[Music]
In between winning world titles and seeing himself on ITV news, George needs to keep
one eye on his pheasant shoots.
Are the cover crops healthy, have any foxes moved in, are the bunny numbers in check?
Well it is a beautiful July evening so he has invited us out to do all that, share some
tricks of the trade and - he hopes - get something for the pot.
Firstly, George explains why it's so important to have a quality cover for those birds.
The big problem you have with cover is that the majority of it tends to be on the highest
part of the bank, because obviously that is where the best pheasants are shown, or the
best partridges are shown from.
But the highest part of the bank is often the weakest, because it lacks moisture.
And unless they are farmed as a proper farmed crop, then you never achieve the thickness
and strength of cover that you would like.
So, consequently, if your cover is always weak, it is always - you know - birds flush
too quickly out of them and you cannot hold your birds.
You have got no cover to entice them up there on a rough, windy day when you want thick
cover because otherwise if they are at the top of the bank there is nothing to hold them
there, they will stay down at the bottom and you will never get your birds to cover.
So, it is an ongoing process now that makes the shooting season - and the best part of
the shooting season - good.
To help protect those crops we are after rabbits and George finds a couple in the first field.
He tries to shoot the one closest to the edge to push the other one back into the open ground.
It works - sort of.
By his own admission George doesn't go in for gadgets and likes to keep it simple.
So, what grain bullet is he using?
Seventeen.
It is about as much as I know about it.
His rifle of choice is an Anschuetz .17HMR – and it has a pretty hard life.
It is a little rifle, and it is quite difficult to hold steady, but I can shoot it out of
the window of the truck, I can shoot it off there.
if you have got a big, heavy-barrelled rifle you can hold it a lot steadier but for me
this is a perfect little rifle.
The one thing I would say about the 17HMRs, shooting them as much as we do, is that we
do tend to shoot the barrels out quite quickly.
One of the reasons is the speed the bullet is travelling at.
With a silencer , they get hot on an autumn or winter night when we are shooting 'long'
rabbits with a 17, and the condensation - where the barrel gets hot, and then cools down quickly
- the condensation tends to form in the silencer and the barrel, and that tends to corrode
the barrel and once the barrel is corroded, they are shot out.
That is the problem we have had.When you do as much as we do that is part of the game.
George has a neat style of paunching the rabbits but we'll explain that later.
And why does he have a duvet in the back of the Polaris?
We get to the first of the shoot’s cover crops and he is happy with the way it is looking,
even though we haven't had much rain.
We have come out to look at the maize.
We had some rain two days ago which has obviously made some difference.
you can see a nice , even crop.
And then as you come round, the crop gets weaker and here, where there is the over hang
from that oak tree - so you have got that oak tree there - overhangs from it - and that
will be moisture, purely and simply, lack of moisture.
And you can see here just an odd plant or two which have been eaten - the tops have
been eaten just out here, and that tends to be fallow deer.We can put up with one or two
but if we get too many then we would have to electric-fence it.
Across the next field George spots a fox cub – which also spots us.
He tries to call it but no Charlie.
With the wheat doing well, he is confident that after harvest he will be able to catch
up with it.
Content he has got the measure of this shoot, we move to the other.
The sun is lower in the sky and the air is full of life – and because there is no windscreen
on the Polaris, we are full of life too.
Even with his eyes splattered with insects, George spots a fox sunning itself along a
fence line.
That's really made things successful tonight, whatever happens now.
Just coming along here, there is a fox less than 100 yards up the hedge, which I just
shot with the .17HMR.
I did not have time to change.
I did not want it to go through the fence into the ditch.
And it is less then 100 yards from one of my main release pens.
A really good result.
There are some rabbits between us and the fox so George picks off those too.
A half-grown cub.
These really are the sort of size of fox that (1) get in to the release pen and (2) do huge
amounts of damage.
Cubs tend to kill and kill and kill and kill for fun.
They do not really know any different.
An older fox will kill for fun but tends to kill and bury some, and then take them back
for young ones.
But that could do me a huge amount of damage.
So very pleased with it.
It is a summer evening to relish and George fancies having a cuppa at one of his favourite
spots.
He has had an incredible competitive year, so does coming out here work as a cheap form
of therapy?
