sport,hobby,or way of life

jwshooter

does your life ,job ,home,work around your hunting /shooting .are the dogs the first thing you think of when you get home of a eve ,is the first of sep or nov the best day of the year ,is the sound of a sika stag whistle or a cock pheasant coming from cover with your dog just behind him the best sounds in the world if so help is on the way ...winter is a coming

bunny shooter

+1

ballistic

jwshooter wrote: »

does your life ,job ,home,work around your hunting /shooting .are the dogs the first thing you think of when you get home of a eve ,is the first of sep or nov the best day of the year ,is the sound of a sika stag whistle or a cock pheasant coming from cover with your dog just behind him the best sounds in the world if so help is on the way ...winter is a coming

wouldnt it be great if you could replace your job with hunting and shooting would mean being on the dol for half the year though

Jonty

ballistic wrote: »

wouldnt it be great if you could replace your job with hunting and shooting would mean being on the dol for half the year though

well if we get this big recession there will be plenty of time for hunting!

To be honest, its a way of life for me. All I want at the weekend is to go out and cap plenty of rabbits, and do a bit of lamping for charles and bag a deer from time to time. No beer or smokes. As a mate of mine put it - "Hunting to me is like drugs to junkies"

I even bring herself with me!

bunny shooter

Jonty wrote: »

.....I even bring herself with me!

What breed of dog do you have, setter, lab, springer ?

Jonty

now bunny there's no need for that


TBH I got a brittany for the pheasants

dreamr

i love the adrelein rush that comes with hunting. it's an amazing feeling!

Grizzly 45

Way of life for me,anything firearms related.Would love to have been a gamekeeper,trouble the pay is crap and still seems to be based on Victorian wages.:(

John Griffin

ballistic wrote: »

wouldnt it be great if you could replace your job with hunting and shooting would mean being on the dol for half the year though

Or you could just become a Ranger:D:D;)

bunny shooter

Jonty wrote: »

now bunny there's no need for that


TBH I got a brittany for the pheasants

It was meant as a joke. If I've upset you I apologise

Mac Tire

could you imagine....getting paid for what we enjoy doing....dont think that such a thing exists...

Grizzly 45

John Griffin wrote: »

Or you could just become a Ranger:D:D;)

And be stuck in the office all day doing paperwork ,on how many antis complained about everything relating to fieldsports,and what PC quotas you have fulfilled on alland sundry??? Nah!!:(

Jonty

bunny shooter wrote: »

It was meant as a joke. If I've upset you I apologise

No offence taken mate. Don't you know us Laois boys have thick skin (some would say skulls!! )???:D

Thats the worst thing about typing stuff - wires get crossed and this place is like a tinder box at times.

Mellor

Jonty wrote: »

now bunny there's no need for that


TBH I got a brittany for the pheasants

How do you find the Brittney?
I am planning on getting a new dog, i prefer setter types. I have a gordon at the moment, but i was gong to go smaller with the next. I love being non-traditional so i'd rather and irish red and white over a red setter. I have move away from that and decided on a smaller dog, possibably english or llewellian setter. But the brittney has really caught my eye. I know they are very similar to setters.

Did you find a specific gun line of brittneys in ireland?

Sadly, the reason I ask is that my gordon (8 years old) is sufferly lately. He recently started limping and falling alot, 8 years old isn't alot in my book. Recently when washing him we found a growth on his leg, thinking it was swelling from bad joints. Next wash and haircut, its gotten bigger and its probably some kind of tumour. Seeing the vet tonight, and he might be going to sleep.

John Griffin

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

And be stuck in the office all day doing paperwork ,on how many antis complained about everything relating to fieldsports,and what PC quotas you have fulfilled on alland sundry??? Nah!!:(

Ah its not that bad now in fairness. Although the politics can be a bit frustrating at times. You get to do plenty of shooting and cool stuff though. Beats working for a living.:D:)

Sparks

Hmmm. Not sure this is just a hunting thing lads...

Something I wrote a few weeks back:

May 12, 2008
Hobby versus Sport

Been pondering that distinction for a fair while now. Up to now, you see, I’ve not been much of a plinker. I did plink once, back before I got drafted/dragged onto the DURC committee years ago. From that point onwards, I’ve been pretty much solidly committed to competitive shooting and I tend to go all-in on these sort of things. I’m aware I’m not the statistical norm in this (or as others have more succintly put it, I’m odd and a bit of a dry s***e). And with the exception of the colours team two years ago, I’ve tried not to demand anyone else get my addiction (and for the colours team, to be fair, they were all volunteers and I was putting my life on hold for six months to train them - and the results they got were more than worth it).

