the program. As stated he did have a withered left arm as a result of the Doc's screwing up when he was born. He did in fact love to shoot and did several times in England prior to the Great War. Why they said he had a Model 12 is beyond me. He couldn't even cut his food, he had a servant do it for him. He shot a lightweight 20ga Sauer double. He also shot lightweight Purdeys that he ordered or were a gift from his Grandmother, Queen Victoria. Oh well, that's Hollywood or some such rot.

Best,

Greg

And Patton had him pegged, even before Patton showed him up in Sicily. Why Ike gave that Limey idiot the OK for the biggest Fubar before the Battle of the Bulge Dec 1944- that being "Market Garden"- staggers the mind. Ike was a good leader, but he had to kiss Limey ass under orders from Marshall and FDR- Patton would have been a way far better Commander of SHAEF--and Monty would have been sent home to play cricket with the King. Limeys-- what a bunch of snobbish fops..

Ike was the only commander who could have kept the Alliance and SHAEF together, Fox. Who else could have handled prima donnas like Patton, Clark, Montgomery, deGaulle? Ike and Marshall to my mind were at the top of the US military pantheon.

Yes, but we would have been much better off without Montgomery.

Here's a quote from the US Army Museum's write-up on Operation Varsity:

In his wartime memoir, A Soldier’s Story, GEN Bradley contended that the Germans had diverted the bulk of their forces east of the Rhine to the Remagen bridgehead, leaving weak forces around Wesel. He added that if Montgomery had crossed the Rhine on the run as Hodges and Patton did, or had allowed Simpson to do so with his Ninth Army, Varsity would never have been necessary, and that the operation was typical Montgomery overkill. Other officers had even harsher words, claiming that Montgomery used airborne forces to simply “put on a good show” and to further to his own standing as a military genius.

Link: https://armyhistory.org/operation-varsity-the-last-airborne-deployment-of-world-war-ii/

My father's unit (the 771st Tank Battalion) fought in the area of Wesel. My father's opinion of Montgomery was even lower - he said that Montgomery killed more brits and GI's than the Germans by the airborne operation rather than simply crossing the Rhine on the surface. My father was a 1LT combat medic who served through the battle of the Bulge and the push through Germany - combat medic's badge, purple heart and 3 bronze stars, all from pulling wounded men from between the lines from what his men told my mother. Less than a year before he died in 2014 at the age of 95 he was still cursing Montgomery for wanton slaughter of his own men.

Field Marshall Ervin Rommel outfought Montgomery for hundreds of miles plus the operation after D-Day in front of Caen.
D-Day plus one?

Montgomery couldn't get there until early August.

Of course those 'Bloody" German tanks had a lot to do with also.

Montgomery and Gen. Haig- aka- "The Bloody Butcher of the Somme"- something about that stiff upper lip and swagger stick mentality that allows such men to send enlisted and NCO's into certain death-- or head into the Wehrmacht and the M-42's MGs with the sound of bagpipes at full blast-

And certainly not a Model 12 (or Model 1912) with a Cutts in pre-WW1 Eduardian Europe. Maybe a Model 1897 however. Not quite proper form, old boy--

Even today, you're not likely to see pumps or autos on a driven shoot. But plenty of those evil, improperly oriented OU's!

Is there any way we bottom feeders can see that episode?

Depending on whose history, the Normandy operation was to draw the Germans on to the British-Canadian forces and the Americans to close the gap---hence the brutal massacre of the Falaise Gap behind Caen. The Canadians---to be precise, regiments of my region---struck farthest into Normandy that day, seven miles.

Montgomery wasn't out-fought as you say, for all his fubars and every other Allied commander. No particular general under his command got Canadians in front of Caen that day, simply well-led formations leavened by veterans of the Italian and North Africa campaigns. Our tanks were no match for SS Panzer Kurt Meyer's. (He was imprisoned in our region for his troops' atrocities.)

Canada had a couple generals of the Patton cut-and-slash style. Wars aren't won through bravery and sacrifice alone. Ike didn't have particular field experience. Canadians were part of restoring his losses at Kasserine Pass. But Ike had formidable negotiating skills and the back-up of Marshall's intellect in building an indefatigable war machine.

They're my reasons for putting Ike and Marshall at head of the pack on the Western Front. Rommel knew the jig was up before the end of June. It cost him his execution. PS, I lifted this on Rommel's whereabouts and actions from "World War Two database:"

"Early 1944, Rommel was approached to participate in the July Plot to assassinate Hitler. It is popularly believed by historians today that Rommel had refused due to his loyalty, but the exact facts are still unknown.