You can chill for two or three hours, driving around and checking the shoot, checking the
cover crops, shooting a few rabbits and just get my mind completely away from it.
And then of course, I only shoot clays seven months of the year.
I do not shoot clays twelve months of the year.
So I have seven months full on and five months when I am doing other things, and I think
that complete five-month break makes a Hell of a difference.
I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world.
And that is saying something, because I have been to some nice places.
Last month he arrived at a competition to discover that Martin Myers had straighted
the 100-bird course.
George went out and matched it, beating Martin in a shoot-off.
How do you mentally prepare, knowing that one error will end your challenge?
When you have shot 100 straight at a registered shoot, that does not deserve to be a loser,
to be fair.
instead of shooting 100-bird competitions, I shoot 101-bird competitions.
Refreshed, George has one last port of call before we call it a night: his duck pond.
The young mallards are vulnerable this early in their lives.
When we turn the corner, there's a fox on the wheat pile.
Then there are two.
George has to try and make this opportunity count.
He targets the adult first.
[Gunshot]
It was feeding on the wheat pile with the ducks on the duck pond, so I am going to 'cop
a bit of stick' for this one, I can see.
The only thing is, I have shot either the dog or the vixen and there was a three-parts-grown
cub with it, and the three-parts-grown cub has run into that rough on the right.
And... he's coming out, he's coming out, he's coming out.
Coming into the wheat pile.
[Gunshot]
Now, that is a result.
I was just about to say, if you have shot the dog or the vixen, there is a possibility
that the other one could come back out because it will not know what has gone on.
And, sure enough, half way through explaining it, the other one has come back out to see
what has happened, and I have managed to kill the pair, which to me is the perfect evening.
What an end to our evening.
We didn't catch the foxes red-handed but they were certainly too close for comfort.
You just could not have written the script on that.
What I found interesting was that when we pulled up, they were actually on hear, and
they were feeding on the wheat, so that is something else I have learned today, that
they do actually feed on the... you know, we have got a wheat pile here for the ducks
that...
This is a vixen and that was actually feeding on the wheat, and then, having shot the vixen
- because I could see this was being subservient to it - having shot the vixen the... and you
can see how big it is.
It is three-quarters full grown that cub.
You can tell by the fact it has never had a winter coat, and that sort of thing.
But I knew that there was a very big chance that that would come back out if we sat sat
tight.
A lot of people in that situation would have roared off and gone down there to see what
they had got.
By sitting tight, we managed to get two instead of one, which is a fantastic achievement for
me.
Very happy.
All that's left to do is clean the rabbits, explain his paunching technique and say why
he needs a blanket in the back.
I put the duvet in there just so it gives a bit of padding if we go over any bumps when
you are driving to the shoot.
You know, it just - although the rifles are in cases, and they are cases with a wooden
inside - it just gives that little bit of extra, and at the end of the day we are hear
to do a job, and do a good job.
You cannot do a good job if your rifle is out of sight.
So, it just gives a little bit of extra protection and it is easy to wash.
I will wash that tonight and the blood will come out.
There is no problem at all.
It just gives that protection and gives me the confidence to know that when I get here,
even if I have gone over a bump or two, my rifle is not going to be out.
Basically, I hold my knife, showing about that much of the tip, and just hold the back
legs, touch it in here, go up to the chest cavity, which - you know - lets the guts come
to there.And then you take that out, get your fingers around the paunch, which is the bit
right up in the front, and then there you have got a nice, clean rabbit, with no...
all you have done is cut the inside cavity and then there is nothing there to go off
or go wrong.
So, there again, same thing, straight in, up to the chest cavity.
You do not cut the paunch at all, so there is no debris left in there from that.
Everything comes out - because it is head shot - everything comes out clean.
Yet another clean rabbit.
Another half/three-quarter-grown rabbit - a beautiful eating rabbit.
And then, obviously, it is not the greatest smell in the world, so I always bring a flask
full of hot, soapy water.
That IS hot as well tonight.
A dozen rabbits and three foxes, checked all the covers, which is good, protecting the
ducks, and done a bit of good all round, really.
A dozen bunnies and three foxes: George and his ducks can sleep sounder tonight.