Gordon Hughes on Droppers

By: Gordon Hughes
Date: June 1966
Category: Droppers

The second NTU Competition of the season was held on 22nd May and at Derby,
we had a surprise visitor, namely Mr. John Van der Wel from Ijmuiden in
Holland. We were all surprised to see him and thankful that he looked so
well after his recent long illness. We regret that the weather was terrible
and that some of our kits did not put up a faultless performance on the
occasion of his visit. Naturally, he was disappointed as he, when I was
unable to get two of the birds down at night. Let me say now that I take
full responsibility for this. If a kit does not do what it has been taught
to do, it is mainly due to bad management by the trainer, and bad luck can
be only a very small percentage of the total fault.

Shortly after dark, a stray Tippler joined the kit and no doubt this bird
played it's part in splitting the kit into a two and one party. The kit had
been split before during the day, and no doubt the terrific gale force
downwind had something to do with this. However, my undoing was that I had
got the birds "too fit". In other words, they were capable of many more
hours of flying when dark arrived. On top of this, when birds are raking for
miles as dark comes and there is a terrific gale force storm blowing, the
birds are then likely to let the wind take them just a little farther than
their normal raking distance. Consequently, they are then lost, and one can
imagine that this is not hard to do when there are myriads of lights under
the birds, making the whole earth look all the same from the air. A sad end
for birds which have flown continuously in the dark for four years and been
placed first or second in no less than eight NTU competitions. I left the
lights on all night. This was strongly contested by the wife, who says that
they shine into the bedroom and keep her awake. However, at the time of the
writing, no birds have yet returned. This sort of things happens and will
happen again, and one must be prepared to take his losses in this sport, and
bear his disappointments; not because he is afraid of losing, but that any
keen and true fancier hates to lose birds that he has brought to such a fine
standard by ceaseless patient hours of training and attention.
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