EP 556. A Fresh Approach to Duck Hunting?

“Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where I am wrapping up an amazing, I would almost say life-changing, visit to the United Kingdom, where I have toured 1,500–2,000 miles.”

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where I am wrapping up an amazing, I would almost say life-changing, visit to the United Kingdom, where I have toured 1,500–2,000 miles. Who thought you could cover so much in such a small country, in both England and Wales? And it was just mind-blowing.
Joining me today is my host and my friend, Mr. James Maunder Taylor. James, thank you for everything. I’ve had a great time.

James Maunder Taylor: Ramsey, you’re more than welcome.

Ramsey Russell: Somebody asked the other day and I could not remember. I just remember one day, I can remember where I was, I was at the post office sitting in the truck while my wife ran in, and I got a phone call from you. We started talking ducks and geese and hunting opportunities over here. Next thing I know, I’m buying a plane ticket, flying over. How did Ramsey Russell and this whole event fly up on your radar and come to be?

“Well, I think it started with what turned out to be a very lucky search on the Internet. And I think, as getducks.com quite rightly says, if you’re on the website, you’re not there by mistake. You’re there because you’re passionate about wildfowl.”

James Maunder Taylor: Well, I think it started with what turned out to be a very lucky search on the Internet. And I think, as getducks.com quite rightly says, if you’re on the website, you’re not there by mistake. You’re there because you’re passionate about wildfowl.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a fact.

“And so I found the website. I was very impressed with the global reach it has, and I think at the time I was buying a top or a cap, and I had the good fortune to speak to your wife, Anita, who suggested I give you a call.”

James Maunder Taylor: And so I found the website. I was very impressed with the global reach it has, and I think at the time I was buying a top or a cap, and I had the good fortune to speak to your wife, Anita, who suggested I give you a call. So we had that call, and I think there were several calls later, you realized that perhaps there’s a good chance you might be able to get that final goose you were after. And so we set that up along with one or two other interesting opportunities along the way.

Ramsey Russell: We talked about a lot of opportunity. When I’ve always thought of hunting in the United Kingdom, wing shooting in the United Kingdom, I’ve always thought about the estate shoots, where guys are wearing the plus-fours and ties and coats, and it’s like you’re sitting on the 18th fairway past shooting pheasants. Other than a little rough shooting, I had no idea, no idea whatsoever, what an amazing place this is for hunting. It’s mind-blowing. How did you even get into hunting? When did you get into hunting? Were you a child and your dad brought you into it?

James Maunder Taylor: I was born in North London into a family that didn’t shoot or hunt. My father was a fly fisherman, so occasionally I did accompany him to the riverbank. I think my interest in shooting, my love of shooting, came because I’d always been keen with birds, not just waterfowl, and as a young child I always collected feathers. But it was when I was staying with a great aunt down in Sussex who always used to keep an old .410 shotgun behind the door. Every year I got sent down to stay with her for a few weeks. I asked if I could go and have a go with it, and every time I was told no. Then I think one year, at the age of 12, she finally gave way. She gave me the gun, she gave me a box of cartridges, she told me not to shoot myself, and that was it. I was off, away in the fields and the woods, not hers, with a .410, seeing what I could shoot for the pot. Typically it was rabbits and pigeons. If I was lucky, there was an occasional pheasant. That all came back to her little cottage, a thatched cottage set in woodland, and it was all eaten.

Ramsey Russell: How hard was it for you as a young guy to find access in the UK? Did you just knock on doors to go hunting?

James Maunder Taylor: If you don’t have those friends or family links, it can be difficult. That said, there are a number of wildfowl clubs. There’s also the BASC, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, that do a lot to welcome young shots into the sport. What helped me, I actually joined BASC, and every year they have an auction. There are people that donate lots to raise money for conservation. I remember bidding on a number of the lots, thinking I might win one or two. And to my surprise, and to my father’s amusement, I got all of them. So I had to get a loan from my father. That enabled me to go duck shooting down on the Taw Estuary with a chap called Chris Green. It enabled me to go roe deer stalking in Sussex with a stalker called Keith Seymour. And it introduced me to a world that, at the time, I didn’t know existed. I was absolutely fascinated. Then, very kindly, those people let me stay in contact. There’s another wildfowler called Den Curl, who was down on the Somerset Levels. I went snipe shooting with him and kept in touch and used to perhaps pop down every other year.
They were all very welcoming, very keen to bring young shots, new shots, into the sport, because obviously, wherever we are, if we don’t do that, our sports will die.

Ramsey Russell: How is the future of the sport looking here? I mean, I met a lot of hunters, but I feel like as much as we traveled, as many people as we met, I sort of lived in an echo chamber. It was all around the hunters and stuff.

James Maunder Taylor: The majority of landowners in the UK, be they private estates or farmers are very much in tune with conservation and the landscape, and we have a very healthy field sports arena. I think the biggest threat to UK field sports is probably more political than anything, as whether, no matter which side of the Atlantic you’re on, there are people that, just because they don’t like it, don’t want it to happen. I’m afraid that’s the age we live in, and it’s upon us sportsmen and women to try and help them understand, perhaps take them out and show them that what we do is not what they had thought and actually conservation benefits that we, as hunters, shooters, wing shooters, bring to the areas in which we hunt are significant and far outweigh the conservation efforts and the pounds spent by those local and central governments.

Ramsey Russell: Would you say that most people start over here hunting like you did, or do their parents take them to an estate shoot? I’m just curious how, because there’s so much private land worldwide. In the United States, private land access is a big deal, but over here there’s a lot of private land. Like to your point, there are a lot of estates, there’s some area out in these marshes that’s owned by the Crown, the foreshore, you all call it, that affords public access, but it’s very limited.

James Maunder Taylor: I think certainly it is easier where you have young boys and girls that want to enter the sport, field sports. I think where they have that family linkage it’s much easier. That could be a father or an uncle who is a farmer and they’re invited to take part in a small farm shoot or a rough shoot or just knock hedgerows looking for a rabbit. If they’re very lucky, their family might have a large estate. More often than not, it will be people just drawn to it, perhaps through a clay pigeon shooting club, and there’ll be members there that have a young shots day on a small pheasant syndicate that they run. There will be people with fathers and mothers that enjoy wildfowling, be that on the foreshore or duck flighting inland, and they’ll get an opportunity to accompany, perhaps initially just to watch or to sit with the dogs and work the dogs on any birds that need to be picked up. Certainly with the shooting, my first start, once I found this was something for me, a local farmer, when I was home from school at the holidays, would ask me to go beating. I think in the US it’s called driving. I would join the line and with a small walking stick I would push through the undergrowth, go through the woods, gently tapping the trees to drive the pheasants and the partridges and the occasional woodcock towards the gun line. I remember the first time I did this for a local farmer. It was quite an incredible experience. There was a lot of competition amongst the young boys in the beating line to see who could grab a pheasant before it got to the guns. At the end of the day, the farmer came up and said, thank you very much and gave me ten pounds. I couldn’t believe that I was actually paid to do that. It had been such fun. One gradually moves on and eventually, if one’s old enough to hold a gun, you have some clay lessons or, if you’re fortunate, there’s a gamekeeper who introduces you and shows you the way, or a relative or father or grandfather that shoots and takes you under his wing and shows you what to do and what not to do.

Ramsey Russell: As we talked on the phone months ago, the clinch for me was I needed one, there was one remaining legal goose species on Earth that I had never hunted, and that was the pink-footed goose. You said, oh, no problem, we’ve got them, and we’ll talk about that in a little bit. That was the clinch. That was really what I thought I was coming over here to do, get a chance at shooting a pink-footed goose, which we did. I think you mentioned punt gunning was still legal. That turned into a whole conversation, and we decided we were going to do a little punt gunning. But how did you develop the whole itinerary? Because listen up, folks, I landed at London Heathrow Airport. James picked me up. Thirty minutes later we’re driving down a busy two-lane road, and I look off to the right in a pasture and there’s Stonehenge. It seemed like three months ago that we did this, James, because it’s been such an action-packed trip. That whole first day, we stopped at Stonehenge, which was very interesting. Then we drove and you introduced me to a biologist and we went up to Slimbridge Waterfowl Conservancy. Then we spent the night with an artist friend. How did you develop this itinerary? What were your thoughts when you crafted this seven or eight-day itinerary?

