Thin times, fat fowl

You just can’t win, can you? Any wildfowler might be forgiven for asking this question during recent weeks. For months during the autumn and well into winter, he has been brainwashed with the notion that his sport is not worthy of the name until hard weather makes it so uncomfortable for him that he can eventually take advantage of conditions that make the ducks and geese easier to approach and therefore collect a reasonable bag.

For weeks and weeks, he waits and waits for just the right conditions and then, all of a sudden, when that time comes, he is confronted with a national figure who tells him on the television or wireless that now he should hold