Outside Days » pheasant

Where Did August Go?

Howard — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:05:35 +0000

The glorious 12th came racing up on me like a steam train, leaving disarray in its wake as I tackled Yorkshire, Croatia, the 19th century and the Sussex downs in rapid succession. While the rest of the country basked in an Indian summer, I sweltered in tweeds and froze in moleskins depending on the whim of Mother Nature. I pack sunscreen and short sleeves for Croatia, but the indignity of combining suncream with tweed has me questioning the apparent realignment of the seasons. Except for the not-so-glorious fog that accompanied the guns on August 12th and 13th of course.

The first of our annual brace of black powder days went off with a bang as the team attempted their first partridge. Mini-driven days are always more about the laugh, fancy dress and the giving of stick, bag is immaterial to this team…especially when we never seem to reach it. At 60 seconds plus to reload both barrels, I spend more time on the radio holding the line and my belly than anything else. Having taken up the invitation to fire a flintlock in anger at quarry, I am amazed the team hit anything at all: the delay requires physics calculations worthy of a submariner to put shot in the same airspace as a bird.

At long last, the sweltering weather seems to have broken with cool nights, showery days and the fallow rut settling us in to autumn’s rhythm. The first pheasants are starting to turn up in bags, and days are going from pure partridge to the days of mixed sport that signal the start of pheasants in seriousness. With the first frosts underfoot, we are selling the last of the late grouse bargains and a few remaining guns and days. The first woodcock have been reported on the Isle of Lewis, with many more to follow as the winter days draw in and the arctic blast we are promised materialises. If you find yourself with some spare days to fill, get in touch…we’ve taken our first booking for January 2013 so you needn’t worry about appearing overeager.

Stay In The Know AND Get To Go

Howard — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:29:42 +0000

All clients are created equal, but the ones on the Outside Days Mailing List get offered sport first.

In our 24-7 365 day world of blogging, tweeting and emailing, the List is the best way of reaching most of you without joining the spamming hordes. It gives us the opportunity to offer you deals from single guns in a line to last minute sport to cancellations that would otherwise pass you by. Most special offers never make it past the mailing list: last year 5 days of walked up or mini-driven grouse were snapped up in hours; numerous cancellations at half price; scratch days were filled before ever seeing the publicity of the blog.

For some of you, this will be like sucking eggs, for others I fear it comes as a complete revelation. Either way, the List works on the simple premise that if you are interested you’ll come back with a reply, if not you’ll just ignore me. It’s a hassle-free way of ensuring you’re in the know. Put your name on the List now.

Our latest mailing:

I’m predicting a BBQ summer (Morgy will certainly be having one). Optimist? Me? Well if not a July and August scorcher, I’ll settle for a sim game spring.

If you haven’t discovered the beauty of potting the featherless bird, Game Clay Days work on the same principle as a driven day’s sport, but with no beaters or sausage rolls and better weather. Instead of flushing birds over you, we fling clays from cover and woodland.

Whether a novice shot or old hand clay days offer a chance to dust off your sporting etiquette, brush up on your shooting and make plenty of noise. For the novices (to clay or game) we can provide loaders cum coaches to explain the intricacies of a driven day in a safe and unpresurised environment. And fire around 500 cartridges in a day.

The scratch days are back by popular demand, so if fielding a team of 10-16 guns proves impossible, why not join a made up team on:

Friday 6th of May or Friday 10th of June 2011

Scratch days are £175 per gun to include refreshments on arrival, lunch, and of course enough clays to satisfy anyone (in excess of 3,500 clays over the line in the course of a day). Call or email to reserve your place…as always it is first come first served on scratch days.

Alternatively if you can field a whole team of bangers, please contact me to discuss dates and requirements (yours and mine).

The shoot is located just north of the M27 at Romsey.

