DRIVEN
SHOOTING

DRYNACHAN  A Highly Overrated Shoot.

Having moved to the Highlands exactly a year earlier, we thought we would celebrate both that fact and my better half’s birthday with a shoot at Tressady.

Tressady had not had a full time keeper in a number of years and we were not able to find a suitable man until late February so while woodcock, salmon and stalking were all under control, more or less – some pools requiring significant cleaning of detritus to allow us to reach them, his late arrival prevented us from doing enough fox control to take a serious approach to our own driven shoot.  We did put a few birds down for experimental days but did not have the confidence to ask our friends to come all the way up from London and its environs solely based on our own shooting. 

Renata is one of the sportiest women imaginable: one of the few life members of Guards Polo Club where in her heyday she had a two goal handicap (a big deal for a woman- indeed, for men as well).  For a number of years she fox hunted throughout the British Isles and for six seasons held a Joint Mastership at the Kildares, Ireland’s oldest fox hunt.  She has recently been invited to be a Joint Master by another Irish Hunt, which I would support if I thought she could afford any more broken bones. Often at our duck days at Humewood Castle and pheasant shoots at Shillelagh, she would run the picking up team while working three of our labs. 

I was indeed right to add a second day as the birds flew in ways we did not predict and did not peg for on our first day at Tressady.  Bright sunshine, not a breath of wind, and mild weather did not help things at all. While all first days at all shoots is experimental, almost as a tautology, once or twice I have seen everything go to plan on my own shoots on new drives but most often drives do need tweaking that can only be achieved by trial and error and by understanding the importance of various weather and weather related factors. 

I decided to buy a day at one of the UK’s best known partridge shoots just on the other side of Inverness from us called Drynachan.  As I have my own booking agency, I approached them early last winter, perhaps even last fall, about sending teams to them for this year. At first they were reluctant believing that they would fill all their days with repeat business.  Come spring I received an email that quite a few days were still available.  It was too late to do me any good commercially, since most of my serious teams book for the following year between January and the end of March.  While new teams approach me every year the ones that don’t do it early tend to be quite last minute, those roving or commercial groups suddenly deciding in the fall that they need a day or two more for the current season.  I decided, that while it was too late for me to do anything on a commercial basis with Drynachan, and while their reputation was sterling, I do prefer to see a shoot in operation before I send clients.  This enabled me to kill two birds with one stone, as it were. 

I had specifically requested in emails for tall challenging birds only.  I said I was not terribly concerned about making the bag as long as the birds beat us – i.e., lots of birds at the limit of range.  Now I know that a lot of teams claim to be able to shoot high birds, but in the end are clueless.  I once had a group from London come to me in Ireland demanding only the toughest drives. If memory serves they had only contracted for about 250 birds day, I gave them what they asked for and at the end of the day about 210 birds were shot.  The team captain asked for a refund at which point I let him know that his team was 15 cartridges to a bird which was easy to do with great accuracy as they had bought their cartridges from us. 

At the end of the first drive at Drynachan, I spoke to the head keeper telling him that I was quite disappointed in the quality of birds presented – off a very low, wide tree covered hillside – as soon as I saw it, I had my doubts, which most unfortunately proved correct.  Roddy Forbes, a well known keeper & dog judge, explained that he wanted to see how the team shot.  Nothing, unfortunately, is learnt putting birds 20 yards give or take 5, over the line.  Personally, I shoot better on 40 yard birds than I do on 25 – I rarely raise my gun and if I do so, I do so in a half hearted manner out of boredom and with a gun that has so much choke that there is no margin of error at that distance.  Because I expected good birds I did not ask the team only to pick the high ones.  As everyone was invited, and as no bag limit had been discussed, every marginally acceptable bird was shot at and probably shot.  Should a keeper choose this option, it makes much more sense to start guns on birds of roughly 30-35 yards and if they can’t handle them to go down and if they can to go up.  The second drive was a modest improvement, although for a few of us it was quite a long hike up a steep gorge to mediocre sport.  The shooting was more interesting because birds were not in view for very long as they came across the ravine but at least at my peg, and I could only see the peg to my left and right, there were not a great deal of birds and while slightly higher, except for the quickness that was required of the shooter, still not terribly high.  Casasola, an excellent shoot above 40 minutes from Madrid near the town of Chinchon, has a drive very similar in physicality where most of the team walks up the side of a ravine. The biggest difference being that at Casasola even months later, there are many more birds and at twice to three times the average height.    I also find that when mediocre birds are presented or birds in insufficient quantity that many shooters take goofy shots to the side or behind out of range simply to keep themselves amused which, while it makes the bird cartridge ratio go up, is not a true indicator of the quality of shooting or the Shot.