Hosting Game Conservancy USA auction winners on a private farm shoot

Until I joined GunsOnPegs I would say that, at a rough guess, 95% of my shooting has taken place on the family farm in Hampshire. Barring a few days at a syndicate that my Dad belonged to when I was younger, and the very occasional day with other friends or family, our home shoot was all I knew of shooting. 

These days I have enjoyed a few days on more 'professional' operations through work, but my point remains the same: I have a fairly limited experience of what might be called a ‘commercial’ shoot, or of 'big days'. However, we know from the Game Shooting Census that for a significant proportion of guns the equation is reversed - they know nothing of the private farm shoot. 

This is especially true, I think, for visitors to our fair shores, and those who come to shooting later in life. I don’t think I would find many who would disagree with me when I say that it would be a good thing if more people had experienced the kind of ‘grassroots’ shooting that private farm shoots have to offer. 

That’s why I was thrilled, if a little nervous, when I learned that my father had decided to donate a day on our family shoot (record bag in the last 20 years, 70 birds) to the GWCT’s US auction. Our day was packaged up with two days at rather smart shoots so the winners of the lot would go from the sublime to the ridiculous, with very polished, biggish bag days rounded off by our loosely organised chaos. 

In the end the auction lot was won by a gentleman from New York named John, who has shot in the UK a fair amount. His team was a truly international one, including three more fellow-Americans, a brace of Spaniards, an Austrian and a Brit. While they were all experienced guns, at least two had not shot in the UK before. We were also joined on the day by Teresa Dent, CEO of the GWCT.

A family-run shoot

I’ve spoken about our shoot a fair bit on the podcast and in articles, and I’m often a bit deprecating about it. Sure, we don’t shoot big bags, but the reality is that a great deal of work, money and love goes into the operation. The vast majority of the work is done by my brother Jim and his fiancee Georgia, who look after the birds from the day they arrive, dogging in in the mornings before they start their respective full-time jobs, filling hoppers at the weekends and generally doing the heavy lifting. 

On the day it is more of a team effort, with a crew of beaters and pickers up who are as much family friends as any of the guests. The catering is carried out by as many as five family members, including game sausage rolls made from the previous shoot’s bag, sloe and damson gin made from fruit harvested on the farm, and a big lunch to round off the day in the farmhouse.

We’re a pretty big family (I’m one of four siblings) and on some days the Browne clan can outnumber the guests by quite some margin when you include various fiancees, wives and boyfriends. These days our ranks are swelled by my twins, fast approaching their second birthday and enthusiastic spectators until their nap time after elevenses.

They're keen to join the beating line!

Although the numbers we shoot are not huge, we do show some fantastic birds. A few years ago my brother and father made the decision to focus on partridge shooting, our gently rolling 'minimalist' topogrpahy being best suited to it, and embarked on a tree planting programme to create some new drives to compliment the shelter belts planted in the 70s.

The style is very traditional, with birds typically driven over hedges and these shelterbelts, with guns pegged fairly close to the drives. The result is whipcrack fast shooting that often leaves good shots wondering if their cartridges are duds, and prompting one recent guest to remark that "this is the only place I shoot where I miss the partridges behind." 

As this was the first time in living memory that Down Farm had seen a team of guest guns, it was all hands on deck to ensure a smooth running day. My Dad and I took on hosting duties, while my brother Jim took command of the beating line. Riding in the gunbus (borrowed for the day from a neighbour with a bigger shoot) with the team I was able to get to know our guests a bit more.

A first UK partridge

One gun, Jake, also from New York and one of the younger members of the team, was an enthusiastic duck hunter, but was on his first shooting trip to the UK. “I’ve wanted to come over for years, but the right moment has never come up.” After the first drive he returned to the gunbus grinning from ear to ear, having shot not only his first ever UK partridge, but his first partridge anywhere. He asked if he could keep it in order to have it taxidermied, something which we were very happy to agree to. He’s not the first person to have shot his first partridge on the shoot, and he won’t be the last, but it was a special moment none-the-less, and I like that he will have likely remember his day with us for ever, and will have a great memento of the day.

Jake awaits a chance at another partridge

I stood with Jake on a couple of drives after elevenses and really enjoyed talking him through the history of the shoot, and the changes that we have made. On the penultimate drive he was definitely in the swing of things. With the guns pegged close to a shelter belt and the partridges whipping over at speed with a slight tailwind, he accounted for three in five cartridges, all clean shots.

Rather more experienced was a Spanish gentleman from Madrid, who was sharing a peg for the day with his son. I asked him where he did most of his shooting in Spain he answered simply: “Everywhere.” Of course, he was a very accomplished partridge shot, but spoke interestingly about the differences and similarities to the traditional partridge shooting style of his homeland.

Our new plantations have become a haven for farmland birds

Standing with team captain John on the final drive, I was reminded of the reason that we had this team on the shoot in the first place. This particular drive sees the beaters blank a couple of fields into a block of new woodland planted about five years ago, which is flanked by a patch of cover crop.

Conservation in action

As the beaters swept down the hill towards the flushing point one could glimpse the odd partridge nipping down the side and dropping back in. You had to be paying attention to see them, mind, because while this was happening clouds of wild farmland and woodland birds were emerging from the trees. Although the new trees are little over head height, they’re already proving a haven for these birds - a prime example of the conservation benefits that even a small shoot like ours can provide.

Hard work, but worth it!

Hosting a day for guns who have parted with their hard-earned cash gave me a new-found respect for those who do so several times a season; it was a stressful business, especially for my brother, who worked so hard to put on the best day possible, and my Mum, who had to coordinate the catering efforts. Despite my comparatively easy task of hosting, the step counter on my phone records that I covered more ground on that day than any other in the rest of November. 

Chatting to Teresa in the gunbus, she had told me how wonderful she thought it was for John's team to see a small shoot like ours, and commented that she wanted more smaller days to be donated to the auction, both for Game Conservancy USA and GWCT auctions.

To me this made perfect sense - there is so much more to shooting than 250 bird days at grand estates, and so far as I was able to tell, our guests had loved the family-run, no-nonsense, welcoming nature of our day, proving our adage at GunsOnPegs that it is not the size of the day that matters, but the company you’re in and the atmosphere.

Supporting the GWCT

Once the day’s shooting was concluded and the bag (54) had been distributed to the guns, beaters, and pickers up, it was back to the farmhouse for beef stew. Between the main course and pudding Teresa Dent made a short but impassioned speech thanking John and his team for their generosity (they’d paid a significant sum for the three days of shooting) and highlighting how important the work of the GWCT is.

She pointed out that research begun decades ago by the charity had been instrumental in seeing off Wild Justice’s attempts to restrict gamebird releasing near protected sites, and that the work being carried out today may well turn out to be pivotal in years or even decades to come.

We’re proud of our little shoot, for all that I’m sometimes downplay its quality, and it was an honour to share it with John and his team. So, if you have a small private shoot, whether it is a driven affair like ours, a rough shoot, a flight pond, or whatever, I urge you, consider donating a lot to a future GWCT auction - rest assured, the eventual winner of the lot will appreciate it, perhaps even more than you do, and it will give you a new pride in what you have. What’s more, you’ll be helping to swell the coffers of one of the most important organisations in shooting and helping to fund research that could turn out to be vital for the future of shooting: a double win!