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That's why I liked the Venters and Batha articles in SSM. They made it clear that high bird shooting is a specialty game, requiring a special gun with tighter chokes and shooting heavier loads than on a typical driven bird day (as described above by various people who've shot driven birds). In my own case, I've seen the occasional drive on a "typical" driven shoot--pretty much as described above, with "bread and butter" birds in the 20-30 yard range, taller ones around 40--where there are very few below 40 yards. And not very many birds are killed on those drives. I remember one drive last year where that was the case. And another from a couple years ago, when I was next in line to the best shot in the group. Instead of coming at us on that drive, most of the birds were coming from our right, and I was on the far left end of the line. My companion was missing a few, hitting a few--and they were taller by the time they were over me than over him. After missing about 7 or 8 in a row, I realized they were beyond my capability, after which all I did was watch the guy next to me, and admire his skill. But he also shoots 50-60 driven days a season, which does help.

Blocking on pheasant drives in the US doesn't compare very well to driven shooting. Certainly not really high bird driven shooting. Our pheasant country is relatively flat. In the UK, you don't get really tall birds unless they're coming off the tops of hills (and often over the tops of trees) and the guns are down in a valley. We tend to overestimate the range of pheasants coming at us with some elevation, because that's not the way we usually see pheasants. A rooster that's 25 yards up will clear the top of a 60 foot tree with quite a bit to spare--and that's a fairly tall tree. Birds 30-35 yards up can look REALLY high, because we Yanks seldom see them presented that way. We're used to judging horizontal distance on pheasants, not vertical.

There are a couple problems with classic American 12's. One is that, unless you modify them, they're stocked too low for this kind of shooting. The other is that, especially on very tall birds coming at you, ANY sxs will blot out the bird. (The broader profile of a sxs is one reason an OU is preferred by most of the high bird specialists.) The tendency is to stop your swing when the barrels hide the bird, so you miss behind. It's not that the Brits don't have longer barreled, tighter choked, heavier sxs. Many were built for waterfowl or pigeon shooting, and aren't that different from our classic sxs (although they're much more likely to be stocked higher than ours). And sxs certainly work well enough on "typical" driven birds, although more and more Brits are shooting OU's simply because they come to driven shooting after having started on clays, and an OU is the gun with which they're familiar.

The first time I shot driven birds, one of our "guns" was Roger Mitchell, then managing director of H&H, and pretty well-experienced at driven game. I asked him what was considered a good average on driven birds. He told me that on proper, sporting birds, 1 for 3 was a respectable average. I thought that seemed pretty low. Having done it several times now, I'm pretty much in agreement. I usually shoot 3 driven days when I go, and I have had rare days where I've been over 50%, and begin to think that perhaps Lord Ripon's shade is nodding approvingly. That will be followed by a day when I have more challenging birds, or just plain aren't on my game, and I don't make the 1 in 3 standard. When all is said and done, if I can shoot around 40% total for the trip, I'm satisfied. I keep hoping I'll make 50% one of these years, but if I did, I might be asking myself whether I took too many of the easier (but still "sporting") chances and not enough of the harder ones.

To give an idea of chokes for "typical" driven birds: an American friend, who's done a lot more driven shooting than I have, has a pair of McKay-Brown OU's. He sought out David's advice on choking: .010 in both barrels. I seem to recall that at least some of Ripon's guns had no choke. I want at least some, but an honest IC pushing an ounce or 1 1/16 of Brit 6's (270/oz) should put 140+ pellets in a 30" circle at 40 yards. And with that being a "tall" bird on a typical shoot, fairly open chokes seem to make a lot of sense.