Even though I may never be part of a “glorious twelfth” shooting party I do look forwards to this day. Kind of like the official beginning of another hunting season which always comes just before my opener. 20 days and counting down here.

Stepping up field work to get ready for Dove season. Mowing strips of wheat still as the sunflowers are still filling heads in in some sections of the field. Been wet here like a lot of places. Hope to o cut some sunflowers in ten days. Corn harvest is going to be late because of such a wet Spring. That should keep the birds concentrated with a late harvest. Full season beans might be ready before some of the corn. If we can just not get a cold snap in middle September our Dove and Wood Ducks should be here in good numbers until October.

It's like waiting for Christmas morning. Hard to keep my mind on the things a husband is expected to.

28 days, 1 hour, 4, minutes and 3 seconds

SRH

34 days until Grousemas up here!
Karl

If you look closely you can see Salopian and Lagopus awaiting trains yesterday for going north:

Sadly the service depicted by this picture is a total disaster nowadays. Even worse British Snail have decreed that they will not carry firearms.

The NYT mentions the Glorious 12th which lead to a few sorta interesting, but very short links


This one if from 1922.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYBbC2RrUpo

This one has a few more guns and some interesting socks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vpvTywOoYw

This one is much longer, but more interesting of course.
The Glorious 12th plus other British excentricities

Brent, being an Iowan, you'd certainly be interested in a tradition started by a group in Des Moines. Called themselves the Huntmasters. On the glorious 12th, they'd drive rural gravel roads and celebrate by shooting bridge pigeons. No idea whether they're still active.

I managed to bag one opening day 2017 here in northern WI. Did not last year. But even though it's usually too warm, too leafy, and too many bugs, I always take the dogs for what is often nothing more than an armed walk.

Larry,
I generally wait until the following week when Woodcock season opens up, as I've gone out on opening day to experience the same issues. It seems when I go out the first day of grouse season I flush nothing but...…..you guessed it, woodcock!
Karl

I spend my "Waiting for Dove Season" time shooting pigeons at a dairy farm. Great practice for doves!
Shot 60 yesterday. Concentrating on picking a single bird in a flock sharpens your ability to focus on a single target.

In 27 yrs here, I have never heard of that. Interesting. My grandfather used to shoot barn pigeons up near Jewell, but he was a sporting man, so he shot them with a .22 on the wing.

I've always wanted to shoot some pigeons, but I'm hesitant to eat them. Too many places poison them.

They are now Coming South after the "Glorious Twelfth" at Perth Station, I prefer this George Earls painting out of the two it has more dogs. Possibly because it is a painting from my miss spent youth, the original did hang in my local Pub "The Vines" in Lime Street Liverpool. Oh! how I wish to be looking at it again across a smoke filled Lounge Bar with my friends of yesteryear trying to count the lamps after one too many! The painting now hangs in York Railway Museum.

This is something I did as a child..
..In your old age you must be reverting back to being a child.



One minute you're up the east coast next minute you're "down here"....

At this point I hope you know where you really are.

Just sAying.

Agree that's also a problem. Wish they'd open together. But they've got to work with that woodcock window imposed by the feds. They could open the woodcock season earlier, but they'd then have to close it earlier. And I've seen years up here when there were still doodles around, even in northern WI, after the season closed.

I seem to recall that the Huntmasters were associated with the Des Moines Izaak Walton club.

Larry I have an island up around Jewel I'd sell ya...



They kood rights a country sOng about that there....

I'm jist sit'n on da back porch polishing up my turd of a fOe tin Yiltz'e shOOt'z gun just count'n the minutes n saconds till yonder dove season...

Wife's in the kitcken kooking up some frozen dOve turd pie....

Looking at the painting, I believe I can see both Walsingham and Ripon in addition to the dogs. What about you?...Geo

Thought I had better post its sibling painting "Going North King's Cross Station". Walsingham & Ripon are just off frame to the right.

I was late to the assembly.
Missplaced my sonic screwdriver while working on the Tardis.

One minute you're up the east coast next minute you're "down here"....

At this point I hope you know where you really are.

Just sAying. [/quote]


jOe, I’m not surprised you can no longer figure up from down. I’ll make it easy for you. Even or level. There. I live in the KY/OH area with small local parcels of land for Dove in both states. I go back East to the Eastern Shore every three weeks to deal with holdings back there and to visit a friend under Hospice care. If you draw a line East to West, where I live to my house back there is almost exactly parallel to the Mason Dixie line the Maryland - Pennsylvania part not the Maryland - Delaware north South leg. So when I go back East I am level with where I live here.

jOe you ain't no Steve Goodman.....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6taItuJqwcA

Thumbs up for both DAC and Steve Goodman.....love that one.

Could someone post the history of the “glorious twelfth” shooting party. I am not familiar with it.
Jim

"The Shooting Party" was a 1984 film starring James Mason in his last role.

"The Glorious 12th" has been the opening day of shooting in the UK for more than a century.
People left the cities in the summer to avoid disease, and relax in the cooler countryside.

I was serious about seeing (imagining?) Ripon and Walsingham in the picture. Look at the men on either end of the group just behind the red setters and tell me I'm wrong...Geo

[" was late to the assembly.
Missplaced my sonic screwdriver while working on the Tardis."]

A fellow Whovian, no doubt...Geo

Frederick Oliver Robinson, 2nd Marquess of Ripon. He died on September 22nd 1923 in the field, having killed 51 grouse on his last drive.