James Maunder Taylor: We knew what the key points were for you. It was more a case of building in around that other opportunities, such as the woodcock shooting, which we’ll get onto, which I think is very special. It wasn’t too difficult. Fortunately, three of the people I wanted you to meet, or two of the people, and obviously Slimbridge, are not a million miles away from Heathrow. So after we had a pickup, en route to see Mike Swan, the scientist and biologist at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, it wasn’t too much of a detour to see Stonehenge, which is an important part of UK history. But we went on to see Mike, spent some time with Mike, and then went to Slimbridge, the Waterfowl Wetlands Trust, and met with Paul Walkerden there. Then we arrived mid-evening where we stayed with Terence Lambert and his wife Glenys, Terence being one of the leading sporting artists in the UK.

Ramsey Russell: It couldn’t have been a better lead-in. That whole first day, maybe a little jet lag going on, we see Stonehenge. I just have to say one thing I’ll never forget. We drove up and the groundskeepers with yellow vests on said no, it’s closed, it doesn’t open for 30 minutes. We didn’t really have time. Cost 50 bucks to walk up into it. I said, no, I don’t want to do that. But I did walk down the trail to take a look, and there were already people in there. They weren’t officials, but there were three people in there looking around. Maybe they were archaeologists, maybe special members of the thing. But I’ll never forget my impression, there was a guy dressed in gray and black, wearing a hoodie, and he had all these crows around him. It was insane. I was sitting probably 100 meters from him, and there were all these crows landing on him and flying around him like he owned them. That’s what I’ll never forget about Stonehenge, seeing this guy with the crows who had a special pass to get in before it opened and all these crows chasing around. Then we met Mike Swan. We went and had a bacon sandwich with Mike Swan, and that really set the pace. Because Mike brought a biological perspective of what I could expect in terms of landscape and conservation. It was the perfect intro to what was to come later in the week. Then we went to Slimbridge. Explain real quickly what Slimbridge is and who Paul is. And who founded it. Let’s talk briefly about Slimbridge. I would describe it to anybody listening as the UK version of a Jack Miner banding and research facility.

James Maunder Taylor: Slimbridge is looked after by the Waterfowl and Wetlands Trust. They work very hard in promoting and looking after wetlands throughout the UK. It was established, I believe, by Sir Peter Scott, who was a keen wildfowler and also a punt gunner. At the same time, he was a passionate conservationist. He was very focused on the waterfowl.

Ramsey Russell: The sense I gained about Sir Peter Scott was that he was a punt gunner and an avid hunter of the gentleman level. But at some point in time, he shot so many geese that he began to have philosophical issues and decided to set that property, where he used a gun, aside as a sanctuary for these waterfowl.

James Maunder Taylor: I think with age, he possibly mellowed and decided that he wanted to do far more in the conservation world and less shooting. We met Paul Walkerden, who said that obviously he still shot a little bit. He was very passionate to reduce the greylag numbers, the greylag geese that took the food which was intended for the Bewick’s swans and many other wonderful species that visit the center there. And obviously, just coming on to Paul, Paul very kindly showed us around. Paul himself is keen wildfowler and, I think, at one stage was chairman of the local wildfowl club there too. But Sir Peter wrote a couple of books which were quite interesting. I think one’s called Morning Flight from Memory. The other one might be Dawn Chorus or Morning Chorus. And I think in there he describes one or two of the hunts he went on, both as a wildfowler and a punt gunner. And I’d have to ask Paul, who actually knew Sir Peter, but I suspect just with age, he mellowed.

Ramsey Russell: I can see where that happens to a lot of people.

James Maunder Taylor: I think so.

Ramsey Russell: To a lot of us.

James Maunder Taylor: Yeah

Ramsey Russell: Its kind of like the ultimate stage and phase of a hunter. You talk about going, there’s four or five or six or seven stages of hunters. We’re kids, we want to kill something. Then we want to shoot more. Then we want to perfect a sport. Then we get down to the art of it all. I guess evolve all the way to Sir Peter Scott.

James Maunder Taylor: Yes, I think so. I think both in the UK and the US, initially it’s all about getting the duck. And then in time, it’s probably about actually shooting something and eating it. And then it’s more about enjoying the conservation efforts to improve the habitat for those ducks and perhaps increase the number of ducks. If we’re talking about ducks. As one grows older, one realizes that there is a far bigger picture. And I think it’s that which we as sportsmen and women, have to try and convey. We have to get across to those people that aren’t engaged in our sport to help them understand.

Ramsey Russell: The following day, we drove back down to your home, near your home, and we finally cracked out the shotguns, loaded up, and went on our first duck hunt. Very, very different. That was eye-opening. That was my introduction to proper English duck hunting over here, totally different. We did not go out an hour before daylight. We went out an hour before sunset, which here in the UK this time of year is at 3:45 p.m., that’s legal sunset. But we’re just getting started. I mean, we’re not even set up good. We didn’t see a duck till 30 or 40 minutes later.

James Maunder Taylor: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: To a small little pond that you hunt sometimes. And we waited till well past dark for the ducks to come in.

James Maunder Taylor: That’s right. I think typically, hunting wildfowl, ducks and geese, on the foreshore would be what most duck shooters in the UK would say was the real wildfowling, the real duck shooting. But inland, it is just as good, if not better. Part of that reason being inland, we legally are allowed to feed. We’re allowed to put wheat or barley into the water to encourage ducks and geese in. And when you know you have a number of waterfowl coming in, then obviously it’s right to shoot. The duck flighting, is done at night. It’s done in the evening. Some may come in early, but typically it’s in that last half an hour, 45 minutes when there’s still enough light to shoot. One has to sort of make sure your background is okay because, obviously, as we found, the wind had changed and the ducks were dropping in over the trees, and it made it very difficult to see them.

Ramsey Russell: My background okay, you mean we’ve got to have some open sky where we can see those shadows coming.

James Maunder Taylor: Where you see the duck silhouetted. So it called for some sort of snap shooting. But no, it was great fun.

Ramsey Russell: It was great fun. That was a proper introduction. Do you ever go out, James? Would you ever get up at 4:30 in the morning and be there when the sun rises and have floating decoys out in the water and call them in and decoy them? Or is that strictly mostly an American thing? Is that at all a British thing?

James Maunder Taylor: I think it does happen in the UK, not to the extent it happens in the US. I’m told, rightly or wrongly, that there are bodies of water, ponds, lakes, that are seen as roosting spots where ducks come in to roost at night and to take the feed that you’re putting out. But also I am told that there are water bodies where one can actually flight the ducks during the day, perhaps in the morning. I don’t get up at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning to go and hunt wildfowl. I do to hunt deer, but not wildfowl. That’s only because I’m not aware of or do not have access to lakes or ponds or indeed rivers here where one has ducks that would respond to decoys. I have done it up in Scotland. I have gone out with decoys and sought to shoot ducks and geese quite successfully in some parts. But no, predominantly my duck shooting would be flighting them in the evening.

Ramsey Russell: Very good. I saw my first Mandarin duck that evening. I have never seen a Mandarin duck outside of a zoo or an aviary. They’re not indigenous to Britain. What is the background? Why are there so many Mandarin ducks feral here in the UK?

James Maunder Taylor: So it’s a feral species. It’s an invasive species, but it’s incredibly attractive. It’s a very, very pretty duck.

Ramsey Russell: Oh my gosh.

James Maunder Taylor: Like many things, initially they were in private collections. I guess at one point they would have been pinioned but obviously bred successfully and, in time, escaped. It would not surprise me if there were people that encouraged the Mandarins to escape and spread as well, being such a pretty duck. They’re a tree-nesting duck, rather like your wood duck.

Ramsey Russell: They’re the same genus. There are two Aix species on earth, and they’re just wood ducks and Mandarins.