Reprise: Idiot’s Guide to Booking Shooting

Howard — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 10:35:29 +0000

I make no apologies for dusting off this old chestnut and republishing. When the loonies, kooks and crazies stop asking questions that would require the publication of numerous volumes to answer, I’ll leave this one in the archive. Until then…

Subtitle: The Things I Really Need to Know to Make Your Day Work
We start booking shooting for one season before the previous season closes, and are in full swing planning for the season to come by the time March becomes lamb-like. Much as I love extended email conversations and playing phone tennis, tag, and catch with all of you, it helps if you’ve done a little thinking before we start. We work with so many different shoots, each offering a selection of different opportunities, that it’s hard to know where to start when the email says ‘looking for some shooting…prices and dates please’.

Knowing what quarry you’d like to shoot, where or when you’d like to shoot helps narrow the choices. Grouse are a possibility in northern Britain from August 12th to December 10th, but you can forget shooting in the Outer Hebrides until September, or being within an hour of London ever.

Do you care how many times you pull the trigger? How high the birds are? How far you will have to preambulate between pegs? Is your dog just for show, or do you expect to use its services on the day? Are you solo, or blessed with an entire team of compatriots eager for the off? Can you shoot any day except the first Tuesday of each month, or are you a weekend warrior? Gourmand content only with linen tablecloths and a selection of fine wines? Cottage pie or casserole in the shoot room? Fish and chips at the pub? Or sausage rolls and soup on the tailgate of the Landrover?

Do you have to be back on your doorstep for dinner at 5? Looking to stay in a sporting lodge complete with singing laird and scotch pancakes? Fancy a pub with a roaring fire that allows your dog to stay? Or maybe a B&B whose landlady has an encyclopedic knowledge of local watering holes?

I’m sure you get the picture. The more specific you can be, the closer to your dream spec I can tailor the day. Of course, giving me plenty of notice always helps…

Simulated Game Summer-y

Howard — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:20:12 +0000

The long dry spells this spring and summer have made for marvellous game clay days, and many of you joined us to have a go at faux pheasant, partridge and duck. In all more than 50,000 cartridges were fired at a similar number of clays. Add to that drawn out lunches on the lawns of the Cuckoo Inn (notable for Jenny’s home-made chillies, curries, cakes and other delicacies) and you were sent home satiated and spent.

With the birds well and truly on the ground, we’ve rolled up the picnic rugs on another fantastic simulated season, but if you fancy one last blast Outside Days hosts the 50 bird sporting clay shoot at the Hamptworth Country Fayre.

So come and join us for one last chance to blow the dust from the barrels before the season starts in earnest.

Idiot’s Guide to Booking Shooting

Howard — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:00:44 +0000

I’m sure you get the picture. The more specific you can be, the closer to your dream spec I can tailor the day. Of course, giving me plenty of notice always helps…

Dog Days of Summer: Pre-season Panic

Howard — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:00:41 +0000

The best piece of canine wisdom I have been given is that the time to train your dog is the off season: using it during the season is more likely to undo training than perfect it. That said, what with trips to Texas, South Africa, and beyond clogging the first months of the off season, I find myself behind on the remedial work I’d intended for my canine team. To complicate matters, my weakness for spaniels has left me with 3 breeds in the kennel, each of a different bent and all comedians in their own rights. Fortunately, a summer lounging on the armchair in the office between surreptitious raids in the kitchen seems to have done my lab no harm and he is back in full working order. Now that he has had a couple of days on the grouse, he’s convinced that we’re for the off every time the door opens. The postie has had a couple of near misses.

For whatever reason, once cockers get to a certain age, all they want to do is shout. Satch started squeaking when on a line a couple of seasons ago, and it has progressed to what Jumpstart calls ‘feral’: baying like a pack of hounds after every flutter of wings. No amount of training is going to convince him that silence is golden, so you won’t be seeing a lot of him this season. But pushing 10 he’s earned a slow season (even if I have had to fortify Fort Knox to make sure he stays put). He’s been superseded by Int. Ftch. Meggie Moo (as No. 2 insists on calling her). All that’s required is a little sharpening and some fitness outings to get rid of a summer’s spare tyre (hers, not mine).