His Hon. Thomas de Grey, later Lord Walsingham



Duleep Singh may be in the crowd also



Prince Freddie Duleep Singh was Ripon's nemesis. The two men did not speak to each other, but squared off often. One drive the Prince shot a high bird crossing his front, which fell dead and nearly struck Ripon. Enraged, he stormed the hill, yelling various imprecations, including “bloody nig...” Singh then proceeded to down only such birds as were flying toward his fellow guest and shot them so that Ripon was bombarded by several pheasant corpses a minute.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...s-habitat.html

My first time shooting inYorkshire, I had been practicing long crossers, and chondelles, 40 to 60 yards, for several months before I went to shoot.

That was because I had heard that the shots were going to be 40 to 50 yards, with lots of crossing birds etc.

Birds were being driven off a hill, flying past me exactly as I had been practicing. I was standing in front of a hedge at the base of the hill.
Little did I know , That there was another peg 40 yards or so on the other side of the hedge. They sort of had the pegs in a crescent transecting the hedge.

So, for the entire drive, I pounded those long birds and dropped them on top of him. Worse yet, I was poaching them just before he was ready to shoot.
He was waiting for them to clear the hedge, and I was trying to prevent that.

My total poached was maybe 6-8 birds.

He was a good sport about it, unlike Ollie.

Yup-- and ABC pirated the tag line from his classic- "City of New Orleans" -- with their usage of his tag line--"Good Mornin' America, How are You?"" I also like his perfect country song: "You Never Even Call Me By My Name"-- great stuff- like John Prine's songs-- RWTF

Maybe I can put some viewers up on the hill.
Apologies for wind noise.
Not really sure how to embed a video.

https://i.imgur.com/DIwDFUj.mp4

That is amazingly beautiful scenery. I've never been there, and find it hard to believe a place is empty at that and so beautiful.

Jim "The Shooting Party" is the film of the novel written by Isabel Colegate set at the time of an Edwardian country house shoot, just before the start of the "Great War. The film is worth looking at for the shoot scenes they got them close to being right. The Film is good though the novel is a book you cant put down until the last page if you have the time and inclination.

I'm sure that most people will know, but there are very good prints available of George Earl's "Going North" and "Coming South".
They make a very nice reminder of times past hanging in a gun room.

If you think about going grouse shooting you had better be quick about it. The Scottish Parliament are looking at the possibility of banning grouse shooting. If they succeed no doubt they will try it in England too if a left wing socialist Government gets in as it is their stated aim to do it also as they perceive it as a rich man's sport. English M.P.'s can't vote on Scottish issues but Scottish M.P.'s can and do vote on English issues. If the Scot's ban it then they will help to get the ban extended to England too. The vast majority of Scottish voters are city dwellers with no concept of grouse shooting and the Scottish National Party who hold the majority in the Scottish Parliament will no doubt force the ban. If they get their way and ban it the losers will be the grouse themselves. Remember what happened when just three people calling themselves Wild Justice got a ban on crow shooting for a period this spring. Two of those, Chris Packam and Mark Avery are rabidly anti grouse shooting. Grouse days may be numbered and then the rest of shooting sports. Currently Wild Justice are trying to get pheasant rearing banned as the say they are a non native species. They have been here since the Romans introduced them almost 2,000 years ago. The slippery slope. Lagopus…..

Lagopus, I feel your pain. I've never shot grouse, but I've shot driven in Scotland many times, and hope that the opportunity remains available.

Re pheasants: Back when I was teaching at university, I attended a meeting of the campus chapter of the Humane Society of the United States (an animal rights group, albeit less radical than some). Questions I posed during the meeting pretty much gave me away as a hunter. As a result, the group's faculty sponsor approached me after the meeting and asked what I hunted. "Birds, with pointing dogs," I replied. We were in Iowa, where the most common game bird is the pheasant. She reminded me that the pheasant was a non-native species, and that it had displaced our native prairie grouse.

My response: "While it's true that pheasants aren't native to Iowa, I think they've now been here long enough that they no longer need green cards. And it was intensive agriculture that displaced our native prairie grouse, which were replaced by pheasants--which have greater tolerance for agricultural lands. But I'd be very pleased if we still had native grouse that I could hunt." Pretty much ended the discussion.

Larry, what college in Iowa has a student chapter of the Humane society? Never heard of this going on 28 yrs now.

I live not far from a grouse moor in North Derbyshire. A friend from the same village from which I originated and someone I went to school with was the third generation Grouse Keeper on the moor. His son has now taken over making him the fourth generation. I wonder how much longer he will be there. I used to attend the shoots each year to work the dogs and help out with management in other ways. I have sort of retired from it when my friend retired. Un-keepered moors hold very few grouse due to predation and lack of heather management; heather being the staple diet of these hardy birds. They cannot be reared and bred like pheasants but only maintained in the wild. Un-keepered moors are poor in wildlife of any kind but a well managed grouse moor is alive with a diverse range of species be they birds, insects, plants or reptiles. If grouse shooting goes a huge amount of habitat management, currently at no cost to the tax payer, will be lost along with the species that thrive there. Lagopus…..

You are so correct,

The moor that I am familiar with that lost its lease from the government, is a wildlife desert now. No diversity in the age classes of Heather, a fraction of the wildlife resides there now than it did when it was keepered and for what?

A century of management erased by fiat.

In the end anti’s will say it was the grouse shooting community’s fault.