But of late, I’ve been plinking again. I still shoot air rifle the old way, with budgets for equipment and training plans and all the necessary bits and pieces. But air pistol was never intended to be serious - I’m a 500-level shooter with a cheap IZH-46M pistol and I’m happy to keep on shooting like that and let it build up on its own - the idea was to learn stuff from air pistol to use in air rifle (trigger control, for example). It’s a hobby, not a sport. And to be honest, I don’t ever see it going beyond that point. I just don’t have the interest in it. The same could be said for smallbore pistol. Probably not for smallbore rifle, that was too challanging, but I’ve not had the chance to shoot it for two years now (though that’s going to change now I’m back in TCD).

Recently though - and this is what got me thinking - I’ve been mucking about with archery. Ewan Oughton was one of our members before he ran away to the US to write computer games, and he got a few of us interested in seeing if the archery side of the club could take off like the airgun side did. And recently we found a useful contact in the archery world to help us get up and running, and now Geoff and Jimmy have done their coaches courses in archery and Geoff’s stocked a few basic recurve bows (wooden risers, composite limbs, all basic beginners kit) in the shop, and a bunch of folks have been plinking away on 80cm faces at 10m outside the airgun range to get a feel for it. That’s definitely a hobby - I might buy a basic bow and kit in a month or three, but it’s just purely for a bit of craic during the summer with the warm evenings. And it’s a bit of fun to do this on your first day:




And I did a little better this weekend:




Although Geoff’s just much, much better at this sort of thing!



But here’s the thing that has surprised me - it’s definitely a hobby, but I know in my gut that if I’d found Olympic Archery before I found Olympic Target Shooting, I would never have gone into competitive shooting. It’s just too much work to get to the line in shooting compared to getting to the line in archery. You need licences, gun cabinets, thousands of euros of kit, the clubs have for years been very reluctant to publicise themselves so they’ve become closed shops with lots of in-fighting and hassle, and there’s never been organised coaching and training paths to take someone from newbie to competitor. That last bit is starting to change, it’s true, but I still cannot take a total newbie and say “turn up at such-and-such a place and such-and-such a time, there’s a course on for total newbies, it’s an hour a night on thursday evenings and lasts for X weeks and costs X euros and at the end you’ll have a competency certificate and your own shooting glove and we’ll have an information pack for you listing off your local clubs, the name of your local Firearms Officer and a letter from us to him saying you’re sound, and the names of local clubs, and we’ll put you in contact with them, and the next follow-on course is in X weeks time and we’d love to see you there, and here’s what we’ll be doing then”.

But in archery, you can do that (though you don’t need the stuff with the gardai which is a major advantage for them - it’s possible we might someday get to where every other EU state is and have airguns to seven joules deregulated as well, and if we do the sport will get much easier, but for now we’re stuck).

It’s a sobering thought that if one little thing had been different (if TCD had had an archery club - it’s the only college in Ireland without one), then something that you’ve poured so much of your life into for so long would never even had happened.

It’s a more sobering thought to wonder what it takes before what is a hobby becomes a sport. In twenty years, I’ll still be standing on a firing line somewheres - I know myself well enough to know that - but will it be an Anschutz 2002 in my hands or a PSE X-factor?

Of course, since writing that, one or two things have changed - for example, yesterday I finally got to tell a new shooter looking to start about an organised coaching course designed to induct beginners. That was a nice step forward. Pity the rest of the stuff from yesterday wasn't so much fun. And there was the follow-on course to tell him about as well. Airguns are still not deregulated though...

kerryman12

its a state of mind man!!

Whenever I am out after deer, to be honest being out is its own reward. If you get to even see the deer then it is all worthwhile. Getting to take one every now and again is very rewarding in every respect. But to be honest it is not all about that. It is a state of mind being out alone or with somone surrounded by nature etc.....

Cant beat it.

bunny shooter

kerryman12 wrote: »

its a state of mind man!!

Whenever I am out after deer, to be honest being out is its own reward. If you get to even see the deer then it is all worthwhile. Getting to take one every now and again is very rewarding in every respect. But to be honest it is not all about that. It is a state of mind being out alone or with somone surrounded by nature etc.....

Cant beat it.

Exactly

Jonty

Mellor wrote: »

How do you find the Brittney?
I am planning on getting a new dog, i prefer setter types. I have a gordon at the moment, but i was gong to go smaller with the next. I love being non-traditional so i'd rather and irish red and white over a red setter. I have move away from that and decided on a smaller dog, possibably english or llewellian setter. But the brittney has really caught my eye. I know they are very similar to setters.

Did you find a specific gun line of brittneys in ireland?

Sadly, the reason I ask is that my gordon (8 years old) is sufferly lately. He recently started limping and falling alot, 8 years old isn't alot in my book. Recently when washing him we found a growth on his leg, thinking it was swelling from bad joints. Next wash and haircut, its gotten bigger and its probably some kind of tumour. Seeing the vet tonight, and he might be going to sleep.

Sorry to hesr that about Gordon.

My bitch is good to hunt and point, I don't do enough with her to be honest. If you are interedted in one look in the back of the shooter's digest - A guy called David Hayes breeds them. He's got a very good dog for breeding at the moment.