James Maunder Taylor: Fortunately they are. So they are protected in the UK. We can’t shoot them, but they always tend to be the early arrivals to the flight ponds when we’re duck shooting. And they have a very unmistakable whistle, so you can hear them coming in. Their whistle is very different from a teal or a wigeon or a mallard. It’s not a quack, it’s very much a whistle. So fortunately, they are easy to distinguish as they come through the trees. In terms of their numbers, I don’t quite know what the population is in the UK. It’s always fascinated me. I always wonder what it might be. I would venture it’s certainly a few thousand. There are ponds and streams up here near where I am, near Rutland Water, and one can see up to 30, 40, 50 Mandarins on some of these ponds and lakes relatively easily. So I think we do have a healthy population in the UK. I believe in the wild, their home range, which I understand to be eastern Russia, parts of Japan and China, I think their population is declining quite badly, largely due to deforestation.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s exactly right. And I find it interesting. Mike Swan, the biologist, described the United Kingdom as a manscape of sorts. The entire landscape has been touched by the hands of man and altered and changed more to a park-like setting than to a wild setting. I’ll tell you what, you cross the levee over into the marsh, you’ll see wild. It’s just like it was, I’m sure, a thousand years ago. But the remainder, so I find it curious that a non-indigenous species like the Mandarin, that’s feral, is protected. Why do you think the powers that be protect that bird, even though it’s not indigenous here? Because I’ve got a lot of non-indigenous species that are hunted.

James Maunder Taylor: No, that’s right. Honest answer, I don’t know. I think it can only come down to the fact that it is so pretty. It is such a pretty bird that I can understand why people would want to protect it. Whereas the grey squirrel, which was an introduced invasive species, we are doing everything that we can to reduce their numbers and, in areas where they compete with our native red squirrel, to eradicate them. But it’s very, very difficult.

Ramsey Russell: Do you all do some squirrel hunting over here?
James Maunder Taylor: We don’t. We do, and that’s purely for conservation efforts because of the damage they do to young trees, also mature trees, but also their impact on songbird nests. They do take eggs, they will take nestlings, but also they carry, I believe, a virus called squirrel pox. The gray squirrel has a pox which it will survive, but sadly the red squirrel, if it catches it, dies.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
James Maunder Taylor: So, no, there’s a lot of people very keen to reduce or, in certain areas, remove the gray squirrel. I guess, the squirrel-eating culture that exists in the US. You do get it on the menu sometimes in pubs, and there are one or two people that have recipes for it. I actually have a bag of squirrel curry in the freezer, but I think that’s more of a fun thing than a regular thing.
Ramsey Russell: If you ever decide you want a squirrel recipe, call me. If you ever just get another freezer of squirrels, call me. I’ve got a great squirrel dumpling recipe I’ll share with you.
James Maunder Taylor: Well, that’s very kind. It might only be me eating it at the kitchen table. You’ve met my wife and daughters. I think if I told them it was squirrel for tea, I think they’d probably move more towards a pheasant or a duck than they would a squirrel.
Ramsey Russell: Well, we’ll talk about that, because my wife is the same way. And my recipe, she’ll eat my squirrel dumplings because it’s heavy to chicken too. But anyway, we can cover that. I want to talk about this punt gunning because that was when things got real. That was when my visit to the United Kingdom got truly real, was day three maybe, or four, that we ended up driving over and meeting Ginger and putting together a punt gun. That was one of the most memorable days of my year, getting to experience punt gunning. What was your first introduction to a punt gun?
James Maunder Taylor: So I was introduced to someone by one of my uncles, and we soon found out that we both enjoyed shooting. He started talking about punt gunning, which was obviously new to me. So I looked into it and read about it, and this was quite interesting. Eventually, I gave him a call and asked if there might be an opportunity to go out with him. And he said, yes, absolutely. So I went out with him in his two-man punt. This was up in Suffolk, and we went down the river. We did manage a shot at ducks, but we missed. It really was quite an experience. It was a very wild experience. Because one is on the foreshore, conditions have to be perfect because the punt is very low-lying in the water, very shallow. You can’t have any wind. There needs to be almost barely a ripple on the surface. The heavy waves will soon swamp and sink a punt.
Ramsey Russell: Because it’s a very shallow boat by necessity.
James Maunder Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Otherwise, you would not be able to sneak up on any unsuspecting ducks or geese. So that was my first introduction to punt gunning, and I think it always held a fascination. It wasn’t until we were chatting and you said you were keen to experience it, I thought, right, well, there’s a number of people I can contact who I know punt gun. It transpired that they had either given up or were in the process of giving up. With the exception of one or two, I think you could say it’s probably not an old man’s sport, given what’s involved. They’re very heavy, the punts. The guns are very heavy. Having said that, the average age of the punt gunners, as we’ve been discussing, is probably mid-60s to mid-70s. Sadly, it is a dying art. In terms of active punt gunners, I don’t know what the numbers are in the UK, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were no more than 50 or 60 left. In a generation’s time, I suspect there may only be a dozen or two dozen still practicing. But I went to the punt gunners’ annual meeting and had a chat with some of the members to see if they’d be willing to take you out. But then I also bumped into Ginger Blaney, who was a super chap, as you’ve met him. Sadly, a friend of his had recently died, and his widow was looking to sell his two-man punt and a single punt. Before I could say boo, I was the proud owner of a punt gun, a two-man punt, and a trailer. Fortunately, I have a very understanding wife. So there was a slight surprise when this turned up outside the house, but not too much was said.
Ramsey Russell: Do you think she’ll ever go out and punt gun with you?
James Maunder Taylor: It’d be great if she did. I think it’s probably more likely the girls will come first.
Ramsey Russell: I believe they will. I do believe they will. Those of you all listening, go back a couple of weeks and you can see the Last of a Dying Art, Last of a Dying Breed episode where we met with Ginger and talked for hours. We had a couple of great conversations with him about punt gunning. But you bring up a good point. It is a dying sport, a dying art. But one of the biggest revelations about the punt gunning day to me was, I had envisioned, and as recently as last night at dinner, somebody mentioned this misconception, that it was cheating, that it was, well, it’s no sport. It’s just about killing gross numbers of ducks. And I would have thought that because the market hunters did it, because they went out and they pulled the tether and the cannon went off and they killed hundreds or thousands or whatever of ducks, I just said, oh, that is not the case. What I realized in spending a couple of hours on my belly sculling around on a very poor wind day, a very poor weather day, a very poor tide day, trying to do this, this is like the ultimate handicap. I am in a shallow boat that is cumbersome to push around with a cannon-sized gun. It’s like, I’ve handicapped myself back to the Napoleon era, and I’m trying to position a cannon within a hundred yards of a flock of ducks. Hats off to the people that can pull that off consistently.

James Maunder Taylor: Yeah, I think the art is very much in the stalk. The art is very much the stalk in getting close to the wildfowl. My punt gun is a nine-foot smoothbore shotgun, effectively. It’s a one-and-a-half-inch diameter, and as the rule of the land currently is, anything with less than a two-inch diameter with a smooth barrel is classed as a shotgun. It is a long, smoothbore shotgun, effectively.

Ramsey Russell: How much would you say that weighs? 100 pounds? Your j ust the barrel weighs 100 pounds?

