Building bridges

Charlie Portlock offers his thoughts on getting the permission of your dreams.

Permission; the perennial problem. Many readers will be familiar with the challenge of finding ground to shoot on. For some, there’s always the option of joining a syndicate, but for others it will be long hours of driving around the countryside, cold calling on farmers and landowners who will more than likely be annoyed to have their day interrupted by a couple of strangers telling him that they can ‘do him a favour’ and take care of his rabbit problem. Let’s be frank. Firstly, nobody wants to share their shooting permission with other people and there’s no need to. Secondly, knocking on doors is a waste of time; it’s antiquated, inconvenient for all involved and largely ineffective. For some reason, in airgunning there’s an enduring idea that permission is hard to find. It’s not, if you go about it in the right way.

Crime

Many people don’t realise that countryside communities are small, very well networked and generally suspicious of outsiders. Many rural communities feel that their way of life is under threat in a general sense and they often feel misunderstood by city folk. Add to this the increasing rates of rural crime, and you can begin to understand why farmers and landowners are suspicious of anybody poking around. Who are these people? Are they scoping my farm out for a robbery? This may sound a little paranoid, but the threat of theft is very real. In the past year, I’ve had boots and shooting trousers stolen from my porch, the house down the road has had its tack room ransacked, a local farm mechanic had over £10,000 worth of tools stolen, a sheep farmer had a two tonne generator lifted from a remote barn – it was bolted into concrete – and poaching is on the increase.