Lydia wildfowling
Lydia wildfowling
  • - Features
  • - Features

Finding my feet on the foreshore

For BASC Council member Lydia Castellano, wildfowling was a shooting sport that she had yet to experience for herself, until recently. 

When I told my shooting friends that I was off to try wildfowling for the first time, many told me, “You’re going to hate it!”, so it’s no surprise I went into the experience with no small amount of trepidation.

Wildfowling was a discipline of shooting I had yet to try, and given BASC’s origins as WAGBI and my mission to encourage women into every discipline, I felt it was important to give it a go despite how far out of my comfort zone it was.

I was elected to BASC’s Council in May of this year. As part of my role, I’m lucky enough to see first-hand how much hard work goes on behind the scenes and how broad BASC’s remit is. 

This equips me to attend events like The Game Fair and encourage everyone – particularly women – to get involved with shooting and conservation. It felt almost fraudulent to wax lyrical about all our good work in wildfowling without having experienced it myself.

Unmissable opportunity

The opportunity arose to take part in a BASC Women in Shooting event with Fenland Wildfowlers Association, so I bought all the gear from the list that the BASC team diligently put together for us and headed to Cambridgeshire, where I met our hosts and the lovely women taking part. 

As is always the case with BASC events, everyone was incredibly friendly and helpful, happy to answer all the many questions I had about the process without making me feel ignorant at all.

Another preconception I had – aside from expecting to be cold and wet – was that the group of wildfowlers hosting us would be a little grumpy about giving their time to showing women the ropes, in what I saw as a broadly male-dominated discipline. Luckily, I couldn’t have been more wrong! The guys who hosted us were warm and welcoming, excited to share their passion with new people, and genuinely keen to get more female members. 

I saw the lifelong friendships that members of the group had and learned about their mentorship scheme for new members. There is no doubt in my mind that, if I were looking to join a wildfowling group, I’d become a member of the Fenland Wildfowlers Association.

We took part in three separate flights, two on the washes and one on the foreshore, and we were paired with a club member who took us out and gave us all the information we needed to know. This included everything from identifying the beautiful birds we saw, to explanations of how the land we were on was looked after.

Benefits of wildfowling

I learned about the many benefits of wildfowling. It’s one of the most sustainable ways to eat meat, and with my interest in cooking, I enjoyed learning about the ways that the wildfowlers and their families use the meat – with absolutely nothing going to waste.

The cost of wildfowling is also something that should be shouted from the rooftops. We’re in a time where the cost of living is high and the tax burden is rising. Members of wildfowling associations pay an annual fee that’s often half the price of a single game day, for which they can shoot throughout the season.

While my sensitivity to cold and wet means I might not rush to get my waders back on, I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone. 

Wildfowling deserves more airtime – it seems completely addictive for the hardy who love to be connected to nature’s rhythms. As one of our hosts put it: “I tell all our new members to go out wildfowling to be in nature and enjoy the scenery – and if you get something, it’s a bonus!”. 

Having experienced the beauty of goose flight at sunrise on the foreshore, I can see why so many take it up for life.

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Picture of Lydia Castellano

Lydia Castellano

BASC Council member
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