"After the western Allies launched the Normandy landings in Jun 1944, Rommel was out of the area and unable to get a clear picture of the situation, and then Hitler hesitated to approve a counterattack by armor until it was too late. Rommel's nightmare came true over the next six weeks as the Allied beachhead strengthened. On 15 Jul, he communicated to Hitler that Germany should seriously consider ending the war on favorable terms when it was still possible . . ."

Eight bore it’s just been released by Netflix streaming. No doubt will be available on Disk at some point. Whole thing is worthwhile particularly the interaction with Winston Churchill. It’s part of Churchill’s history we don’t read much about. True it’s entertainment not pure fact still worth a look. Many sporting scenes not just the one I mentioned.

Looks like my post turned to a discussion on WW II Generals. Only 69 years old I did not know any of them. But have read a lot of the Biographies and Autobiographies. If you look at it from all sides they have their positives and negatives. The Montgomery- Patton controversy was fact, inflated by the British and American press. True they had very different styles and the armies they lead were very different. However both were competent and in Montgomery’s case more so than the Generals he replaced. We all know Patton not many Americans read Montgomery.

Core issue with Montgomery is most of the war he lead a poorly equipped war weary army which lead to his being very cautious.

Boats

Now there is a sensible comment, free from jingoism from any direction.

I don't particularly like Montgomery and feel history has been kinder to him then it should have, but to be fair Montgomery was very much a methodical planner who was at his best in getting the Germans to break themselves on the British defenses before Montgomery would go on the offense. I will also add that by the summer of 1944, the British (and the rest of the Commonwealth) were out of men. While they would get some replacements, they had no more formed and trained divisions available for Europe. Montgomery could not afford to be daring, even if it was in his nature.

Patton came up through the cavalry where speed, shock and surprise were key to a successful cavalry engagement and he applied that mindset through out his career. Almost every other Allied Army commander came up through the infantry and did not share that training or mindset.

Chantry that's a good summary of the Montgomery Patton controversy . Very different men very different situations .

Boats

Appreciate all these perspectives of the commanders and generals and their armies. I put a lot of stock in the American historian Eric Atkinson and the British Antony Beevor, gifted writers whose impeccable research from all diaries embraces the above.

And the one time he threw caution to the wind--Market Garden--the result was a disaster.

If you want to understand Montgomery start with the Biographys of the other officers around him not his own. Best one for a true picture is Freddie DeGuingard his chief of staff. DeGuingard soothed offended allied generals often. He probably knew Montgomerys WW II history better than any other.

I came away not exactly liking Montgomery instead thinking he was the right man for the job. He made mistakes no doubt about it. Taking over a bad situation in North Africa Montgomery turned it around well before we were in a position to fight the Germans.

But who am I to say, make up your own mind.

Boats

Here's another slam on Monty, one I've always liked. Churchill made this comment about General Wilhelm Ritter Von Thoma, who served with the Afrika Korps and was captured by the Brits.

Here's Churchill's quote:

"I sympathize with General von Thoma: Defeated, in captivity and... (long pause for dramatic effect) dinner with Montgomery."

Best,

Greg

brits despised pumps and autos.
a true gentleman is suppose to be able to hit a bird with no more than 2 shots, thus the love of sbs's.

I had a friend I served with many years ago that was a British Army Officer from a family that was affluent and took part in the "Shooting Sports". We were talking about hunting one day and after waaaay too many Pims, I pulled out my semi-automatic to show him. He just about crapped his pants...At least now I know why.

Doubles allow you to take a brace of birds. In style...

The break out from Normandy was far from planned. Eisenhower was so worried about the lack of progress that in July he set up contingency planning committees to come up with a plan just in case they were still sitting there in the Fall with the subsequent diminishing of allied airpower due to bad weather.

And speaking of history- One Fubar in the great movie "Patton" 1970 starring George C. Scott as Gen. George S. Patton Jr. VMI and West Point-- after he defeated the Afrika Korps Panzers at El Quatar-- he was shown saying "Rommel, you magnificent Bastard, I read your book"-- Der Tank in Kampf-- The Tank in Battle. Not quite right, it was written by Gen. Hans Guedarian in 1933-Rommel's C.O. and an equal in strategy and command presence to Patton.

