What Your Shooting Destination Says About You

More and more Brits are venturing overseas to extend their shooting seasons, experience new challenges, explore new cultures and get a bit of a tan while they’re about it. But your choice of destination speaks volumes - are you an adventurer, a history buff, a luxury-lover, or married to the grind? We can tell based on your shooting destination of choice.

Moroccan Partridge

Spain is passé, Argentina is old hat. You’re an adventurer; the path well-trodden is not for you. You want to experience something that few before you have done, to blaze trails and forge paths. You’re basically Jim Corbett, Ernest Hemingway, Frederick Courteney Selous and Richard Burton all rolled into one. Dust, diesel fumes and a good Khaki shirt - that’s what makes you happy. 

Your friends describe you as “a bit elusive”, but that’s only because you refuse to use WhatsApp and your house doesn’t have a postal address - only a what3words. When it comes to music, you were ‘into the band before it was cool’; you’re a trendsetter. Fashion is for those without style, isn’t it?

Being a laid-back cool-kid, for you, time is an illusion; a meaningless construct, worried about only by those cringy rise-and-grind types. After all, what meaning does it have when you’re lounging by an infinity pool with a cool local beer in hand? (It can’t all be dusty hardship, can it?)  You love the laid-back local style, while the landscape’s Lawrence of Arabia vibes and the chance to get lost in the souks suit you to a (mint) T.

This being said, the one thing you do take seriously is your shooting. You’re not so excited by big bags, and you don’t need to be firing off a slab or two a day (too much like hard work, what?). No, you want proper driven birds with a bit of wildness to them - so Morocco, with its strong-flying native Barbary partridge, is just the ticket. If only they’d let you ride a camel to your peg - though you’ve seriously considered asking William Powell Sporting to make it happen.

South African Rock Pigeons

When pressed, you tell people that you work in Tech, finance or ‘consulting’, though you rarely elaborate on this when pressed for more details. 

Since the pandemic, you’ve tried Working from Home, Working from Garden, and even Working from Pub, but in your never-ending quest to prevent going into the office from getting in the way of having a good time, you’re now giving Working From Hide a try. Conveniently, the acronym ‘WFH’ ensures the boss is none-the-wiser.

But a decent zoom background, or a carefully staged bookshelf (courtesy of William Powell Sporting, I’m sure), coupled with the conveniently low time difference (before the clocks go forward in the Spring the difference is just GMT+1), means that you can tackle the rock pigeons (AKA the African Grouse) while still taking work calls, though explaining the banging takes a bit of imagination - “Sorry, the kids are shooting clays in the back paddock!” Just remember to take the ear defenders off if it's a video call.

That said, taking the risk has to be worth it on a ‘bangs-per-potentially-sackable-offence’ basis, so the fact that you can expect to fire hundreds of cartridges in a day helps, as do the challenging nature of the shooting, the fine South African wines of an evening, and the luxury accommodation.

Spanish Partridge

You read Wodehouse and Waugh, Fleming and le Carré, enjoy proper Test Match cricket (that T20 stuff will never catch on), Old World wines, classic cars, and The Rest Is History. Your slippers are monogrammed.

Tweedy down to the very underpants, for you, tradition is everything, and you like the hint of a royal connection. You still use your grandfather’s ancient ‘best’ side-by-side when shooting at home, and wear his moth-eaten plus fours too.

This said, when in Spain (which you insist on referring to as ‘The Iberian Peninsula’) you’re not averse to wielding an estate gun, so long as it is from one of Eibar’s top houses, and you might swap your flat cap for a battered Panama, which you fancy gives you a rakish ‘Our Man in Havana’ look, though Hampstead may be more accurate.

You love the traditionally-driven Spanish partridge - (“so like the driven grouse on Binky’s moor”), the Rioja and the jamon Serrano, as well as the grand old estates where King Alphonso used to shoot, and exploring the stunning historic cities. William Powell Sporting probably has your number saved under “The Duke”, and not without reason.

Argentinian Dove

Everything you do, you do to the max. You work hard, and play even harder, and you can’t even spell chiché. 

You like your beef rare, your cigars large, your red wines robust, and your appetite for all three is prodigious. Your Range Rover has a personalised numberplate: D0V3Z and the Porche sports CLAR3T. You believe that chicken and chips is a form of salad.

When it comes to shooting, if your barrels aren’t as red as your complexion at the end of the day, you consider it a wasted opportunity. The only downside to firing a thousand shots in a day is that it does leave the drinking arm somewhat sore.

Of course you shoot doves in Argentina - where else could you get your fix for high-volume shooting and gout-inducing luxury? But you’re no boor - you do like a bit of a culture fix, which a guided tour of Buenos Aires and an evening at a Tango bar delivers - before jumping on the private plane to the lodge. 

Your Shooting Style, Decoded

And so, whether you're a mint tea and pith helmet sort of chap, or you’re more for following in the footsteps of Kings, juggling shotguns and Zoom calls, or you value rud-hot barrels over all else, one thing’s for certain: your choice of shooting destination reveals as much about your personality as your choice of shotgun, tailor and London club. After all, where you shoot is a lifestyle statement.

As Oliver Severn of William Powell Sporting puts it: “It’s not just about the birds – it’s about the story you’re telling when you get back to the lodge. Whether it’s dust, decadence or double gins, your choice of destination says it all.”

These are all destinations that Ollie at William Powell Sporting knows like the back of his (well-shot) glove - and he’d be delighted to help you find the right fit. You might even be surprised by how little it costs to shoot in style overseas.

Drop Ollie a line here - just don’t blame him when you start referring to your garden as “the lodge.”