James Maunder Taylor: Well, I could just about lift it, so I reckon it’s at least 100 pounds, definitely. And of course, if you’re trying to lift it over heavy mud and into a boat, it’s really a two-man. It’s a two-man, absolutely. It’s in the two-man punt. But the art is very much in the stalking and actually the beauty. The why you do it, I think, is the thrill of the stalk, really a bit like the adrenaline rush when one is hunting a deer. Because one’s not always going after a large set of antlers. It’s getting close to nature, as we heard from Ginger Blaney and other people. Getting close to birds, very often when they’re unsuspecting, when you float past quietly and they’re still resting on the shoreline, you know, that’s quite an incredible thing. Many punt gunners will go out and not even fire a shot, but they don’t consider it a bad day. It all depends what you see. You can go out punt gunning, you can be sat in the gutter waiting for the tide to come back. You can watch a peregrine chasing ducks. There’s all sorts of things to see and hear. Typically, from what I’ve learned from other punt gunners, you might hope to fire a shot in every third or fourth outing. How successful that shot might be will depend on conditions at the time and obviously what you’re firing on. But I think, as you’ve probably learned, a lot of punt gunners, they don’t want to fire on large numbers of ducks or geese. It’s the thrill of the hunt, it’s the stalk, it’s the adventure of going out in the punt and bringing something home to eat and perhaps sharing with friends. As we heard from Ginger, they don’t want to shoot a large number, that’s too many ducks. But also, if there are birds that are injured and one has to dispatch them with what’s called a cripple stopper, effectively an old shotgun that’s in the boat, it creates too much disturbance. People don’t want to disturb the marsh. It’s about coming in quietly, hunting and enjoying it, and taking what you need. And that’s it.

Ramsey Russell: Why did you get a punt gun? Well, I mean, I can understand that you go to the meeting, you’re networking around, you’re interested in this, you’ve done it before, but now all of a sudden you’re the owner of a punt gun and it took some rehab. So I’m asking first, why do you want to punt gun?

James Maunder Taylor: I think it’s definitely something I want to keep going.

Ramsey Russell: The tradition.

James Maunder Taylor: Yes, tradition, but also it’s something really quite special, provided one can get access to the foreshore in the UK, which is very often through a wildfowling club. In Scotland, it’s open access provided you get to the foreshore. I can see that people need to do it, people need to keep it going or it will vanish. It will go.

Ramsey Russell: It’s almost gone. I mean, there’s nine billion people on Earth thereabouts and as few as four or five dozen on Earth own and practice punt gunning.

James Maunder Taylor: Yeah. So it brings you very close to nature. And to punt gun, it puts you in, I guess, those last few remaining wild places in the UK on the coast.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

James Maunder Taylor: And you have all that wildlife around you, not all of which you’re hunting, but all of which you can enjoy whilst you are out stalking.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. We saw some punt guns along the way. Several people had one. One of them gifted me a little punt gun paddle that I’ll treasure. But they’ve aged out with it, because it is very labor, it’s very arduous. No, I believe that right now, knowing exactly what you’re doing, you’ve done it a million times, you back your punt up to the boat ramp, it’s going to take you 30 minutes to set that thing up. It’s a cannon. It’s literally a miniature cannon that had to be tethered and roped and safe and blocked and all this different stuff. And then when you get to it, on the one hand, I’ve got this thing that’ll throw 20 ounces or more of shot on the water up to 100 yards effective range. But I’ve got a very archaic and primitive elevational system, just this little slide I’m sliding up and down the barrel, kind of eyeballing through experience. And then I’m having to rely on the guy in the back of the punt, who can’t see because he’s low in the boat, to very subtly, without being seen, go left or right. Wow.

James Maunder Taylor: That’s right. So the gunner, which, when we did it, was you, will lie obviously looking forwards next to the gun with his feet down one side. And with me paddling at the back, initially I’ll be exposed paddling, but when one sights ducks or geese, I will then sit down very low at the back of the boat. And the way the punt gunners typically do it, my feet will be next to your feet. And you effectively tap or push my left foot when you want the boat to go left, and you will tap or push my right foot with yours when you want the boat to go right. That is how you manage the left and right. But in terms of the elevation of the gun, that is very much down to the gunner. And it looks a bit like a broom handle with a broom, but we call it the gun crutch. And as you push that out, the gun goes down, and as you pull it towards you, the gun lifts. So it is quite rudimentary. It very much puts the odds, the advantage, in the favour of the waterfowl. But that’s part of the beauty of it. If you make a successful stalk and you take some ducks or geese, then it’s great. But I don’t think one has to have a successful shot every time to enjoy punt gunning.

Ramsey Russell: But even an avid punt gunner like Ginger and others, wow, for all that work and all that effort and all the skill set that it takes to develop it, which is substantial, they may only go out a half dozen times a year, because the weather and the tide and the wind and everything has to conspire perfectly for there even to be a decent chance at a trigger pull.

James Maunder Taylor: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a lot of cost, a lot of work and a lot of skill set to develop for just five or six times that I might be able to really get a trigger pull.

James Maunder Taylor: Very much so. And as a consequence, one can see, I think, that it’s not about the bag really. It’s about the art, it’s the sport, it’s the stalking, it’s everything. It’s about tying the gun in. Obviously, we took some videos, which no doubt you will share with your followers at some point, which I think hopefully they’ll be quite excited by. I think it’s all about the art of punt gunning. Who knows? But Sir Peter Scott was a great painter as well. He spent a lot of time observing his quarry and very probably, while he was punt gunning, he would have got very close, very close to that quarry.

Ramsey Russell: Right. I did the whole way I’ve been on this trip. I have been, I posted little clips and photos and reels to Instagram, and by the time we had finished on day three or so, the punt gunning day, my inbox was blowing up. Blowing up. I was learning and seeing so much. It was so edifying. And the way my inbox was blowing up, I knew that I was showing a lot of people back home, they were feeling the same thing. They were feeling and seeing and getting it the same way because, understand, coming from America, fresh from America, and I’ve been around the world where some of these things exist in part but not all of them, not in an English-speaking culture like myself did I see such a complete absence and stark relief to hunting, duck hunting back home. I mean, there’s no shooting hours, shoot over bait, punt guns. And not only are there punt guns, but we’re not limited at a 12 gauge. We can shoot 8 gauge, 4 gauge, 2 gauge. There’s no limits whatsoever. There’s no bag limits. We can shoot. That’s why you can go out punt gun, because there’s no bag limits on these ducks. There’s no stop point. So at this point my head is swimming. We drive to go meet a couple of friends of yours, the two brothers, Jimmy and David. We’re going to join them on a pink-footed goose hunt. And now I’m not only hearing from a lot of Americans, I’m beginning to hear from a lot of people from here in the United Kingdom. They’re following, they’re digging this story. And as we were going pink-footed goose hunting, I had several locals, I call them locals because they’re from the United Kingdom, reach out and say if you get the chance, try to do it the very traditional way. One of them even said, with this moon right here, you have the opportunity to do it traditionally. To which I responded, we are. I’m sitting in a blind right now, it’s dark, the moon is coming up, and we’re waiting on the geese to start flying. In fact, one of them said, and they weren’t criticizing this, but one of them even said, he said, there are places in the United Kingdom that persons catering to Americans do it the American way, which is the American way, putting out decoys, laying in layout blinds, getting them to present themselves. Done it, been there, done that. We do it in North America. I mean, we’ve perfected the art of it. But they all indicated you really need to go out to the foreshore or near the foreshore and moonlight these geese. I said, that’s what we’re doing. Let’s talk about the pink-footed goose hunt because that first night especially was mission accomplished. Epic. Boy, did we get her done in fine style.

James Maunder Taylor: We did. We had an amazing evening thanks to our guide and obviously David and Jimmy. Just very briefly touch on something you said earlier. You’re right, there are no statutory bird limits in the UK. There are individuals, guides, and wildfowl clubs that will introduce their own limits. We very much, as sportsmen and women, self-regulate in the UK. Self-regulate. But coming on to the pink-footed goose, having the opportunity to flight them under the moon as they come into flashes, we call it a flash, that is a water that remains on a field after perhaps heavy rain or where a river has flooded, and the geese are coming in to feed on crops that perhaps the farmer, as a consequence, hasn’t been able to lift, be it old potatoes or some wheat that’s been caught. Being able to flight the geese in is quite magical. Some of the guides use hand calls to bring them in, others call by mouth. But there’s something very special when you’re sort of hunkered down behind an improvised or a homemade blind, and you suddenly see these almost ghostly silhouettes just appear out of the dark. Sometimes they come in very quietly, other times you can hear them calling, and they respond to the call when they come in. And it’s not easy shooting, but I think Ramsay Russell did himself and his countrymen proud when on the first night, I think the goose guy was very surprised with the shooting from our blind. Probably you were helped with your Boss shot shells, which certainly worked admirably and very kindly. Ramsay’s left a few for me to practice with. But no, the first night, you and I shared 19 pink-footed geese. And that really was incredible. They’ve all been processed. The breasts are in my freezers and friends’ freezers and will be enjoyed over the Christmas period. But it really was a fantastic evening flight.

