Goose shooting with Scotland's top goose guide
Our company has a article in this month's Scottish field magazine. A copy of the article is below.
Geese
Title: Stubble trouble
Stand first: an encounter with Loch Leven’s vast gaggles of geese.
A hedgehog scoured the roadside for slugs, a barn owl on a signpost swivelled its head outlandishly to fix me in its gaze. The first looked surprised by my presence, the second faintly disgusted – it wasn’t often their peace was shattered at this time of the night. Yet, while it might have been 4.30am on a Monday morning, and I might have been somewhat groggy, it was still good to see the creatures of the nocturnal world at work.
My alarm, however, had roused me with more of a purpose than a mere moonlight drive. For I was heading to the shores of Loch Leven in order to stake out some stubble and hopefully shoot me a pink-footed goose. Having spoken to my guide, Lee Robb, the previous evening, it sounded like the birds were likely to hold up their part of the bargain, yet whether I could aim straight remained to be seen.
Boarding Lee’s pickup we headed down a pothole-strewn pathway, in convoy with another carload of goose-shooters, three generations of Taylors who’d be waiting in the same field. It was vital to be in position before the sun rose over Loch Leven, for at daybreak the 15,000 geese which slept on its waters would begin their forays into the neighbouring fields.
Thanks to the rich farmland surrounding the Loch the birds were spoilt for choice when it came to feeding, but Lee had the advantage of having access to shooting over large swathes of Scotland, and had recruited the help of fellow goose guide Des Cochrane, who between them have over three decades of experience and control most of the goose shooting in the area. And the guides’ earlier intelligence-gathering suggested that a particular wheat field was flavour of the month.
However, with wild birds, as Lee reminded us, nothing was guaranteed. So, to remind the geese that his restaurant was serving cereal for breakfast they positioned numerous decoys within range of our rapidly assembled hide. Any passing trade, it was hoped, would be tempted in by their moulded-rubber friends apparently feasting, and would look no further for a place to fill up.
Our guide was offering the finest of dining, and Fife’s larder was particularly tempting for those used to the sparse pickings offered by Iceland and Greenland, North Atlantic outposts where the hardy pink-feet tend to spend their summer months. And to make the ambience even more enticing, Lee also had a soundtrack – in the shape a goose call - prepared.
Once the hide had been camouflaged with dried grass it was time to wait. The stars of Orion, the hunter – which I hoped was a good omen - still sparkled to the south, so we knew we had time for a breather before the action began.
It wasn’t long, however, before dawn appeared and with it the fist specks took shape on the horizon, just north of the distinctive outline of the Lomond Hills. Thanks to the birds’ V-shaped formations it was easy to imagine I was manning an ack-ack gun rather than a 12-bore, and was waiting for an invasion of Heinkels rather than geese.
Thankfully, however, there were no bombs to contend with; the noise as it approached wasn’t the drone of steel-clad engines but was the cackle of feather-clad fliers instead. Trying to balance the urge to look up with the need to stay hidden proved quite a tough one, but it wasn’t long before the decoys had drawn their first birds. A brace of shots rang out from the right and down came a pink-foot – a first for the youngest Taylor, who was manning the hide next door.
If a nipper could do it with his first shot, I foolishly thought, then it would surely be merely a question of pulling the trigger and waiting for the goose to head ground-ward. But, as the sun finally rose over Loch Leven, I’d somehow contrived to make no such connection. Perhaps most embarrassingly, neither the geese nor my guide were to blame.
For, for about 90 minutes after daybreak the birds had intermittently streamed over our positions in huge numbers, arriving in gaggles and skeins containing anything from one to a thousand. Some jinked left, some swerved right; some saw our movements and ignored the decoys; but a decent number came in for a feed, or passed within range overhead. Yet through all the variables there remained one constant – I couldn’t hit a thing. By sunrise my hide was littered with empty 42-gram cartridges, but not even a feather had been ruffled by my barrage of lead.
Next door, Clan Taylor seemed to have fared considerably better; six pink feet were laid out in the stubble, despite the fact that they’d chosen to leave a number of the least testing birds. A half dozen was, they felt, plenty of geese for one morning. Lee fully agreed. For, although Britain’s goose population has been steadily rising, it was in his interest to leave most of them undisturbed, as a long season still stretched out ahead.
As we packed up the hides and gathered the decoys I stole a few rueful glances at the formations of geese that continued to fly overhead. But, while I might have missed one or two, things could definitely have been worse.
After all, had they been bombers not geese, and I been manning a flak battery not a shotgun, the villages of Fife and Kinross could have been reduced to miniature Dresdens. As things stood, it had been an enjoyable morning, the sun was shining and I was looking forward to a breakfast of bacon and eggs.
As we sat and ate overlooking the expanse of Loch Leven, we agreed that spending an autumn morning trying to outwit a sky filled with sight and the sound of so many thousands of wild geese definitely had an appeal quite distinct from the stuffy rituals of a day shooting reared game.
I was also thankful that the Taylors were so magnanimous about their comparative success. Not only did I depart with a plump young goose for the table, but they were also tactful enough not to chuckle until after I’d headed for home.
