Of all my rough-shooting permissions, Ronnie’s farm has long been one of my favourites. Other than to top-up the feeders — and the regular predator-control activities necessary during the close season — we don’t venture near the farm to shoot until late November. Although sugar beet is not as popular a break-crop as it once was, we are fortunate that a couple of our farmers are still on good terms with British Sugar.
So the early season is spent with the young’uns walking-up the beet once our friendly farmers have part-cropped the fields. They leave several strategically placed strips of beet, which allows us to organise an afternoon or two of small drives, giving us older boys a few stands. Once the beet is harvested, we turn our