Ramsey Russell: And they’re delicious. So we go out. Oh, gosh. We had a great, great lunch with Jimmy and David. We go out to meet our host and lots of game farm mouths around, and he’s gonna let us shoot a few of those. And I just, we go set up, we get in this little simple blind with the very shallow field water out front, shoot our ducks. Should I talk about the white one? And then it gets quiet. I mean, real quiet. The wind is blowing. Jimmy and David just said, hey, it’s going to get cold out there. I’m thinking, I’ve been here a week. It’s not that terribly cold. They were right. It gets real, real damp, and the wind was blowing. And I didn’t get cold. But it was fresh out there, I’ll tell you. And we waited and waited and waited. And what I learned is, you’re waiting on the tide to move in because the birds are roosting off in the bay. The tide comes in, now they can’t sit on the sandbars, so they come over the marsh into the feeding areas. And we waited and waited. It was a full moon, but understand, it was clouds. Ninety percent of the time I’ve been here, it’s cloudy in the United Kingdom. And I was wondering. But I could see, but not broad daylight. And I was wondering how easy it was going to be to see these birds. But I could see remarkably well. I was impressed. And when they turned on, they turned on. They started flying. And here they are, here they come into the ground. And he had said, we need an open choke. And I believe him now because those birds were pitching right into the decoys, 15–20 meters away.

James Maunder Taylor: That’s right. And the clouds are important too, because if the night’s too clear, if we have a full moon, it’s very bright, and there’s no cloud cover, the geese can see you. It’s a very clever bird. They’re very susceptible to any movement. So no, you need the clouds. And if the clouds are perfect, and you’ve got the moon, and you’ve got that sort of sky where you’ve got gaps and cloud, gaps, cloud, it’s very often referred to as a mackerel sky, rather like the side of a mackerel. And no, we were. That first night we were very lucky, obviously. The second night, it was a very different night. We didn’t really see the numbers of geese that we’d seen on the first night. We were in a different location. But that’s goose shooting. And it didn’t take away from the day at all.

Ramsey Russell: But we shot enough.

James Maunder Taylor: We shot enough. I don’t think I shot one, not to my gun, but it didn’t matter. Over two nights, I had enough geese for my needs. And whether I shot one or not, it was still an amazing evening. It’s a fantastic bird to see, to hear them, to watch how they move on the wind. It’s just, it’s mesmerizing.

Ramsey Russell: We went out. We hunted the first night. Boy, with that gang, butchered. We went out the second night a little slower. In between, we did get up in the morning very, very early, and we went out and flighted them again. I would call that flighted because it was pass shooting. We just got off in the marsh and got hidden and intercepted them. It was tall shots. They were just trading. But we formed a shooting line, and very, very European to do it that way. We did kill a few geese. That’s when those tight chokes came in handy. But by the second evening, because you’ve got time when you get to the blind, you can see because it’s still daylight. The sun sets, then the wait begins. The geese just have to fly. And boy, when they start flying everywhere in the black dark, you can hear geese flying around. But I would just look downwind, and even though I felt like I could see pretty good, I would always flinch or jump when obviously those were geese coming in. And they would be within 200 meters before I could visibly see them coming in from downwind. And I would flinch. And boy, they were coming in quick. I mean, they were locked up, coming in at 40–50 miles an hour. So it was like an optical illusion. It became very exciting. But during the lulls, we had plenty of time to visit and talk. And this is when it really started to dawn on me that we observed, not a bag limit, but just observed an enough-is-enough limit. And I asked the question to our host, why do you have a stopping of a couple of braces of geese? Plus or minus a few is fine. But here we are sitting in a country hunting at night. There’s no bag limits at all. But we come to a stopping point. And I said, is it to manage hunting pressure? Is it to manage conservation? And he just shrugged and said, well, four geese is enough, or six geese, but it’s enough. And it is enough. It is more than enough. But I just find that at this point of the trip, I find I’m really starting to get my mind wrapped around this whole approach you all have to hunting where the sky’s the limit. And this is when I’m sitting in the dark, in the lulls between the valleys, thinking to myself, back home, where there is a six-duck limit, seven ducks if you’re in the Pacific flyway, the average American hunter feels compelled, feels that a moral obligation or a point of ego almost sometimes, and I have felt that way, that I’ve got to get my limit or I somehow fell short of what I’m out there for. Whereas    I’m over here with this great abundance of birds and all these relative opportunities, all these relative advantages of hunting at moonlight, hunting at night, hunting over bait, hunting without bag limits, and yet societally, the sportsmen over here, to a person, are content to shoot enough. Just to shoot enough.

James Maunder Taylor: Yeah, well, I think, as I said earlier, we are. There’s always one or two that won’t, but I think generally we are very good at self-regulation. The wildfowl clubs are all very strong on conservation, understanding what numbers of waterfowl are on their patch, so to speak, and managing that with their members. I think maybe the danger is once one starts imposing limits, they become targets, and wrongly so. Perhaps people then define a day’s success as to whether they’ve hit that target, that limit. I think success for me is time spent in the field with friends or family. Has everybody enjoyed it? Is everybody happy? Obviously, one wants to get something, but we don’t want to get, and we shouldn’t get, everything.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a great mindset, great approach. We got up in the morning and went to join your friends. Back to Wales. Totally different landscape than what I’d seen so far because we were right on the ocean. It looked like a painting, with those waves crashing on the rocks, this beautiful house, and we’re going woodcock hunting. I’m going to say right now, that was my most favorite day of the week. It was new, surprising. The whole pageantry, the ritual, the approach, the species, how we hunted, what an amazing day. I did not even know there was such a thing as driven woodcock.

James Maunder Taylor: Driven woodcock shooting is very special.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, is it.

James Maunder Taylor: One can only do it in certain places in the UK, in Scotland and Wales, Northern Ireland, and England. One can also shoot driven woodcock in Ireland too. But there are not a lot of places where you can do it, and it is something very special. One can walk them up with pointing dogs. That happens a lot in Europe. Personally, I think it’s a bird that’s best driven. The adrenaline rush when they come through the line, you don’t know where they’re going to come, when they’re going to come, at what height, they twist and turn. It is an incredible bird. The journeys they make to get to the UK are quite incredible. The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has done a lot of work on woodcock conservation. They have done a lot of work catching the birds at night and attaching satellite tags as well as geolocators to understand the bird more. There’s still much we don’t know. What we do know about the woodcock in the UK, our resident population is declining. That’s not linked to shooting, so far as we know. We don’t plant the woodlands that we used to plant. We don’t have the young trees that they like. There is increased disturbance in the UK woodlands through ever-increasing deer numbers that are causing problems. We have too many deer. But also there’s increased use of our woodlands, which is a good thing, recreational use. But if you have mountain bikes going through woodland at night with LED lights, the woodcock, which is a very shy bird, will move. Where you have dogs being exercised off the lead and running through cover, again, ground birds, they don’t like that. What we shoot in the UK, though, predominantly, are the migratory woodcock. There is a stable European population of woodcock, estimated at some 16 million, half of which are Russian birds. Typically, from the last moon in November, but sometimes before, weather dependent, they will migrate to Europe and the UK, especially if the ground they’re on freezes such that they can’t feed, they will move. Over the course of the winter, the GWCT has estimated that we probably get anywhere from a million to a million and a half woodcock that come and overwinter in the UK. It is those birds we focus on hunting. It is such a fantastic bird. A lot of sportsmen and women don’t shoot it anymore, which is a pity. But those that do focus their efforts in December and January, such that the chances of shooting a resident bird are significantly reduced. It’s more often than not, ten to one, that you’re targeting a migratory bird. The GWCT has run isotope analysis on wing samples that have been sent in. That’s how we have these numbers and information. These birds come in. There are large parts of the UK where there are no resident woodcock. Where we were shooting in Wales, in Anglesey, there aren’t any resident woodcock. So we were absolutely focused on migratory birds that would have come from perhaps Scandinavia, the Baltic states, Russia. As you found out later that evening, they’re not just fantastic sporting birds to hunt, especially when driven, but they are great on the table as well.