The German Blitzkreig was an amazing war process, but it had two major flaws that cost it final victory for Hitler- (1) You outrun your supply chain quickly, and (2) your communications link is stretched to the breaking point.

Rommel's book is "Infantry Attacks"

Best,

Greg

There have been a number of good films made over the years with British shooting party scenes in them. I wonder with people contributing from this forum, if we could make a list...I would like to compile them for those cold days when I cant get out..Any contributors, Fox?

And speaking of Panzers: Of all the weapons the Germans had in WWII, the one dad feared and respected the most was the ubiquitous 88 mm cannon whether pulled behind a truck or mounted on a Panzer's turret. The round was on target before the sound of the muzzle blast arrived.

Watching some of the newer documentaries on WW2, its incredible how much trouble we had dealing with only one German tank.

"After my platoon was decimated I drove my tank behind a house to escape his fire and the bloody thing shot through the bloody house and blew my bloody tank up."

Not a contribution, per se, but the H&H instruction videos with Ken Davies, walk up and both driven grouse and also high pheasant are well worth consideration. I am not into that realm of hunting/game shooting, even at our area pheasant club the Sat. tower shoots are no where like what I perceive a driven bird shoot in England or Europe to be. For one thing, at our club, the guys working the tower only throw out one bird at a time, and wait until the shooting is over on that bird and the dog(s) have retrieved it back to their handlers before they throw out another one. Not quite the same as having 10 pheasants moving at Mach 3 and at altitude- and the other guns on adjacent pegs hammering away= or incoming red grouse jinking with the wind and the volley of shots ringing out-wish I coudl recommend something that would give us all a real close-up view of a true driven bird shoot--but I can't..

They must have passed me by. Without exception, every movie or TV drama I've ever seen supposedly depicting a driven day is wholly (and wilfully) inaccurate.

Usually it's just the director getting in some "progressive social commentary" and depicts Bold Sir Jasper assuaging his blood lust after a night spent deflowering scullery maids, but culpable ignorance plays its part too.

I've learned many things from these expositions that a near life time in the job hadn't brought to my notice, viz....

Black powder is the norm; no smoke no drama.
Guns stand about 10 yards apart.
Pointing a gun at your neighbouring Gun is jolly good form, everybody does it.
All beaters are members of the downtrodden lumpen proletariat whose daughters are invariably scullery maids.
All dogs are Labradors.
All the Labradors are encouraged to run around a lot whilst the drive is in progress.
The Norfolk jacket of the late 1900s is still de rigeur today.
Pheasants can't fly higher than 15 feet.
All gamekeepers are either mentally sub-normal or homicidal maniacs; occasionally both.

And so it goes on, hopeless, hopeless, hopeless.

Eug

Well, Then!

Thanks Eugene. I keep watching, waiting to see a driven shoot accurately depicted in any movie, but nothing yet. Have been chuckling about the black powder since I started watching The Crown a few days ago.

The scenes of a young Elizabeth and an old Churchill remind me why I like living in a constitutional monarchy. You just need the right people. Like Elizabeth, Churchill and Thatcher.

Is it really more sporting to shoot with two guns and a loader, sometimes three guns and two loaders, than with a pump in which you place two shells and have no help?

I wonder...

Also, why is it more stylish to bring down a brace with two shots from a double, but not so with a pump? Considering the added handicap of manipulating the forend, the pump arguably requires more skill and coordination. Just saying...

A lot of the etiquette of the titled classes in GB is a bit unfathomable to many, even some with the titles. The headmaster of my school, and my french teacher, was Lord Tottenham, the Marquess of Ely. For those who don't know, Marquess comes next after Dukes and ahead of Earls, Viscounts and Barons.

We called him Sir, Mr Tottenham or Chaz if he couldn't hear us. He happily taught in Canada to get away from the ridiculousness of the social conventions that came with the title. Only occasionally would he return and take his seat in the House of Lords. One of the kindest and most elegant men I have ever met.

And he shot a Model 12? With a cutts? I say!

Tottenham has a lord? When i was groing up there the most famous man was Jimmy Greaves of Spurs.

I thought Ely was in Minnesota?

I have to say that sometimes it's tricky being British and reading some of the views expressed on here. I hasten to say that I do quite understand that it is a minority and probably (hopefully!) unrepresentative of the whole. In addition, I served 13 years as a British army officer, including five tours of active service. I do have a thick skin!

