Outside Days » pointers

Croatian Flights

Howard — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 22:09:09 +0000

When it comes to birds, we pride ourselves on offering the extremes. Our quail and woodcock packages in Croatia are no exception.

If, as the dog days of summer roll around each year, you contemplate the sorry state of the British summer and rusty shooting skills in the face of the Glorious 12th and beyond, kill two birds with one stone: add a quick trip to Croatia in pursuit of migratory quail walked up over English pointers and setters to the diary. Within hours you could be ensconced in rural agricultural Croatia, contemplating an evening’s walked up quail over pointers. Hunt for four or five hours from dawn and then again for two or three hours in the evening to avoid the heat of the day. Being on the doorstep of the hunting ground compensates for a lack of bells and whistles accommodation when you are hauling yourself out of bed to be in the field at dawn. Perhaps a villa by the sea and a pre-dawn commute to the fields is more your style: only an hour from our rural hunting idyll, the coast offers an array of watersports from boating and snorkeling to fishing and diving.

Are you pheasant and partridged out? Or has the end of the British shooting season come all too soon? Maybe you are just a ‘cock junkie? A quick flight from any of the major British airports and a short commute to the hotel at the centre of the hunting ground has you in the heart of European woodcock territory. Pack comfortable boots as you can walk for five or six hours each day in pursuit of these pop-eyed shot-dodgers. On the plus side, the pointers give you the heads up before the birds leap skyward. Groups of two or more can shoot woodcock over pointers over more than 100,000 hectares of prime Croatian hunting ground from the 1st of October to the 28th of February.

Both of these packages are flexible, offering sport for one day or many, and are readily combined with other fieldsports.

Glorious Grouse from August 12th to December 10th

Howard — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 16:01:38 +0000

Two months into the grouse season and we are down to our last three days. From the Outer Hebrides to the Cheviots, the Lammermuirs to the Yorkshire Dales it has been an amazing season for grouse. Despite last winter’s cold spell, there have been record numbers in places across the country. Even so, demand has outstripped availability with days, whether walked up, over pointers or driven, being snapped up within hours of offering.

I warn every novice grouse shot that it’s an addictive sport, but that doesn’t stop you from making that ‘once in a lifetime’ trip…and rebooking (you know who you are). It’s easy to see how fortunes have been spent in pursuit of the king of game birds.

In two short months, we’ve enjoyed/encountered sunburn, frost, floods, fog, gales, men in skirts, and a long list of unmentionables. To the owner of the spare right boot left behind on the moor, it’s made it back to Wiltshire and is waiting for collection.

Next year’s waiting list starts here…well, the queue does.

Make Your Indian Summer a Mediterranean Quail

Howard — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:06:02 +0000

While the well-heeled twiddle their trigger fingers waiting for the start of the season on the Glorious 12th, you could be pulling the trigger in anger on the Fantastic 1st (of August, of course!), reveling in some of Croatia’s finest quail shooting. And all only a bargain dash from Gatwick or Heathrow. So before you settle for the gloom of another English summer (I mean autumn) stretching out in front of you, pack your bags for a short break on Mediterranean shores. With a season extending to the 1st October, blow the dust from your barrels and recharge on vitamin D in one fell swoop…

Leaving the heat of the day for the mad dogs and mythical Englishmen (those that avoid hats and sunscreen), we’ll be up and in the fields at first light, following the pointers in pursuit of feathered bumblebees before breakfast. By the time respectable holiday makers are emerging bleary-eyed from their beds, you’ll be enjoying brunch and contemplating the day stretching out in front of you. With temperatures visiting the 30s and the Med a mere 15k down the road, the options are endless. Just be back for an armed tea-time romp. Returning to the fields after the strength of the sun has waned gives the dogs the best chance to find the diminutive quarry. And it means you can return to Blighty’s cloudy shores without looking like a lobster.

We’re estimating an average bag of 40-50 birds a day…influenced by your fitness, walking speed and accuracy, of course. A good day and guns who have honed skills before arrival hold the promise of double that…

The season is short and birds quick so getting planning now as bookings are flying in fast.