Ramsey Russell: We’re going to talk about that. First, let’s talk about the hunt, the drive itself, the whole day. We show up, hot coffee in this incredibly historic and beautiful hall. We draw cards. I was explaining to you last night at dinner, I was a little nervous because we cut cards at home for a draw on duck blinds or stands at my personal camp. You want the high card. You want the ace of spades or the kings, you can go with the first blind. I drew a three and I’m like, oh my gosh. But it had nothing to do with that. There were eight of us, so there were eight cards, one through eight. All we’re doing is getting an assignment, so we know when we get there what peg in the line we’re going to go to. And we rotate. We start at three, then we go to five, then to seven, then we start again at one. It really didn’t matter. It was just random luck where on that line those birds were going to fly out.

James Maunder Taylor: Very much so.

Ramsey Russell: And we walked. It was exactly like I would have envisioned my entire life, a driven hunt. We walked down the little road and across this beautiful pasture, like across my front lawn. I get into position, very easy, non-labor intensive. They start the drive. The first woodcock comes by to my right along the edge of the trees. Bam, bam, I miss. Here comes another. Now I’m looking up kind of high because it’s going to come high. Nope, here comes one low. He was passing before I saw him. Boom, boom, I miss. Pin shot one next to me over there on his post. Here comes another, kabang, I miss. I’m feeling about an inch tall right now. I’m getting kicked in the cajones. Finally, here comes one, maybe he was slower, I don’t know. I killed him. I’m proud as I can be. Now there’s payback to be reckoned with. The terrain, climbing over those rock walls. We walked through some marsh area one time. I literally took a knee or fell in three times. I haven’t fallen in a duck hole in ten years. Had to get wet walking in on these pushes. We walked about three miles that day through anything but a front lawn. It was an amazing experience to be standing there in the rain or not. At any given time, the boys and their dogs, there must have been seven or eight beaters. They’ve all got springers, field cockers, and labs. They start on one end and begin to scrabble the bushes. They’re tapping the bushes and the vines with their sticks. The dogs, those little cockers are so popular here because they’re tiny, like your little cocker cupboard. They’re favored because they get up under those briars and can really root those birds out. After every push, I am just walking on cloud nine. Then I get lucky, I caught up with those birds. I was in the right place at the right time and came back with a bunch of them just on that one push.

James Maunder Taylor: I think you were probably wearing the right aftershave on that drive.

Ramsey Russell: I was wearing the right aftershave.

James Maunder Taylor: They all came your way. But you mentioned the dogs. Yes, when everyone’s hunting, a dog’s important, especially where you need to retrieve shot game or wounded game from thick cover or from water. But certainly for driven woodcock shooting, you need a lot of dogs in the line with the beaters because the woodcock can and will sit tight very often. Of course, the cocker spaniel was a breed developed for woodcock shooting, hence, cocker, is a cocker spaniel. In old English, if you were going woodcock shooting, it was called cocking. It’s referred to as cock of the woods. So yes, the cocker spaniel is invaluable for those of us that enjoy hunting woodcock. Where we were in Anglesey, it’s a lovely place. The terrain, it’s unspoiled, kept very quiet. The secret to good woodcock shooting is finding areas that are quiet, not encroached with lots of deer or people walking through them, bare footpaths, mountain bikers. They just like peace and quiet. Where you can find those areas with thick cover but also access to pasture, where they will fly out at night to probe for earthworms and invertebrates, that’s where you will find a quarry you can drive and shoot.

Ramsey Russell: Toe dog, especially while we were hunting those birds, because the European woodcock, he’s bigger. Oh, he’s so beautiful. But when they hit the ground, especially in cover, they just disappear. They blend in with that habitat. After the hunt, after the push, you’d wave over to the beaters and they would come over with their dogs. It took about seven or eight dogs to scrounge around and find some of these birds that get off into thick cover. It was great. Then we take a, what do you, you all don’t call it tailgate, you all call it the elevenses.
James Maunder Taylor: Elevenses.
Ramsey Russell: The elevenses. We took an elevenses and we had sandwiches and hot soup. By now it’s been raining and it’s cold and chilly, and what a great lunch. Tell me about the sloe gin. I’m looking at a bottle on your mantle right there. That’s a big thing over, what is sloe gin and what is its importance to events like this?
James Maunder Taylor: Sloe gin is a home brew which lots of people in the countryside enjoy making, regardless of whether they’re shooters, walkers, or fishermen. Typically, after a hard frost, you pick the sloe berries from the blackthorn. You’ll be picking in, depending on the weather, because these days it’s all changed a bit, but typically, you’re picking them in October. You put the sloe berries into a demijohn. The rule I use is a third of sloe berries, a third of neat gin, just a cheap gin bought from the supermarket, and then the final third is sugar. As the sloes go into the jar, you have to prick them with a cocktail stick. That takes quite a bit of effort. But where you have sons and daughters, it makes it a lot easier, so they are put to work. All the sloes are pricked and go into the demijohns with the gin and the sugar. It’s shaken up and then I leave mine for anywhere from six to twelve months. You have to put the demijohns in the dark or inside a black bin bag. That way you keep the deep red color. If you put the demijohn into the light, the sloe gin still tastes nice, but you lose that fantastic bright pink, bright light, ready color. That gives you your sloe gin. On a cold winter’s day, it’s a great sort of tot. One might have one or two, depending how much aiming fluid one needs. One will have a couple of drinks, or indeed, as you found out after the goose shooting, if one mixes the sloe gin with some champagne, it’s commonly referred to over here as a slowgasm. People enjoy that at elevenses as well.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it was excellent. It was a great tradition to revive our spirits and continue on during the day because that was a full day. We actually made, I don’t know, half dozen, maybe seven, drives. It’s so easy to go from hero wearing the right aftershave to zero when you’re wearing woodcock, because depending on the peg, depending on how the birds are flying, it may be in the wheelhouse, it may be in your weak blind spot. But you gotta just roll with the flow. I’m convinced, James, you know you’re gonna miss 100% of the birds you don’t shoot at, so shoot at them. Somebody that would go out and do these driven shoots a lot, with the different pegs, the different angles, the different presentations, man, you have no choice but to become a better shot. Because it may be all on your weak side, it may be on your strong side, it may be coming, it may be going. It’s like real, live, endless amounts of kind of like the five-stand sporting clays. We’ve got these target presentations, oh, this is real birds. I just, I so enjoyed that day.
James Maunder Taylor: You definitely have to be on form to shoot the driven woodcock. They are very challenging. One of the best birds, funnily enough, which you haven’t had a chance this time to hunt, but we will do it next time, is the wood pigeon shooting.
Ramsey Russell: Oh boy.
James Maunder Taylor: Typically, you’re protecting crops. You’re in a hide, stopping the wood pigeons coming in to eat the young rape that’s been planted, or salads, veg, or kale. If the field’s just been drilled with peas or beans, they’ll come in for those too, to fill their crops. To the sportsman, they present one hell of a quarry as they come in. They can twist and turn. In a day, you might shoot 40, 50, 60. What you need to keep the birds off the crop. But they’re great eating. They’re a hard bird to hit, but they really do improve your shooting. A lot of game shots, a lot of people that shoot game in the UK, before the season starts, will try and find some wood pigeon shooting with a guide, just to get themselves ready, as much as they might go to clay pigeon school as well.