And then there’s Heck (formerly Hector, abbreviated to reduce the swearing that follows in his wake). I now know why Clumbers aren’t mainstream. He can hunt, as proven last year, and practiced on the chickens all summer. Now if I could just convince him to retrieve. By using a high-pitched voice and rolling on the ground with him, I can incite and excite him enough to retrieve a dummy a couple of times. He has style, but one that is going to leave him with some decapitated pheasants or propelled by partridge if he’s not careful. Hopefully once he’s working on the real thing, he’ll sort it out for himself…eventually. It did take him 9 months to master the dogflap in his kennel…he’s destroyed two since then.

If you are out on a day and Heck’s retrieving, don’t stand in his way…

Sim Species Expansion

Howard — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:00:54 +0000

Many of you have shot simulated game, whether I’m the one flinging clays over your head, or you’ve tried it with somebody else. We’ve just trialled a new venue and format for these fun out of season days, and can now offer 4 species simulated game days from spring next year. It also adds a second venue with completely different landscape to our downland days, tucked in the trees, hedges and ditches of the New Forest.

Hours of stomping around the estate’s fields and woods, heaving clays into empty space, we have derived a strategy that lets us show: driven partridge over high hedges; duck looping crazily and springing unseen from a flight pond; high pheasant soaring majestically over the tree tops; and grouse charging at butts across the heather and bracken.

Butt and blind construction is underway, and I can’t wait to see what you make of it for next season. All sorts of hospitality and corporate packages are possible, and there is something to suit everyone’s pocket. The secret’s out and booking has already started.

Pheasant Stage 4: Life in the Field

Howard — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:05:38 +0000

By the start of August, fluffy week old chicks have morphed into stroppy teenagers, ready for putting to wood. After all, in five weeks time the partridge season opens, and in 11 weeks the pheasant season starts. The gamekeeper’s love and care produces strong, healthy poults feathered up and more weatherproof, ready to make a go of it in the wood and learn to roost.

The English partridge (or grey) have been declining in numbers for half a century as farming methods have changed. The Game and Wildlife Conservancy Trust is doing lots of work on increasing the populations. There is a school of thought that says rearing and releasing greys does nothing to increase their population, but there are many who think that by adding reared birds you increase the genetic diversity and the covey sizes, reducing the impact of predation by foxes. Either way, the future of these beautiful birds seems to be on the up and up.

Driven Pheasant Stage Three: Rearing Shed

Howard — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:09:13 +0000

Some keepers stress on the day, berating the beaters as they race around trying to ensure that the birds are moving in the right direction and the right numbers to provide guns with the perfect day’s sport. Others spend their summers stressing over the chicks in the rearing field, clucking around like mother hens, tweaking the heating and the feeding to get it just right. And all the while knowing that the success of the season rests on the six weeks the birds spend on the rearing field. Fail here, and the guns will be less than impressed on their pegs.

Whether home-hatched or bought in as day olds, partridge and pheasant spend their formative chickhood on the rearing field, sunning themselves in day shelters where they can chase insects throught the long grass, and retreating to the heated confines of the rearing shed as the evening chill or wet weather sets in. Catch a keeper sitting in the doorway of a shed gazing lovingly at his brood (eyes glazed over with exhaustion), and he’s probably checking the height of his nipple drinkers to make sure all the birds are able to reach the water. Or making sure that the feeders are topped up, the heat is just about right (a comfortable tropical swelter), and catching any small issue before it multiplies into a disaster.

Driven Pheasant Stage Two: From the Rearing Field to the Bath

Howard — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:26:35 +0000

As you stand on your peg waiting for the high bird of the day to glide over you (and hopefully fall at your feet), stop to consider the commitment and effort of the keeper who got it there. That commitment doesn’t start with abuse of the beating line, hours of dogging in or even religious filling of feeders. Every egg hatched in an incubator (and there are hundreds of thousands each year) has been carefully washed by hand to reduce the risk of disease and infection from the off.

After collecting and handwashing the eggs, they are stored until sufficient numbers to fill the incubator have accumulated. The time-worn method would be sticking them under broody hens for 24 days, but modern efficiency and the reduction in keeper numbers (not to mention broody hens) means the incubator dominates.