Right, having got that off my chest, I totally agree with Eugene about the awful way in which driven game shoots are depicted on film and TV. Never seen a true depiction, so for those of you who have not enjoyed the experience, please don't believe what you see on the screen!

Tim

To clarify, I wasn't really looking for a factual documentary on driven game shoots. Most of the things in films are sort of fantasy anyhow. I dimly remember a sort of dark film which may have starred James Mason built around a shoot on an estate. Ended with some one blowing someones head off...Entertainment of sorts. My wife and I spent a bit of time in Scotland in 2000 and had an opportunity to spectate a couple of shoots. This courtesy of a couple of gamekeepers we met in a pub. (where else) Their names were Jock and Rob or some such...Scots, ya know...Drank whisky....anyhow.....thanks, I guess...

Of saint and greavsie fame ?

Another film with a lot of game shooting scenes is, not surprisingly "The shooting party" made in 1985. There is a similar theme with an american shooting with a pump. Why on earth you would want to shoot one when you could afford a Purdey, H&H or even a Boss o/u is beyond me. I had a pump for a while and despised the thing, traded it for a bsa side by side and never looked back.

May have been it...Sorry about your pump...dreadful experience...

That would be "The Shooting Party".

All black powder, ten yard spacings (and less) plus aristocratic shagging. Piffle.

Eug

Whats not to like about that Eug? Black powder and shagging!

So, we conclude- the 1950's pop song "The Duke of Earl" kind o skipped over the Marquess thing- title wise anyway.[quote]My favorite Duke was the Duke of Ellington- "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!"

The pegs were very close in "The Shooting Party". But there weren't any Americans, nor any pumps. James Mason (in his last movie) played the owner of the shoot, and he was using a pair of hammerguns. Set in 1913, the year before the lights went out all over the world.

Well, except the lights on the Titanic in 1912-- wonder if WW1 might have had a different out come in Europe had all the "Big Wigs" and money guys hadn't gone down with the ship that had the temerity to defy Mother Nature- with some leadership/planning Fubars added to the mixture- "Hey, no sweat folks, we're just stopping to take on extra ice for the fish and goose soire!" Right.

The book, by elizabeth colgate was good. but as with so many film makers, they simply don't have a clue about any aspect of shooting or firearms. Mythbusters spent years debunking the nonsense that appeared on film to do with guns.

Just watched the shooting bit in the Crown...no recoil! Watch Mountbatten fire two shots, no recoil movement, looks ridiculous.

This may take us out of the normal safe and respectable confines of DGJ .... forgive. The only saving grace of the movie "The Shooting Party" is the presence of the luminous Dorothy Tutin in the cast list.

As a little boy (13?) we were taken on a school trip from The Oratory School in Birmingham to see "The Merchant of Venice" at the Royal Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford where she was playing Portia to Peter O'Toole's Shylock. I spent the entire evening staring down Ms Tutin's cleavage through a pair or those opera glass thingies that were clipped to the back of the seats in front. You had to put in a sixpence piece to release them.

This I then considered, and still do, was the best sixpence I ever spent; it was a life changing experience.

Some years later I was having a drink in the "Mucky Duck" in Stratford when Ms Tutin walked in on O'Toole's arm. The entire pub just dropped into silence; she was a woman of heart stopping beauty, utterly bewitching.



Pray continue whilst I get my breath back.

Eug

"The Big Shots"
http://www.thevintagemagazine.com/sports/the-big-shots-revisited-by-robert-jarman/

"Just How Good Were They" from Fieldsports Magazine is at the bottom here
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x7uk0ii6-lPdWEZj5ctyqr1td19ZcsA5xGGoKBhP9o0/edit

Drew! Great reads! Thanks

The lovely Diana Rigg, of "The Avengers" fame, was another Shakespearean actress . . . before she became Emma Peel. And still wins a lot of votes as the most lovely Bond girl ever.

Other than the fact that the pegs were too close (and that Edward Fox referred to the pheasant he shot at when he killed the beater as "a woodcock"), I thought that the actual shooting scenes in "The Shooting Party" were relatively well-done.

Good reads indeed. Worth noting references to shooting guns with no choke (cylinder). Really "high" birds, which have become a mania with some shooters today, weren't that common. Cylinder worked because most birds were shot at skeet range, or not a lot more--and that's still more or less the case on your typical driven shoot these days. 40 yards is an unusually tall bird. I wonder how Walsingham, Ripon etc would do on the high bird shoots, where the guns are long and heavy, and a 1 1/4 oz load is on the light side. I rather expect they would have pursued the high bird challenge as eagerly as they did on the driven shoots typical back in their day.

