Country mouse on gun cartridges

Make sure you empty your pockets after a shoot, particularly before setting off for the airport warns Mark

Country mouse, Country Life magazine
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Some years ago, in gentler times, I ended up with a gun being pointed at me and my hands instinctively raised above my head. I was at Heathrow catching a flight to who knows where. Neither the man pointing the gun nor his colleagues who searched me were anything less than completely terrifying.

My crime was to have grabbed my Barbour jacket that had been lying forgotten on a peg at home since the previous winter. What I had failed to do was to check the pockets when I was finally allowed to lower my hands, I discovered they contained a dozen shotgun cartridges from the previous season’s shooting. It wasn’t a good moment.

More recently, I was about to enter an event attended by a member of the Royal family, but, luckily, I stuck my fingers into the pockets, to discover some more cartridges lurking in the bottom. I chose to miss the event. Please don’t make the mistakes of my past always check your pockets at the end of a day’s shooting and make sure you store the contents away safely. Good luck for the new season and safe shooting.

Country Life

Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.