Spoiled For Choice

A day at High Park, an invitation to shoot beautifully presented pheasants, driven grouse or flighting a pond — which is best?

Sometimes I find it difficult to decide what sort of shooting I like best. I love my High Park days, of course. I used to think of them as semi-organised days, when chaos and confusion were never too far away. That was when I was in charge, but headkeeper Tony Smith has brought order to my little shoot and it is all the better for it.

I think our guests enjoyed themselves at our second shoot (Days of deep pleasure, 13 December); I enjoyed myself enormously. I only shot three birds — with four shots — but I was well satisfied. I am perfectly happy watching pheasants fly, especially if they fly well, and watching other people shoot, particularly if they are good at it.

Behind a High Park day there now lies much forethought and careful planning, but if our days are better ordered and more tightly run than in former times there is still an air of informality about it all: the feeling that a group of friends have gathered to shoot a few birds and enjoy time in each others’ company. We laugh a lot. At the end of a successful day at High Park, I feel that I need no other sort of shooting and there is the additional satisfaction of knowing that I have played my part in all the work that goes into the making of the day.

Now and then I am invited to slightly more formal driven shoots, where you wear a tie and stand in the line all day while others do the hard work. There are beaters to flush the birds, pickers-up to do what their job description suggests and your job is to swing your gun and pull the trigger.