Laying a foundation for sporting success

Combining the best drives of two Essex syndicates is a real game changer that results in some very fine birds, says Simon Garnham

- Simon Garnham

Anyone who has ever organised a rough shoot will know the awkward relationship between bag size and perceived success — something you might call the Goldilocks conundrum. I still feel disappointment following a day for neighbours I organised when the entire bag was four pheasants and three partridges. It felt too little. Yet I remember with great happiness and pride the day for Royal Marine mates when the total bag was one pheasant — shot by me. It felt just right.

Someone with a mathematical mind could probably put together an equation where b equals bag size, e equals expectation, w equals weather, h equals hospitality and so on to create the ideal formula for rough shooting success. I’ve recently come to a simpler conclusion as to what makes a great rough day.

A clash of dates had been causing headaches. The Saturday before Christmas is always a busy one on the shooting calendar. But this season has been more congested than ever with November written off due to the pandemic and many fixtures condensed into fewer possible days.

Loyalties

Around here in North Essex — and I imagine in most regions — certain key people are stalwarts of more than one shoot. It’s true of my own little affair, my friend Liam’s professional set-up and my lamping buddy ‘Ballistic’ Bob Feaviour’s shoots. If a Venn diagram were drawn with each of the three shoots represented by one circle, there would be a lot of names in more than one circle and several in the middle. I didn’t want to cause any division of loyalties or headaches for my shooting mates, especially when I knew that a number of key beaters had had to cancel for Covid reasons.