doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Why "high" birds?

+1 Tim thanks for that great perspective.

Damn, I am going to have to get some new hunting buddies. Only reason I bring Joe along is to pay half of the expenses. Of course he does bring me a bologna sandwich WITH cheese.


Best,


Mike

Just to keep the great diaglogue going and for informative purposes would those of you who have been on a driven shoot enlighten us on the process? How are the lines formed? types of guns used? how the guns are generally set up? How you would sign up for a syndicate. How do you shoot single days, etc. Any info would be of interest.

Well Mike, I did offer to come out and help you with ridding your lease of those pesky quail...and I'd bring some deli coldcuts and foo-foo bread along with sum dat Jack Daniels musturd and a cold beer for your lunch.

Khanh,

There are several kinds of lines/groups. In the UK syndicates are common, which is a group of people who manage/own the shooting rights in a property and share the expenses. There are variations. If the estate is too big or they want to shave some costs, the syndicate will sell a few days each season. Depending on how much they want to spend , they will hire a keeper and a few under keepers, plus beaters and pickers up for the shooting days, or it could be a much more DIY thing with members helping in what they can, and friends and family beating and picking up.
There are syndicates who simply buy days every season, avoiding all the work and risks involved in keeping a shoot. They could negotiate several days for the season with a determined number of birds, and then share the expenses among them.
There are also the pure commercial places, who sell to whoever wants to buy. This could be the syndicates mentioned above, a corporate group ( not very popular right now!) or some agencies who can organise driven shooting for foreigners etc etc...
There are the roving syndicates who sell single days for different people.

Guns: it's not such a big issue as one could thing of.
Pairs are not the norm, these are for the big days where big numbers are expected.
Most break action guns in 12 or in 20 will do for a normal driven shoot.
It's my personal opinion that a sporting gun is perfect, with the extra weight being a bonus for that kind of shooting.

hm

Everyone's experience and advice will be different. So saying, here's mine.
The best thing is to have a shoot of your own, however modest. You can then invite your friends , who will reciprocate by inviting you to their (bigger, grander???) shoots. As you can see from my profile, I live in Texas and we have a dearth of good driven shoots in my area. Not hilly enough, I guess. You can still accept invites, but there'll be the need to reciprocate, and a dinner at the Savoy won't cut it.

So, most of us count ourselves lucky if we can join roving syndicates and shoot days at a variety of different places. Here, you all pay your ways, although there may be a well-deserved discount for the shoot csaptain who has a big job in putting it together and may bear financial responsibility if a day is under-subscribed. This is great fun and you can shoot all over the place and get a wide variety of shooting and accomodations. Some days you dine in ducal lodges, some days it's sandwiches from the motorway stop eaten in a trailer. All is good and you should never turn down an invite.

As Henrique points out, you can also buy individual days, and there's nothing wrong with that. The shooting world is remarkably small and you'll find yourself shooting with people you've met before. Probably resulting in some more invitations.

Eventually, you'll have to reciprocate. You can take a whole day and invite 7 or 8 friends. Or, you can invite friends, for example, to shoot quail in Texas!

As for forming the line, you draw pegs each morning, using pretty little devices with numbers marked. Some look like shirt collar stays, some are old silver. After each drive, you move by 1,2 or 3. Sometimes odds move up and evens move down so you don't find yourself poaching off the same people all day.

As for the guns, you rarely see what others are shooting. Your guns will stay cased until you reach your peg. Of course, the loaders will often compare what's being used, but there's little showing off. If you are shooting something different, you might offer another gun the opportunity to borrow it for a drive. I shoot either a pair of lightweight 12 bores or a pair of 20 bore O/Us. In either case, 28grams will do for even the most dastardly shoot, although the 20s have chokes and I might bump them upo a notch for certain estates like the Brigands in Wales or Chargot late in the season when it's all wary pheasants, especially if certain absolutely humbling drives are on the menu.

I believe one company selling everything from single guns to whole days.(gunsonpegs) sponsors this site. Another absolutely reliable agency is run by Ian Coley, who is the British Olympic team coach. www.iancoleysporting.co.uk . or, you might try one of the superb estates owned or mannaged by Gwyn Evans. No points for guessing where in the Isles he comes from. www.bettwshall.com. In my experience, you'll find a warm welcome with whomever you call and with the other guns you meet. As Dig says,There are rules, but they're designed to increase everyone's enjoyment and keep everyone safe. Try it, you may just enjoy it as much as I do

A great thread this and good to see some quality contributions from my fellow Englishmen, especially Diggory who I had the pleasure of shooting in the line with several times this season.

Straight off the bat, I would recommend "Classic Game Shooting: The English Art" by Tony Jackson. It is quite an old book now and tough to find, but given that driven game shooting has its origins well over a century ago, it is pretty timeless.

As previous posts have stated, driven days can vary enormously in size, formality, complexity, characters and structure to name but a few factors. I have shot for over 20 years now, and had the privilege of starting young, being tutored slowly and with safety and quarry recognition/respect always at the forefront of my training. I went "beating" in the line of the local shoot for all of my teenage years which provided a superb opportunity to see the workings of a shoot from the ground up and often assisted in the close season. The one "beaters day" which I was gifted at the end of each season for the work undertaken throughout the winter was a cherished day and I still remember many when going back through my shooting diaries.

As time has gone by, I have been fortunate to expand my experiences and have enjoyed many different days across the UK. I have never had a bad day because there are so many facets - it is not about pulling a trigger and indeed some of the best days have been those where few shots were fired, but those that were were always memorable and the company, landscape and quarry more than made up. Equally some of the poorest days have been those with plenty of shooting but with fellow guns who were often there simply to kill things and didn't appreciate the entire day for all of its elements. Each to their own.

My days have ranged from anywhere from 30 birds on an informal walk/stand "driven" day to 200+ bird days with very formal drives, much of the hidden etiquette one rarely learns from books, and birds presented in an incredibly challenging fashion. I have used a number of guns including an over-under 12 bore of 20 yrs age, and now use my 1870 Reilly hammergun for all of my shooting bar wildfowling on the coastal foreshore. Over my time shooting, I have definitely noticed a shift away from side-by-sides to over-unders, and this is in a very "traditional" shooting area of the UK - Norfolk/East Anglia.

Agreed, good quality stuff. Much thanks to our brethen from across the pond who have taken the time to post.

Thank you Chuck. You are "On Deck".

Mike

I've only done it once, with several other American writers and a couple of Englishmen, one of whom was Roger Mitchell--then managing director of H&H. I asked him how well one should expect to shoot on "proper" driven birds. 1 for 3, he told me. That didn't sound like much of a challenge to me . . . but I found that it took my getting into a very nice "groove" on the last drive of the day to put myself in that ballpark. The birds we shot, for the most part, were not unusually high. But the right combination of terrain and vegetation (trees) means that even "normal" driven birds will be a good bit higher than the roosters you'll shoot when you're blocking on a pheasant hunt in South Dakota.