The Folly Shoot Leicestershire

The kind of shoot you’d want to say you’d been to before everybody else knew about it.

- Martin Puddifer

Taking on a new position is always daunting, especially when the success of the previous incumbent has left you with big shoes to fill. In Wall Street villain Gordon Gekko’s book you either do it right or you get eliminated, and that same sentiment (and pressure) applies to those throughout the various leagues of commercial shooting, all of whom live and die by the strength of their last day.

In all my years at Shooting Gazette it has always been a great pleasure to meet young people who are charting their own course, be they a fledgling sporting agent, apprentice gunsmith or gamekeeper – each and every one respectful of the past but also brimming with new ideas. All have had that mixture of ambition and fearlessness which comes with youth, the fire in their hearts fuelled by a desire to show passive detractors, those who might refer to them as “young man” or “young lady”, that they really are the future of our sport and therefore command a certain degree of respect for taking the baton in an increasingly uncertain world.

I had a lot of respect for James Herrick even before we met on a decidedly crisp Saturday morning in Leicestershire last November. The way he had written to Shooting Gazette to present both himself and The Folly gave more than a hint he was confident his shoot would be the kind readers such as yourself would want to visit. There were no platitudes in his pitch. Here was a 20-something with heaps of measured confidence keen to share his shoot with a wider audience, and in only his second full season there, too.