Ramsey Russell: Sure. There’s so much shooting opportunity over here in the United Kingdom. Even after all these days and all these experiences, we only scratched the surface. I do want to go shoot driven pheasants one day. Somebody was telling me yesterday, somebody invited me to come shoot driven ducks. That’d be great. But I just cannot imagine. I can’t even conceive that I’m going to enjoy either one of those as much as I enjoyed that driven woodcock. I so enjoyed that. I can’t even describe how much fun I had. We got back to the camphouse, and we got a good bag of woodcock, big ginormous, beautiful woodcock, European woodcock. You plucked some of them. I was chicken frying some of the duck and pheasant. I wanted to share a little bit of chicken fried with you all for appetizers. You plucked those ducks. Tell me. It was very controversial. It was a topic of discussion when I posted some of these things up in the Instagram stories about how you prepared a woodcock. How did you prepare it? Let’s describe how we ate those woodcocks and enjoyed them.

James Maunder Taylor: So we plucked the woodcock. I could have kept the wings, I didn’t. There’s nothing to eat on the wings, so the wings were removed. Obviously, the legs were removed. The bird was then plucked. The innards, the offal, the intestines were kept inside the bird.

Ramsey Russell: Did not eviscerate them. Everything was kept inside.

James Maunder Taylor: Correct. Everything was kept inside. Then the head is gently bent round to one side. Using the bill of the bird, we pinned the legs, pushed the bill through the bird’s thighs. We pushed the bird to just have it right so it could then go on a tray into the oven. What we did then separately was we fried up some bacon lardons and some shallots. The birds went into the oven, probably a high heat at about 220 centigrade. After I think it was about 12–15 minutes, we had the woodcock in the oven. You want them sort of medium rare, really, when they come out.

Ramsey Russell: They were cooked perfect.

James Maunder Taylor: If you overcook them, they taste a bit like liver. We took the birds out. We then opened the birds, and at that point eviscerated them. Having obviously let them rest breast down, we then eviscerated them, and the contents were chopped and mixed with the bacon and the shallots in the pan. That was then put on fried bread and the woodcock served on top of that.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a very traditional dish, I learned. I’ve heard it referred to as a pâté of sorts. It was everything. It was like a British woodcock chitlins, is how I describe it. Because you had the heart, the gizzard, the liver, the intestines all chopped up, minced, put back in there with the shallots and the bacon, and then kind of deglazed with, was that brandy?

James Maunder Taylor: That’s correct. We had some brandy.

Ramsey Russell: And it burns off a little bit. You top the toast, you put the woodcock on top. I really, I cannot believe how much I enjoyed that. I think I enjoyed it as much for the authenticity of the dish as much as I did the flavor.

James Maunder Taylor: It was very good. I think one has to be careful one doesn’t eat with one’s eyes. Obviously, looking at it, one can think, oof. But no, certainly, and it was new. One or two of the other guests around the table hadn’t had it cooked that way before, but they all enjoyed it. I think quite rightly said, it was rather like having a pâté, a woodcock pâté on toast. I think it complements the dish quite well. It was nice.

Ramsey Russell: I did a little research on the drive back to your house yesterday, just Googling the internet. That recipe, that form of cooking, originates back to the aristocrats of several hundred years ago that wanted to utilize all of the animal. I mean, it was a way of, they liked the wild flavor, and they accentuated that, and they felt like it was the full utilization of that game bird. With regards to woodcock, I don’t know if I’d try it with a duck or a goose, for example, but something about the woodcock, I’ve learned is, I asked,         why it was clean to do it that way. It’s because when they take flight, they void themselves. Then they’re sitting in the roost, where they haven’t been eating and filling back up their intestines, so it’s clean. I mean, when we actually went through and looked at some of the intestines, they were void of anything.

James Maunder Taylor: They’re sheet white. You look at them. If you open up a bird, they’re sheet white. The woodcock is crepuscular, so it goes out at dusk to feed in the pastures. It comes back just before dawn or at dawn. So when you disturb it during the day, it ate and digested a long time ago. If there’s anything to void, it does void itself on flight, on being startled and driven forward. So yes, it’s not at all unpleasant.

Ramsey Russell: No, it was absolutely delicious. One topic I want to ask you about, James, is, I think it’s worth mentioning because I got asked a lot by friends back home and by people that kept up with us in social media and whatnot, about the dress code. I felt on the woodcock trip, several of the guys were dressed to the hilt in plus-fours. Boy, did they look good. Here I was just out here, Mo Filson pants and Tom Beckby jacket, and you all let me in your ranks. I felt like you all let somebody in a special form of ranks. But what is the dress code etiquette here? I mean, I was dressed perfectly for the hunts we did. But when and why do people necessarily wear the way they dress? The tie and whatnot.

James Maunder Taylor: I think it’s very varied. If one’s wildfowling on the foreshore, for example, then I think we’ll be wearing the same sort of kit that you guys wear in the US and Canada. When you go out wildfowling, shooting ducks and geese, you have more kit and better kit than we do. But I think a lot of your clothing has made its way here. We’ll be in camouflage and really whatever we can get that’s waterproof, camouflaged, and keeps us warm. If you’re flighting ducks inland in the evening, again, people just wear something which is comfortable. It’s not formal. I think where you have the driven days, be it driven pheasants, driven partridges, or certainly driven grouse, the days are more formal. On some of those days, they might be quite prestigious in terms of the estate that you might be shooting on and who you’re shooting with. So typically, yes, people will be wearing tweed. They will be in a shirt, a formal shirt with a stiff collar and with a tie. They might have a shooting coat as well, partly just, I think, out of respect to their host, but perhaps also to the quarry as well. In terms of the woodcock shooting, it tends to go both ways. There are those that will wear tweed plus-fours or plus-twos even, and they’ll have a shirt and a tie and a shooting coat. I have worn that when I’ve been driven woodcock shooting. But also, just because the shooting is, you don’t have the volume, you don’t see the numbers that you would on a driven pheasant or partridge day. And rather like grouse, the woodcock is a wild bird. It is a wild bird, so you don’t know what it’s going to do. You don’t know what you’re going to see. Personally, I like to dress comfortably. I like to have fairly loose clothing, given one has to move around quite quickly sometimes to make a shot. Very often, one’s in thick cover, even though the birds are being driven to you. Very often, you have to move or go through that cover, and if you’re wearing tweed, it can snag if you’re going through thorns and bracken. So the waxed clothing, like your Tom Beckby clothing, is very good. I think we’re going to have to have a chat with them about producing some waxed trousers. The demand for those would be great in the UK.

Ramsey Russell: Everybody on the woodcock trip asked me about my attire, about the jackets and stuff I was wearing. Do you think Tom Beckby would have a successful go at selling over here in the UK?

James Maunder Taylor: Well, I think you need to check your bag because you might find your Beckby jacket’s not in there. That’s probably gone. I think, yes, there is a place. I think we discussed it briefly on the day. The go-to many years ago was Barbour in the UK with their wax jackets. They used to make a wax trouser. They don’t anymore, sadly. The wax trousers and the jackets, rightly or wrongly, I feel it’s gone more down the fashion route, the city route. It’s moved away a bit from field sports, which I think is a pity. Yes, the wax jackets have a big following, so people hang on to their father’s or grandfather’s or mother’s or grandmothers. Those 14-ounce heavy wax trousers are invaluable when you’re going through thick cover, more so than chaps. So yes, there would definitely be demand over here. It’s something you keep, look after, and hand down, which I think is a nice thing in this day and age. We live in a throwaway society, which I think is very bad. I think putting money into clothes that one can then rewax, look after, and hand down, and a lot of tweeds, funnily enough, are handed down: tweed coats, tweed breeks, are passed from mother to daughter or grandfather to father. I think that’s a good thing.

Ramsey Russell: One thing I did notice and talked to several of our team about as we were walking out on a shoot was, there’s a lot of mud here. We’re walking through mud, sometimes mid-shin, and some of the environment stepping through creeks. The plus four attire, the tweed, it’s not just form, it’s function. The way those plus-fours come down to about two or three inches below your knee. Then you pull up those big heavy socks. Then you pull on your tall rubber boots, provided you’re not beating through the briars. It’s very functional and comfortable and windproof and warm. But those guys that were dressed like that, they were clean. Their clothes were clean. With me wearing my ankle, my full-length wax cotton, my pants, I was having to step in that and get muddy. That was great for going through briars, but I could see not only that it looked great, it was very functional. It was very well suited to driven hunting. I could see that perfectly well. It makes perfect sense to me. Not beyond just the fact that you’re wearing a tie hunting. I’m not above wearing a tie hunting. I think I’d look good wearing that.