One Season Closes, Another Opens

Howard — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:39:23 +0000

When Britain mothballs game shooting for the season, my attentions turn to sport further afield, and to the next season looming on the horizon – a summer of game clays and fishing for trout and salmon.

While you’ve been reliving the season past over a pint and cleaning your gun for the final time, I’ve been to the GP to arrange shots and contemplated packing for a guinea pig trip to South Africa in May. Never one to live in the present, I had the details of that trip sewn up with my Christmas shopping: now I’m firming up plans for trips to Croatia in early August. Better known for boar and deer (which we can also arrange), Croatia is also home to a species of quail so small that disturbed coveys have been described as swarming bees. Cheap flights to parts of Croatia have made bargain sporting breaks a tempting prospect. We’ll be putting together teams to go to locations near Split and Zagreb in pursuit of these tiny dynamos. The sport will be quail over pointers at either end of the day (avoiding midday heat), and ‘cultural’ activities in between. As always with pointers, the ideal team size is 4, and the standard package is 2 days sport, 3 nights accommodation. If birds the size of angry bees are your thing, get in touch.

When game birds become protected species on February 2nd, trigger fingers across the country begin to itch through lack of use. Simulated game, or game clays as I like to call them, provides the remedy for many of you each year. From April until mid-July we offer days on several locations in the South, or we can bring the sport to you. Unlike driven shooting where the line is limited to 6 to 10 guns, we work on 12 to 18. Perfect for everything from team building to wedding guest amusement, we’ve organised days for it all. From fully catered with wait staff and candelabras to picnics in a hay barn or sandwiches from the boot, we can do it all. For the lone gun or incomplete line, we have a number of scratch days throughout the simulated season. Get in touch if firing upwards of 400 cartridges a day sounds like fun.

My sporting passion began with rod and line, and every year as the buds burst and the days lengthen I am drawn back to my roots on the river bank. Whether your pleasure is still water or river, novice or experienced fisherman, we have opportunities to flick fluff at trout for all. Days are booking up rapidly, but remember you can always fit in an evening’s sport after the office closes with some of our waters catering to the afterhours fisherman.

A Lewis Year: Four Seasons Six Species One Day

Howard — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Fortunately, excursions to the Outer Hebrides aren’t made or broken by the weather…for dour folk, the Hebrideans are weather optimists: whatever comes next, it won’t be the same twice. Very like the sport. After grouse, the odd snipe or passing plover, and a whatever the collective noun is for 3 salmonid species, we’d stretched FlyBe’s weight limit with kit and headed north.

All I can say is we didn’t see snow. There were plenty of coveys – Scottish National Heritage‘s commitment to mink trapping real seems to be paying off with groups of 5 or 6 replacing the twos and threes of previous seasons (turn numbers are on the up, too). The wind was determined to make its presence a factor: moments of absolute stillness, broken by the midges, had the dogs befuddled by lack of scent. A couple of hours later, and we had birds out-racing Superman and needed elastic for our hats. In between, we managed some excellent shooting, bagging braces of birds in great condition.

The variety of fishing normally offered by the island’s lochs, burns and rivers from boat and shore was supplemented by the challenge of a generous wind. It provided some excellent gifts (two minutes of video of our man in the Hebrides clinging to a rock by his prehensile Northern toes, fishing all the while…priceless), and plenty of brown trout. Their larger cousins rolled at the occasional fly, but stayed warm and wet out of the wind.

Well worth it for the sighting of a sea eagle and a peregrine sharing the same sky, not to mention stags, seals and numerous golden eagles, we still have a couple of spaces for walked up woodcock for this season, and are booking up fast for next year’s grouse over pointers. Get in touch and go wild.

Grouse Afoot: The Need for Speed

Howard — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:00:21 +0000

I’ve just stopped long enough to reflect on the truly glorious Glorious 12th we had in Yorkshire… I’m in the throes of complex packing for more walked up grouse (this time over pointers, not people) in the Outer Hebrides. You would think that with numerous seasons trekking back and forth, I would have mastered the intricacies of packing my 20kgs for FlyBe. Alas, I will still be racing to unlace my grouse boots at security (too heavy to pack).

These pictures reflect some of what I love best about fieldsports: great company, unbelievable weather (despite the Met Office forecasts otherwise), the best of British scenery and of course incomparable sport.

