Name Britain’s five greatest wildfowlers. Now there’s a challenge, for there have over the history of the sport been countless innovators, plenty who have worked tirelessly for fowling’s future at both local and national level, many who have inspired and brought wildfowling to new audiences and quite simply those who have perfected their own skills over a lifetime as supremely competent duck hunters.
I have known individuals in all these categories, but to reach across the breadth of wildfowling’s history — and to spare the blushes of those still around today — I propose to nominate four who will be well known to most readers and one who will probably not.
Wildfowling had its origins among ordinary folk, local people who made their homes among fen and marsh or alongside firth or estuary. For most of human existence, these folk were largely unlettered and left barely a