James Maunder Taylor: I think you look very smart.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve got my new lucky hat.

James Maunder Taylor: Exactly. Ramsay Russell now has a tweed hat, which I think hopefully some of his US followers and listeners will see in his next magazine’s next edition. But no, I think tweed’s great. It was an early form of camouflage. Estates would develop a tweed in line with the habitat that was around their estate. That’s how it first came into being. It does retain its heat even when it’s wet, as I think you found with your wax cotton hat and then wearing a tweed cap. So no, it absolutely has a use and it’s smart. It’s hard-wearing.

Ramsey Russell: I do love this tweed hat, this flat hat. It’s very warm. Very first night I loved it.

James Maunder Taylor: I have a lot of friends in the US who have a lot of tweed. I think having come over to the UK, they’ve taken to it, understandably so. Actually, I have a lot of friends in Alabama who have developed their own tweed. They have spoken to a tailor that I’ve introduced to them in the UK, and they have developed their own tweed for their preserve where they hunt quail and chukar and pheasants. I think that’s a great thing. They’ve got their own tweed now, which is pretty smart. I think it’s a nice touch. A very nice touch.

Ramsey Russell: So we finally make it back. I’m going home in just a few minutes, time to ready to get home for the holidays. But as if all we did was not enough, we get back yesterday afternoon at noon, we get picked up by a friend of yours, we go ten minutes from here and close the deal on a Chinese water deer and muntjac deer. Very great way, different way to end this trip. That was a fun hunt. It was a unique hunt. To me, it speaks a lot, kind of wraps up a lot of what we’re talking about the United Kingdom, both of those species. T  he Chinese water deer has tusks, not antlers, is about the size of a short dog, has longer back legs than front legs, and runs like a rabbit. I mean, just looks like a rabbit when he’s running. That was a very interesting hunt. The way they would lay down and poke up and look at us, and you had to judge by their tusk lengths. A rifle hunt. There’s a lot of them, and I’m surprised to learn when I did a little research on them, they are nearly extinct in their home range of China due to habitat loss, and yet they are flourishing.

James Maunder Taylor: Here they are. We have huge numbers in this part of the country. You’re talking to your listeners from Northamptonshire, but around here, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, there are big numbers of Chinese water deer. The muntjac obviously is abundant throughout England.

Ramsey Russell: Well, the muntjac breeds like rabbits, literally breeds like rabbits. They have litters of animals, not just one or two litters, and they breed.

James Maunder Taylor: Yeah. The Chinese water deer, I understand, could have a litter of up to as many as six. The muntjac, I think it’s one, maybe two, but they’re prolific.

Ramsey Russell: He was telling me last night that he needs to shoot a lot. He’s a game manager and they are shooting a lot of these animals just to manage them.

James Maunder Taylor: We definitely have an issue in the UK at the moment with deer numbers. Following two years of COVID and a foot and mouth outbreak, people were not able to manage the wild deer population. As a consequence, it has mushroomed. That’s not just fallow deer and red deer, but also the Chinese water and the muntjac. There are six deer species we’re lucky enough to be able to hunt in the UK. The Chinese water deer and the muntjac were, again, foreign introductions. I believe they were brought in by the Duke of Bedford many years ago onto his Woburn estate, and some escaped, I think when trees fell down onto walls. Both species absolutely thrive in the UK, and both species eat very well on the table as well.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, it was amazing. What a great ending. I think wraps this up, talking about those two species, it goes to the heart of a lot of what we’ve talked about. Here we are in the United Kingdom. You all have no hunting license requirements.

James Maunder Taylor: Correct.

Ramsey Russell: There’s no tagging, there’s no permits, there’s no bag limits, there’s no shooting hours except for deer, you can go an hour past sunset. I really got to thinking last night on the walk out, bringing my muntjac does, I really got to thinking last night that probably a lot of the game laws, for what they are or not, probably revolve around the fact it goes back to the estate. So much that a lot of these pheasants were put on the landscape. The muntjac, the Chinese water deer, the mallards, now, a lot of these animals were brought into these big estates and put. Maybe at some point in time or to the present time, they are a form of private property. So is that kind of the origins of the game? I must say, the lack of game laws, in quotation marks, relative to the United States, is that where this is all coming from?

James Maunder Taylor: The laws in the UK are such that when you release birds onto your land, they are your birds. But similarly, when wild birds come onto your land, they’re yours as well. But where they move off your land onto somebody else’s land, they’re then owned by that person. Similarly with the deer, if deer are on your property or on property that you own, then you have the right to hunt them. But if that deer moves from your property, let’s say it’s a big buck with lovely antlers, and it goes onto somebody else’s property, then they have as much right to hunt that on their property. As we touched on at the start, there is a lot of conservation done through shooting in the UK, and far more so than is done at a local or central government level. It’s the farmers and shooters in this country that are conserving what everybody enjoys. Lots of people drive the roads in the UK. They take the woods and the copses and the spinneys for granted. I would venture that over 80% of those would have been planted by shooters. The conservation story, similar to the US, it’s a big success. Yes, deer were in private collections and they’ve escaped and they have since multiplied and multiplied, particularly the muntjac. In terms of birds that are released, there are birds that are released for shooting. Invariably, one gets a certain return. But some birds will be predated, and some will just move elsewhere, into someone else’s field or wood.

Ramsey Russell: Right. The thing that just blows my mind about the Chinese water deer, this little animal was brought over here into a manscape and put onto a private estate for recreational hunting. It provides great recreational hunting opportunities, but at the same time, the UK is now the harbinger. I mean, this is where they exist. They’re extinct practically in their native range.

James Maunder Taylor: See, it’s, they’re now wild.

Ramsey Russell: I think if that’s not conservation, I don’t know what is.

James Maunder Taylor: Well, they occur in, I think, six or seven counties in the UK now, the Chinese water deer. So no, they have very successfully adapted to the UK and, in the areas in which they are found, are thriving I believe.

“And I just can’t believe, as much as we’ve seen, as much as we’ve done, and it was no rest for the wicked, you said. We slept briefly, we skipped eating some days. We had to get down the road and get some stuff done. And yet I feel like we just scratched the surface here in the United Kingdom. There’s still pigeon hunts and pheasant hunts and trying to close the deal on punt guns. There’s so much more to do over here.”

Ramsey Russell: You told me, and we’re going to wrap this up now, but you told me on the phone the first time we talked, you had said something to come over for 15 or 20 days, and I’m like, oh, it’s impossible. I don’t have that kind of time in January. So we abbreviated it to about seven or eight days here in December. And I just can’t believe, as much as we’ve seen, as much as we’ve done, and it was no rest for the wicked, you said. We slept briefly, we skipped eating some days. We had to get down the road and get some stuff done. And yet I feel like we just scratched the surface here in the United Kingdom. There’s still pigeon hunts and pheasant hunts and trying to close the deal on punt guns. There’s so much more to do over here.

James Maunder Taylor: And we need to get you a muntjac buck as well.

“My wife said, are you coming home? She literally asked me, are you coming home? I’m like, yeah, I guess so. He’s not going to let me stay over the holidays, but I really enjoy this. Thank you.”

Ramsey Russell: Got to get a muntjac buck. That’s going to happen. I’m all in on that. James, I’d like to thank you very, very much for hosting me this week and introducing me to so many of your contacts and introducing me to proper English shooting here in the United Kingdom. It has been so amazing. My wife said, are you coming home? She literally asked me, are you coming home? I’m like, yeah, I guess so. He’s not going to let me stay over the holidays, but I really enjoy this. Thank you.

James Maunder Taylor: Ramsey. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Ramsey Russell: I appreciate it. Folks, I appreciate you all listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast from the United Kingdom. Stay tuned. We’re going to be coming back over here next year and redoing it again. See you next time.