Would I call this proper wildfowling? Foreshore

On his pilgrimage beyond the sea wall on opening day, Gethin Jones reflects on whether wildfowling in September is worthy of the name

- Gethin Jones

Muscovites say if you ask one question of two Russians, you’ll get three answers. Wildfowlers are the same. Ask any group of fowlers, as I did at my club’s AGM, whether September wildfowling is the real deal and you’ll be greeted with moans and groans from the old hands at the mere suggestion, while others will excitedly regale you with tales of the duck and geese they’ve spotted during their August recces.

Proper wildfowling, so it’s claimed, demands the intrepid fowler sets forth into the teeth of a winter gale, with the barometer needle on ‘Stormy’, the temperature in single digits and the shipping forecast issuing gale warnings for Fastnet, Lundy and the Irish Sea.

The dawn must be fiery red with menacing clouds scuttling across the sky and white-topped waves crashing angrily against the sea wall. Multitudes of fowl — “enough to darken the very sky” according to the old salts — struggle to make headway against the tumult. Sharp-eyed, ruddy-faced fowlers crouch in muddy ditches with their faithful hounds, eyes fixed skyward, their half-frozen thumbs cranking back the elegantly curved hammers on their large-bore fowling-pieces, hewn from ancient walnut with barrels of the finest damascus steel, poised to salute those mysterious winged messengers from the distant Arctic.

First day