Cocking Shoot West Sussex

We clatter along the road in the back of the shoot trailer, chains clanking loudly. Ahead, lies a day of high birds and good humour.

- EWAN DAVY

The jovial gathering bubbles with anticipation as Clive Fowler, responsible for marshalling the guns, announces the first drive: The Bumps. A tangible ripple of anticipation reverberates among the merry band.

“The birds are challenging here. They spit out high from the apex of the ridge then hug the contours, descending rapidly. It’s a very testing first drive,” remarks host the Hon Charles Pearson, who rents Cocking Shoot in West Sussex from his brother, the 4th Viscount Cowdray.

As we debus, we cast our eyes skyward, tracking the line of the steeply rising woodland clinging precariously to the face of the escarpment. Swiss financier Urs Schwarzenbach takes a deep breath and asks, with a degree of trepidation: “Is my peg at the top?” Major David Waterhouse replies, “Yes. You’re going to need oxygen.”

Fortunately, for Schwarzenbach, he’s stationed at the foot of the looming woodland slope. The news is not so good for renowned art dealer Simon Dickinson, who has to clamber, grasping at clumps of grass, to his peg: a slit trench carved into the chalk hillside. This is not a drive for the faint hearted.

Guns safely positioned, Fowler gives the beating line the go ahead over the crackling airwaves and from the heavens, birds descend. Some stay high; others jink like slalom skiers, flicking wings as they drop rapidly and curl over on the guns. A former slalom skier and Cresta Run competitor himself, Schwarzenbach takes two in style in front while Anthony Burrell drops a towering cock bird that tumbles for an eternity before hitting terra firma and careering on down the precipitous slope.