A £10 Gun And A Lifelong Love

Following in the footsteps of sportsman Colonel Peter Hawker brings an undimming appreciation of the beauty of the marsh

- John Bishop

Colonel Peter Hawker was born in 1786 and first visited Keyhaven in 1814. The following January, he first ventured eastwards from there with a gun, on to the mudflats that stretch for seven miles along the northwest Solent shore, past Lymington to Pylewell. The flights of wildfowl he saw were “prodigious” and, as a result, Keyhaven became his fowling base until his death in 1853.

My early life followed in Hawker’s footsteps, quite unknowingly. My primary school in Lymington was opposite the former premises of Alfred Clayton, Hawker’s favourite local gunsmith. Clayton built Hawker’s final punt-gun, which won the Prize Medal in the Great Exhibition of 1851. As a boy, I caught bass from the sluice only 100m from Hawker’s cottage. Later, in my teens, I moored a boat in the adjoining creek.

Growing up in Lymington, most country people tuned into Jack Hargreaves’ Out of Town programme at 6.40 pm on Fridays. In a 1969 episode, he showed a punt-gun and extolled the virtues of punt-gunning as a sport, something I fancied trying. My schoolboy Saturday job was in the fishing tackle shop where Jack bought his bait. He was an unassuming man and always quietly waited his turn to be served. He kindly divulged the location of the gun.

Cold as steel

Straight after work, three of us were fumbling in the dark in an old shed at the Keyhaven Boatyard. There was only one torch, with batteries past their best. We were each running our hands through separate racks of wooden masts and oars, feeling for something different. Something as cold as steel. “Over here!” I shouted. “I think I’ve found it!”