IDon'tKnow!

Mac Tire wrote: »

could you imagine....getting paid for what we enjoy doing....dont think that such a thing exists...

When your hobby becomes your 9 to 5 it can quickly become something you hate doing!

jwshooter

IDon'tKnow! wrote: »

When your hobby becomes your 9 to 5 it can quickly become something you hate doing!

A ,NO

Mac Tire

IDon'tKnow! wrote: »

When your hobby becomes your 9 to 5 it can quickly become something you hate doing!

Id love to give it a go and see if it did develop into a chore.....Doubt it though

wallyhering

kerryman12 wrote: »

its a state of mind man!!

Whenever I am out after deer, to be honest being out is its own reward. If you get to even see the deer then it is all worthwhile. Getting to take one every now and again is very rewarding in every respect. But to be honest it is not all about that. It is a state of mind being out alone or with somone surrounded by nature etc.....

Cant beat it.

+1 nail on the head:D

NoNameRanger

IDon'tKnow! wrote: »

When your hobby becomes your 9 to 5 it can quickly become something you hate doing!

I wouldn't say hate, but you don't really feel like doing it at the weekend unless its a bit different like a nice bit of wildfowling, woodcock or an African safari:). You just have to remind yourself sometimes of all the sh!te jobs out there and all the lads that pay to do what you get paid to do:D. But i do hate the paperwork!!!:mad:

Mellor

Jonty wrote: »

Sorry to hesr that about Gordon.

My bitch is good to hunt and point, I don't do enough with her to be honest. If you are interedted in one look in the back of the shooter's digest - A guy called David Hayes breeds them. He's got a very good dog for breeding at the moment.

Found a guy on the net, gave him a ring, turns out its the same guy.
He has three pups at the moment, very good chance i'll take one of these pups.

Just need to decide on boy or girl!!!!

irish setter

Mellor wrote: »

How do you find the Brittney?
I am planning on getting a new dog, i prefer setter types. I have a gordon at the moment, but i was gong to go smaller with the next. I love being non-traditional so i'd rather and irish red and white over a red setter. I have move away from that and decided on a smaller dog, possibably english or llewellian setter. But the brittney has really caught my eye. I know they are very similar to setters.

Did you find a specific gun line of brittneys in ireland?

Sadly, the reason I ask is that my gordon (8 years old) is sufferly lately. He recently started limping and falling alot, 8 years old isn't alot in my book. Recently when washing him we found a growth on his leg, thinking it was swelling from bad joints. Next wash and haircut, its gotten bigger and its probably some kind of tumour. Seeing the vet tonight, and he might be going to sleep.

whats the story with the gordon? two dogs really interest me are the gordon and irish red and white because they are uncommon but i'd have said the red and white was more traditional than the red as it is the original. the red and white is my passion and all going well will have my first litter in a few months

whitser

way of life for me. hunting with hounds,terriers,lurchers etc..is a lifestyle. my dogs and their welfare and their hunting are part of my life.
thats why its nonsense for the antis to think they can ban a lifestyle. every decision i make the dogs/hunting are taken into account, wether its where to live,work or even when to go on holidays.

Mellor

irish setter wrote: »

whats the story with the gordon? two dogs really interest me are the gordon and irish red and white because they are uncommon but i'd have said the red and white was more traditional than the red as it is the original. the red and white is my passion and all going well will have my first litter in a few months

I had great time for the gordon, really loved him (I had to put him down as suspected above).
When choosing a new dog, i've decided to look past breed slightly.
I learnt from the gordon that terrain and type of hunting are huge.
I'm not refering to flushing verses pointing, but even closer down to the the specifics.
Gordons are traditional scottish, they are breed for highland huntng, much larger than other setters and pointers. They heavy frame is strong, but will be a hinderence in very heavy strong cover (where it might be too big for a hole).
In this instance an english or similar would be better.
A brittany, while the full is brittany spaniel, its not s spaniel and is a pointing breed (though not a pointer or a setter i'm told, comfirm anyone) hey are generally smaller. This was one of the reason i've leaned towards this breed, as the land i hunt in less and less open. But if you are lucky enough to have a large open area a Gordon could be good, its worth checking the line from the choosen breeder, as the show and hunting lines have really split, the show are generally selected from the bigger dogs, with hunt the smaller. This would lead to increased natural ability in hunt lines.

mallards

You could do a lot worse than a Brittany!









Mallards

It wasn't me!

That's a lovely bit of ground you've got there to shoot mallards, what sort of acreage have you on it, if you don't mind my asking?

Mellor

Very nice Britany mallards,
I had decided a whle ago, and soured a breeder last week, have pics of the pups beside me, (im only taking one though, wish I could grab a pair)

mallards

Try 4 like me Mellor they will try your patience!

The picture with me in it is on my family farm and along with some other ground is 1300 acres. The other 3 were taken in a large syndicate I was in near Lough Neagh of 4000 acres.

Mallards.