SSW001 onthemooch.indd 38 20/07/2018 16:14 S S 1 6 : 1 4 SS 16:14 HUNTING 038 SlingshotWorld and I know many who have. There is lots of advice out there. For now, issue one, we will leave it at, be polite, diplomatic and take the issue of safety seriously when you ask. Yet the Mooch is also about way more than food. It is about having a walk become an adventure, as you take your slingshot with you. It is about slowing down to nature’s pace. Moving quietly and observing. It is about wildlife knowledge in such depth that you have mental target images of rabbits, pigeons or game birds in all sorts of angles. The reality of what the HFT course is imitating. An HFT course cannot imitate the adrenaline and self control of real hunting though. And yet above all, it is also Shinrin Yoku. Which is a fancy way of saying in Japanese, that just being… just being… in a wood, is good for your soul’s health on a profound level. It translates as ‘woodland bathing’. And the magazine would be hopelessly incomplete without the hunting section. So I asked if I could tag along with the UK’s most respected catapult hunter. The designer of the Hedgerow Hunter frame, Matt Redding. He took me to one of his permissions and after weeks of sunshine and a mile from the road, the heavens opened. Cameras had to go into the removed game lining of Matt’s bag, and we got soaked to the skin. But as the rain stopped and steam rose from the fields around us, a million tiny frogs and toads decided it was time to leave the lake next to the path and were everywhere. It was wet, it was a worry for the cameras and it was completely brilliant, all at once. Like anglers say ‘Fishing, not Catching,’ this was ‘Mooching, not Shopping’. So here is the day in a few images, with some more, taken by Matt’s good lady, of quarry he has harvested in the recent weeks before I went to visit. One squirrel less Rabbit PIE Taken last season Rain shelter What IS up there? SSW001 onthemooch.indd 38 20/07/2018 16:14