Reviewing A Shoot - The New System

Up until now, we have had a simple text review system which has allowed Members to add their thoughts on a shoot. With over 2,000 reviews added to GunsOnPegs, they have been incredibly helpful for prospective guns to gauge an idea from a third party on what the shoot is like.

Thankfully, over 95% of these have been positive and each negative review is investigated carefully. In the event of us being notified that a shoot is particularly poor, we have often removed them from GunsOnPegs altogether.

However, it should not be about our opinion, it should be yours. The single biggest thing that we have learned since starting GunsOnPegs is that if we don’t particularly enjoy a shoot, there will be tens, if not hundreds, who love it. This works the other way too, there will be many that don’t think much of your favourite shoot!

GunsOnPegs was only ever started for a bit of fun and we’ve bolted bits on to the original version for 8 years so it has been in need of an overhaul. With the completely new GunsOnPegs website which has been rebuilt from the ground up over the last 18 months, we've launched some great new features.

Amongst these is a much more complex, meaningful and bespoke game shooting review system to help you make more informed decisions. Discussion on this actually started in 2012 but we have needed a new website to be able to execute this properly.

Below is a snapshot of the proposed new review process and an idea of the end result. We’ve been canvassing opinion for a long time and what you see below has been carefully thought out to take into account the fine intricacies of game shooting and allow for flexibility.

Star ratings

Star ratings are probably the thorniest of issues so let’s tackle this head on. We’re not looking to become a Trip Advisor for shooting, a hotel is a pretty simple offering compared to a shoot so the two can’t be compared. Having thought long and hard, we are keen on a 6-star rating system allows guns to rate certain important aspects of a shoot that they have experienced which, based on the number of questions answered, will provide an average rating on their opinion of the shoot. This result will have to be backed up by some text narrative explaining their reasoning no matter how great they thought it was.

We like the idea of 6 stars rather than 5 because we want to accommodate: Fair, Good, Very Good and Excellent to establish the very best operators in our sport as well as allow for Very Poor at the other end rather than just Poor.

Rating one day or multiple days?

This is one of the key aspects to a review. A gun that has been to a shoot more on multiple occasions is more informed than someone who has visited only once. Therefore, we need to distinguish between these and share this with the reader accordingly. Based on your answer to this question, all of the following questions are adjusted. For example, it will ask for the expected bag and actual bag on one visit but the average bag sizes you shot on multiple visits.

Other stages from the review process, not shown here, include questions about weather, date or month and the quarry you shot.

What should be rated?

We believe that the aspects below are the main ones that make the difference between a good and a bad shoot. As many guns and shoot owners have pointed out, a shoot should not be judged purely on the quality of birds. This was confirmed by our 2015 Game Shooting Cenus, in conjunction with Strutt & Parker, where 63% of guns said that the most important aspect of a shoot day is to have fun with friends. Only 28% of guns believed the quality of birds was more important. Therefore, the shoot’s main responsibility is to lay on an environment for you to enjoy yourself and the quality of birds is a part of this.

Recommendation

Each review is completed with a question on whether you would recommend this shoot to a friend and a compulsory text box to add some narrative or reasoning behind your review.

How it will be seen by other guns

Reviews will be moderated, simply to check for the very rare occurrence of inappropriate language or slander, and will be displayed against that shoot. It will be possible to leave only your initials rather than full name, as it has always been. We also won't be added an average review number like Trip Advisor or Booking.com against a shoot when searching. 

A snapshot of the gun’s thoughts and their average rating will be shown like below. This is missing some of the extra information given such as bag size, date and weather which will be included in the final version.

Members will also be able to see all reviews posted by a particular individual against multiple shoots to help gauge and analyse opinion. A gun that has a similar opinion to you about multiple shoots is likely to carry more weight in your decision making and brings you closer to a recommendation that you might receive from a friend.

Shoot Owners Responses

All shoot owners are allowed to respond to your review which offers them the opportunity to thank guns for visiting. In the event of a negative review, this also allows the shoot owner to respond accordingly and offer extra insight into the day and the opportunity to gather constructive feedback in the event that there is room for improvement on a particular aspect.

Summary

We hope that our new review system allows the chance for all opinions to be conveyed in a constructive manner and provide context behind a wonderful day or a poor day. With the latter causing the greatest area of concern, it is important that if you claim that the birds didn’t fly well, the weather, date and thoughts from the owner are added for other guns to create an opinion.

As a marketplace for game shooting, we look forward to the new system helping guns make decisions on where to shoot, well into the future.