It takes a lot to test a wildfowler’s patience. Long tides, frozen fingers and empty skies all come with the territory. But by the twentieth take, Chris Kelly had had enough.
“How many times do you want me to pluck this bloody duck?” he asked Lewis, who is sprawled under the kitchen table. His top-of-the-range camera and expensive American camo are liberally coated in feathers, sweat, tears and a generous helping of Lancashire mud, in an effort to capture that perfect image of a single feather drifting gracefully to the floor.
This was day two of filming for a new documentary about wildfowling supported by BASC and produced jointly with The Origins Foundation.
The Origins Foundation is a global non-profit organisation dedicated to telling real stories about hunting and its role in supporting conservation and communities. Led by Dr Robbie Kroger, the team has travelled the world, talking with hunters, conservationists and community leaders, filming documentaries across Africa, America and Europe that highlight the cultural, economic and ecological value of hunting traditions.
Having cut their teeth in pristine wildernesses and sun-drenched savannahs, we felt it was time they took on a real challenge. The British wildfowler.
And so, Robbie was persuaded to leave behind the roulette wheels and blackjack tables of Las Vegas and come stand in a gutter on an English saltmarsh (we may not have told him too much about the weather).
We suggested the Ribble as a location for what we hope will be the first of a series of documentaries exploring different aspects of the UK’s shooting culture. Like so many of the UK’s estuaries, the Ribble is a place of contrasts where, besides patience, wildfowlers come to understand the vital importance of stewardship and conservation as cornerstones of a sustainable harvest. It is a landscape shaped by history and economics as well as nature. Where marsh and wildlife rub up against railways, canals and industrial architecture in the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.
In the past, wildfowling played an indispensable role in feeding Lancashire’s growing populations and generating income. Today, it continues to play a critical role in the lives of practitioners and in the preservation of some of the region’s last and most biodiverse marshlands.
The contrasts are striking. Along an otherwise heavily developed coastline, marshlands managed for wildfowling provide much needed refuges for important populations of wildfowl and waders in an areas otherwise dominated by golf courses, housing developments and industrial estates.
The Ribble perfectly illustrates that shooting itself is a crucial piece of the conservation puzzle, allowing wild animal and plant life to survive and thrive in the most unlikely of places. This was something that Robbie and his team discovered when one of their interviews was interrupted for the 9th time by a low flying typhoon jet being test flown at a nearby BAE site.
“I hope he’s using lead free ammunition”, one of the wildfowlers said wryly, casting an eye at the jet. He knows well that, for wildfowlers, lead alternatives are but one of the conditions they accept in order to protect an environment and pastime that is rooted in tradition, ethics, and the pure joy of being connected to something bigger than ourselves.
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BASC has been announced as the headline sponsor of this year’s Yorkshire Post Rural Awards, being held on 7 October 2021.
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