The British film “Shooting Party though I don’t think I should say too much about the story line, except was adapted from the novel of the same name by Elizabeth Colegate. Just to say it is a snapshot of an Edwardian country house shoot attended by members of the British aristocracy and their friends in the autumn of 1913 just prior to the outbreak of the Great War. The films attention to detail of a country house shoot was of a high standard, dress location (Knebworth House Hertfordshire) beaters keepers and every thing necessary for the shoot including a fine vintage Shooting-brake. Though there have always been doubts cast on the type of retriever dogs used in the film for that date. I became a beater for a shoot resembling this one some fifty years ago at one of the largest private estates in the County of Cheshire here in the UK even then not much had changed in the particulars and organisation of a large shoot though sadly even in the span of my lifetime that shoot is now a thing of the past. My reason for mentioning the film is in 1984 a friend of mine who worked in the Birmingham Gun trade contacted me and asked would I be prepared to lend a customer of his my Purdy shotgun. It turned out that his customer was a property master working in the British film industry and was searching for a usable antique Purdey shotgun, it had to be the type of gun an elderly member of the aristocracy would have owned around the 1900s my gun was exactly what he was looking for. After extracting the usual assurances that if there where any damage no matter how slight to the gun my friends life would become forfeit and his children and wife would be sold into slavery and any profits from the sale would of course be mine, not to harsh a deal I thought for what they where about to have on an extended loan. In reality to find a usable Purdey Bar in wood thumb lever shotgun built in 1860s, complete with its original unsleeved Damascus barrels Nitro Proof is rather a rare gun to come across yet alone borrow for the duration of a film. The gun was used in two scenes of the film firstly Sir Randolph Nettleby (James Mason) is holding it talking to Cornelius Cardew (John Gielgud) after Cardew had walked in front of the gun line with a placard, lastly in the scene after Tom Harker (Gordon Jackson) is shot Sir Randolph Nettleby’s loader is supporting it on his shoulder. The gun was not actually fired in the film because the Insurance company where not to keen for the actors to use a hundred plus year old gun it being the oldest gun on the set even though they where assured the gun was perfectly safe to use with black powder charges by the Birmingham Proof house, possibly because of the disaster that occurred on the first attempt to start filming was still very fresh in their minds. The financial reward I received for my help in solving his problem was not a large sum but enough to have some cosmetic work done on the gun.
At the time, I had no idea what the gun was to be used in but as the saying goes if only I did know then what I know now I would have asked for a film poster signed by all the actors. I do find the final scene of the film extremely haunting because it does not need much imagination to know what is approaching to take the lives of the young men in the film as we the audience are looking at it with full knowledge of the Great War to come. And just a personal note I have always believed that the decline of the English bespoke gun industry was caused in no small way by the untimely deaths of thousands upon thousands of sons on all sides from the upper middle and working classes, caused by the War “no customers after the war and no sons to continue to purchase later on” and of course the same fate was to become the artisans and craftsmen which accelerated the industries demise to the now shadow of it’s former self. The film is of a deliberate slow pace and extremely well acted though to be able to understand the English class system which I personally do find unacceptable and very difficult to rationalise as to why so few people should be so privileged and own so much, but there is always a but isn’t there, without it we would not have some of the most beautifully designed and mechanically refined sporting guns the world has seen, built by such names as Holland & Holland, Purdey, Boss, Churchill, Grant, Lancaster, Lang, the list could go on and on. Though the picture of a driven shoot painted in the film of guns at their pegs having loaders passing a reloaded gun to increase the overall take speed all surrounded by the swirl of black powder smoke and falling pheasants you can call it slaughter if you like, though Sir Randolph Nettleby does have a few words to say on that subject in the film. This film is as close as a film maker can get to looking through that window in time to an Edwardian aristocratic house shooting party in Britain.

Re the decline of the gun industry in the UK, post-WWI: I remember discussing the subject with a British gunsmith. He suggested that losing so many of the sons of the shooting classes likely resulted in a glut of second-hand guns appearing on the market after the war. It also explains the effort by makers such as Churchill (the XXV) and those that made the 2" 12ga to offer something new to compete with all the more "traditional" guns that were available after the war.

