KOnor, OK there is public hunting in the zone between high and low tide.
What is this club scene you refer to? Something like the old WAAGBI? The acronym if I remember right stands for Wildfowlers Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
You are lucky to have met Geoffrey in person. Our contact was via letter and phone.
The club scene I referred to was the existence of wildfowling clubs on all the main wildfowling estuaries of Britain ,at one point represented by WAGBI ,and came about largely to safeguard wildfowling and represent its interests.WAGBI has now morphed into BASC the British Assosciation for Shooting and Conservation.
I think it would be fair to say that BASC’s popularity within the shooting community is mixed ,not helped by their recent stance to promote the move from lead to non lead shot for all game shooting. This was seen by some as a betrayal and pandering to commercial shooting who were relying on the continental market for disposal of their game birds and who were insisting on lead free meat. That ,it seems,no exemption will exist for those shooting game for their own table means that there will possibly be an array of shotguns deemed unsuitable for further use. Also the lead shot historic link with the past will be broken and we will no longer be able to enjoy the full flexibility of the 12 bore and its vast array of loads.
Unfortunately BASC has no one of the stature of the likes of John Anderton ,it’s first full time director,a great speaker and defender of shooters rights and wildfowling interests and the driving force behind the formation of the WAGBI affiliated wildfowling clubs.
When Geoffrey wrote an autobiographical article in the Shooting Times he illustrated it with a photograph I had taken of him at the CLA Floors Castle Game Fair holding an eight bore semi automatic wildfowling gun, he definitely had an eclectic taste in guns in the broadest sense of the word and he enjoyed immersing himself in their history as much as he enjoyed using them. As I wrote earlier he was a true gentleman.
