...
"To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under heaven:
a time to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away .."
Copyright Old Testament
I had 2 outings in the eastern province of Austria, once a haven
for small game, as a guest, in both places just wild,non-reared
small game only. One of these 2 shoots a world-class pigeon
shoot in the 1990's and the early 200x's.
Today: It has been a walk with a gun in the hand, not worthwile
to be there.
...
At one of the 1990's pigeon outings then there has been a new
guest, who told us that he has taken lessons with the
Austrian parcours champion, thinking this would enable him
to "plough with the goat".
Within half an hour he became very humble and increasingly
nervous as he had bagged one bird to 15 shots.
...
About at the same time as my 2 outings an e-mail by the
deputy regional hunting kapo complaining about the catastrophic
low levels of small game.
I answered its you who is responsible for that mess, no answer.
What does not cease to amaze me is this obsessive, religious
indoctrination of the antis,
politicians who listen to them together with
defensive and teethless hunting reps to recreate
a pseudo-wilderness in an overpopulated,agro-industrialised
and predator-protected country.
..
After 56 years of continued Austrian hunting licenses I have
decided to discontinue and I told this so to the hunting rep.
I will just take the one from Czechia, in hunting terms a
very pragmatic country. They abandoned steel-shot for
water-fowl , as they found out it is "Aasjägerei", the
meat due to the rusting steel-pellets within short not edible
and finally they dont have white-headed eagles feeding
on lead-poisoned water-fowl.
....
And I have an invitation to a duck shoot in Pakistan for
october. The invitation is from a wealthy clan-chief to his private estate in the Indus-valley. I had the pleasure to
get to know him in Vienna. He even asked me if he should send
me the ticket. What a man.
....
With a drama in the family and me turning 80 within few days
I have come to realize there may be not only a last
hunting season but also that "every day is a precious one".
As the kids dont hunt it is time to return things to the
market.The things are called sidelock-ejector, the
embodiment of beauty, craftmanship and functional longevity,
which I had the pleasure to handle and forward as
custodian to someone for further pleasure and use.
My late friend Dr.HW in a similar depressive situation
told that he wants the barrels of his pair of Holland
selfopeners - at the moment once more on the market -
as kandlestick, the nr. 1 right to the coffin and the nr.2
left of it.
Its time to cease with the lamento, the complacent cynicism
and switch out with the rhyming sentence
"Eat and drink its later than you think" or more
appropriately
"Hunt and drink its later than you think".

Weidmannsheit
DI. Felix Neuberger

Last edited by felix; 02/03/18 05:08 AM.