I liked both James Mason and John Gielgud a lot as actors. The Shooting Party was the film Mason made as far as i know. I didn't think the film was that bad, it moved slowly and thank god for that, if you want car chases and explosions every other minute, then films like this are not for you anyway. Damacus is of course correct, it is a book/film about a doomed generation, the end of the Edwardian era and the Edwardian country house set.

Autumn of 1913- WW1 started in August 1914-- if memory serves. Good book to read on this War to End all Wars- The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchmann

The blaming of WWI for the decline of the Edwardian Shooting Set is overstated.

Yes many died, yes taxes made passing intact estates difficult to impossible.

However the demise of that class was economic and inevitable. Estates based on income derived from land. The farming/renting economic model changed and regardless of the war it was going to happen. While the War created other factors that accelerated it in the end it was the evolution of the agricultural economy and industrial economies that caused it.

Just as economic factors in the US have significantly altered the farming environment in my state of Kansas and massively reduced bird populations. You can argue decisions or a failure to coherently act earlier by our Wildlife and Parks has failed to cushion the decline; it is the market place in the end.

Old COL, you can thrown in the Farm Bill when it comes to what's happened to wildlife in this country. 35 million acres set aside in CRP didn't reverse trends in modern agriculture, but it did take a whole lot of land out of row crops and into grasses, trees, etc. Of course the govt gives and the govt takes away, and they've been busily taking away CRP for the last several years--to the point that about a third of those 35 million acres are now back growing row crops. Couple the loss of CRP with the desire to tile away wet spots, rip out fencelines, raise livestock in confinement buildings rather than allowing them to clean up waste grain in the fields, the economy of scale (bigger equipment justified by a single farmer farming more acres) etc . . . all bad news for wildlife in general. And upland game populations in particular.

When we first got CRP, hunters got a significant benefit. But as those fields went from corn or soybeans to grass, I noticed that farmers were working their crop fields more and more intensively. Taking out the micro-habitats where a pheasant or a covey of quail could hide. And I thought at the time: "God help us if we ever lose CRP." That's where we are now, and given the economy in general and trends in DC, it's unlikely that we're ever going to regain those millions of acres of habitat we've lost. Nor all the little spots that used to produce the occasional bird.

I agree- 100%. The smaller (80-120 A.) family farms here in Central MI that produced pheasants, and small game, and possibly with stream, ponds and swamps un-drained, waterfowl, are all nearly gone today, replaced by the "General Motors" farming operations: 3000 head dairy cattle, milked 3 times in 24 hours, computer tagged and controlled feed. The only thing that hasn't changed is the cowshit--

I remember the Soil Bank era- way better conditions for upland birds to hatch eggs, etc. Also, as a confirmed varmint shooter/hunter but NOT a trapper for pelts) I realize that every coyote or fox or raccoon or possum or skunk that "vaporize" with my SAKO .243Win. and 55 grain Hornady loads- is one less threat afield to ground nesting game. However, the "Airborne Prize Patrol"- crows mainly, some turkey vultures as well, also destroy pheasant eggs in the nest in late Spring.

I have resigned myself, at age 75, that the only pheasants I will most likely ever shoot again here in MI are pen-raised game farm raised-- easy to determine when you clean them, with the layers of yellow fat from all the corn and related feed they stuff down while in captivity. Sorta like the old line about the chronic gambler who lived all week for the Friday night crap game held in a local "blind pig"- and known for it's rigged dice and crooked "management"- When asked why he kept going there, in spite of his knowing all this- he replied: "Yeah, but it's the only game in town!"--

I am SO glad I live in Kansas...

King, I can't find anything on an Eric Atkinson. Do you mean Rick Atkinson? Full given name Lawrence Rush Atkinson.

Yes, Rick Atkinson. He has few peers. His Guns at Last Light and The Day of Battle are in class of their own. Both are within reach among 150 other war books for biography I'm writing of a Nova Scotia citizen-soldier's role in cracking the Gothic Line. (Eric Atkinson is a neighbour down the road!)

Its true that Lord M; Was a stickler on the shooting field, in particular when it related to safety. A distinguished American executive was sent home[Back to his London hotel] by Lord M for dangerous use of his pair of Purdey's.
On the other hand another side of Lord M's character is seen in that he never forgot his old shipmates. My uncle sailed with Lord M in the 1920's.Following his service in the navy my uncle took an admin position in the navy offices Located in Bath. When visiting Bath, lord M; then, "First Sea lord," would on occasions ,to the amazement of my uncles colleagues, drop into his office for a chat with his old shipmate!

SRH