Now that the clocks have gone back, it’s a good time to reflect on what has been a busy couple of months since the partridge season opened on the 1st September. As has been well reported, the grouse season was seriously curtailed by the weather with many days cancelled although there were a few moors that did okay. Our thoughts are with the keepers, beaters, picker-ups, hoteliers, and many other rural businesses who have all missed out on some much-needed income. New legislation has also come into play in Scotland with all grouse moors now having to have a licence to maintain the uplands of the north. If this licence is used to continue to promote best practice, then we can only add our support to these licences. The use of snares in Scotland will also be illegal from the 25th November.
The partridge season around the UK and Spain has been a great success and we’ve been lucky enough to catch up with old and new friends from the UK, the US, Canada, Sweden, Belgium, France, Spain, and many other parts of the world. The team in the office have been flat out arranging every detail from Visitor Shotgun Permits that are valid for a year, to bespoke transport and luggage arrangements, gun and equipment hire, specific cartridge requests, and any other details that any of our teams require – we still maintain that we offer the best possible chance of sporting excellence wherever you shoot. Our service of individually invoiced guns within teams is also proving popular as this just takes away the hassle from the team leader in having to chase guns for monies and then details for a day’s shooting.
Our pheasant season is just getting going and the leaves are trying to fall off the trees, but this seems to happen later and later every year.
With regards to best practice within the shooting community, it’s great to see so many estates embracing the Aim2Sustain and Trusted Game Assurance Schemes and we hope guns will continue to demand that wherever they shoot, estates have been audited to ensure best practice principles are in place. We feel this is crucial to maintaining sustainable shooting going forward. Please also remember to support all the various shooting organisations that continually work on our behalf.
We still have some availability for teams and individual guns throughout the UK, Spain and the Czech Republic and Rupert Edgedale is also hosting a trip to Argentina in February. If we can help with anything then you know where we are.
Wherever you shoot for the rest of the season, have fun, engage with everyone in the field, eat as much game as possible, and let’s all stick together in terms of promoting and supporting the sport we all love.
