A zip around the farm
Mar 09, 2022
5 minutes
Like many other boys of my generation, I started my shooting life potting pests around farm buildings. My grandfather was a herdsman on a Somerset dairy farm and his employer was delighted to find a young lad willing to help thin out the unwelcome critters that were making raids on his tumbledown barns.
Back then, starlings were an abundant and legitimate quarry and I took great pride in picking off birds from the vast flocks that descended on the yard to gorge on animal feed. The truth is that my tally of eight or nine over a weekend couldn’t have made much of a difference, but it still gave me a glow to think that I had a role to play in an operation that fascinated me.
Around the time of
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