Hear the roar of the 4-bore

A 150-year-old piece of history is taken out to the saltmarshes for a dawn flight — but it proves too hot to handle for Simon Garnham

- Simon Garnham

I don’t even know where we are now,” admitted ‘Ballistic’ Bob Feaviour as the truck’s lights struggled to penetrate the pre-dawn mist. We rumbled over a remote railway crossing point, nosed our way across the estuary’s floodplain and pulled up outside the lychgate of the medieval church.

Darkness shrouded the graves. Fog condensed into great cold drops on the skeletal limbs of over-hanging horse chestnuts. Somewhere through the blanket of cloud was a full moon but it lacked the strength to create even the faintest of glows.

We clambered into waders and waterproofs, slung game bags and gun slips on to our shoulders and set out across waterlogged meadows to crest the sea wall, dogs bounding excitedly beside us.

I’ve been fortunate to soldier in deserts, jungles and mountains but for me there is nowhere more full of sensory delights than an estuary spread out just before dawn. The heavy scent of the marsh, the chill wind, calls of waders, channel markers blinking through the darkness: all combine to create the best of shooting locations.

This particular outing had added spice — the chance to use a 4-bore about to see its 150th year and the first serious outing on the marsh for my 15-month-old fox-red labrador, Scout.

Serious

In 1871, when Lords Leicester and Ripon were setting extraordinary records in the shooting field and Payne-Gallwey had not yet written his