Scout's honour in the battlefield

A new permission offers Simon Garnham the perfect chance to hone his keen young labrador’s skills while protecting a farmer’s livelihood

- Simon Garnham

I crouch in the cool shade of an ash tree. Cow parsley, alexanders, nettles and thistle and deep, deep shadows make the hide seem unnecessary, but I’ve draped a scrim net across four poles just to be sure. The slight depression of an ancient hedge line and its ditch make an ideal ambush point from where I can watch cloud shadows scud across a 30-acre field of rape stubble.

To my right, some 400 yards up the hill, is a quiet B-road. Down the hill to my left is a valley with grazing cattle, a wood line of more ash and oak trees and the estuary far off in the distance over another slope. My field lies convex like a sheet being stretched and dropped at both ends, or a full, billowing parachute. As I peer across the lip of the scrim netting, it seems to go on forever.

The truck is parked at the other end, below the horizon. I’ve tried to angle it so that the August sun reflects off the windscreen creating a dazzling warning to woodies: go to the other end; stay away from here, I want it to say — as though Ford Rangers could speak out of the heat and full sun of a sprawling Essex field.

Final recce

I’ve been watching this area for several days. It’s a new permission for me, two farms away from my own but in the same valley and on the same flight line. Last night, when I watched it for the final recce, there must have been one pigeon in every four square metres of it. I pondered where to set my ambush — there were 200 birds there at a conservative estimate, but where best to intercept them?