For years I have been championing the ‘outside day’ in all its beautiful forms. From an amble along a hedgerow in Wiltshire to small driven ‘farm days’ in Hampshire or Lincolnshire, to grouse over spaniel, pointer, or gun in Scotland and Yorkshire. I’ve even braved the mother-in-law to track down the US equivalent in No. 2′s native land. And finally the rest of the world has caught on.

Small driven and walked up days have been flying out the door with all the speed of grouse with the wind up their bums. I sent our mailing list a newsbite with the latest offering late last night, and by morning tea it was gone. If you like what you’ve seen in the pages of this blog, then the best way to find out about our days is to join our mailing list. We don’t share your data, or abuse the priviledge. And we certainly don’t expect a response to every newsbite (although we love hearing from you).

Famous Grouse Underfoot

Howard — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:00:47 +0000

For every keen shot, August 12th is a red letter day in the sporting calendar: the glorious 12th, the start of the grouse season, harbinger of sport to come. This year I took a mixed bag of guns to enjoy the 12th and 14th on the moor above Grassington, North Yorkshire. The lovely Elizabeth and her larger than life other half Joe welcomed us at Ashfield House, and remained unfalteringly pleasant despite the array of car alarms, barking dogs, and merry guns I deposited on their doorstep. We trekked north for the priviledge of shooting over Grassington & Conistone moor, a fabulously managed and extremely productive grouse moor kept under the eagle eye of three exceptional grouse keepers.

All the effort in burning heather, worming birds, vermin control, and pedantic focus on the health of the moor has paid dividends. We were tripping over grouse: two brace were flushed before the guns had even lined out. Four grouse virgins popped their cherries on the 12th, and a further four on the 14th. And while there was doubting the grouse were the stars of the show, the rabbits filled out the bag and the day with amusing sport. Walking up grouse without the aid of spaniels or pointers was a first for me, and would lead to some very quiet days on less productive ground.

The excitement was rounded out by the presence of the illustrious 2nd generation labrador trainer John Halstead Jr. I’m possessed of a reasonable good, very steady lab, but watching a pro of John’s calibre handling his dogs with knife edge precision at hundreds of yards was like watching an Old Master paint.

I always think the success of a day is reflected in how quickly people book for the following season: four days have disappeared in flash. We do get last minute offerings once the keepers have a better idea of how the season is going, so join our mailing list to be kept abreast of all our offerings.

Walked up..and Up…and UP Grouse

Howard — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:40:50 +0000

What better way to start the season than three days spent tramping behind the dogs? Grouse over pointers makes you appreciate the beaters on driven days, and the quarry everyday.While the Yorkshire moors are producing record counts and predicting a fabulous season, in the Highlands we were being more selective, taking only old cock birds and leaving the young to fly on.

Unintentionally, the trip turned into a bit of a father and son event, and it was wonderful to bask in the glow of shared experience. With Will holding down the fort for the next generation, his father had to work hard to keep up. By day three, Mike’s prowess was being challenged by a son who shot his first grouse on day one. I look forward to years of shooting in their company. With muscles screaming after months of disuse, we hauled ourselves across the hill after the dogs, and in hot pursuit of the keeper. By day three, the sight of the boat waiting lochside to retrieve us came as a welcome suprise to the guns. And yet no sooner were they speeding away from the hill, than they were discussing their return.

An entirely wild quarry, grouse breeding and rearing success determines the availability each year. We sell shooting on a first come first serve basis, and with grouse that can mean waiting until August to find out if there are grouse for you to shoot. Your patience is well rewarded, but we do advise booking early to avoid disappointment. This is as true of driven grouse as it is of walked up. Any late availability is always posted on our mailing list.

Spey Casting

Howard — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:02:52 +0000

Occasionally a plan comes together, and I pack the right equipment to make it happen. The estate we have been shooting grouse over pointers on happens to have the River Spey running right through it. This means three things: the potential for brownies, salmon, and fabulous whiskey.Although we didn’t fish it in anger, and didn’t expect the big returns being recorded closer to the sea, all the guns took the opportunity to relax by the river each evening. Even better, everyone caught even if the fish were the same size as the flies.