The first of November and the midges were still biting as I walked the dogs this morning, I’m sure we are in for a wake up call with a good hard frost and a return to winter. The leaves on the trees could do with a good shift before we attempt some of the lower drives. The west coast has fared rather worse weather wise with the last 50 days only having 5 dry ones according to John MacTavish who sits on our committee.
Our committee all turned out on Sunday for our 6 weekly meeting and it was good to hear the news from the different parts of the country. The stag season seems to have went fairly well apart from the shortage of stags in some areas and ever more disturbance especially if you have a Munro on your ground. The general feeling on the grouse season has been a good one with many estates achieving good bag numbers. Feedback from the salmon and trout has been very positive. This is fantastic news when you consider how much private money is being generated from these industries for remote rural communities in times of cutbacks.
I drove up to Thurso last week to spend a morning with the new Gamekeeping students all 28 of them. With a full course and the college has had to turn students away. This is testament to the enthusiasm I met when I spoke with Richard MacNicol and David Shaw. The students themselves were very polite and full of confidence and we touched on the idea that they themselves could maybe visit primary schools in their area and may inspire some young ones to follow a career in wildlife management.
Yesterday I joined the stakeholders for the tail docking meeting in Edinburgh. I left the meeting feeling very encouraged but one of the issues that arose was the fact that the vets that are leading the survey need more owners with working dogs to come forward for the winter trial. This simply means that you register yourself with the trial and if your dog sustains a tail injury you either phone or email Rose Lederer who will come out and see your dog. The contact details for this will be on the front of our website.