Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Chalk and cheers
A traditional shoot on the Wiltshire downs gives Tim Weston a taste of very challenging red-legged partridges in glorious countryside
Sometimes, you arrive at a place and you know there is something special to come. The Great Durnford estate in the south-west corner of Wiltshire, one of England’s most rural counties, is such a place.
The estate stretches across the rolling and sometimes steep Wiltshire downs that show some truly fantastic partridges during the early season and tall, testing pheasants in the colder winter months. It also has one of the finest flyfishing beats on the Hampshire Avon with free-rising brown trout.
Early September is the right time to be starting to shoot partridge. The weather might not have been ideal for shooting on the day we visited but it was perfect for the beach, which is not uncommon at this time of year. That is what September partridge shooting is about; warm longer days, shirt sleeves, beaters in shorts (well, here anyway) and testing, high, twisting birds. Growing up in this part of the world,
I am very fond of shooting in September. Some say it is too early to shoot partridges, but they are often the same people who are out on 12 August on the grouse moors. As long as the birds are adult and ready, there is no reason not to start on the opening day of the season.
The shoot lodge at Great Durnford is one of the best that I have seen. The beaters’ room, which is part of the same estate centre, is comfortable and modern with wifi, under-floor heating and his and her loos. At Great Durnford they pride themselves on doing things “properly”, both on and off the shooting field.
Conservation is a key aspect of the shoot. “We have a varied array of game coverts, which we have changed to add more diverse habitat for all wildlife,” says estate manager Matt Gentle. “We grow lots of wild bird mixes alongside the more traditional covers such as maize.”
The shooting doesn’t seem to be compromised by the diverse coverts, with every drive giving the team of guest Guns some extremely testing shooting. The coveys of partridges were expertly flushed by the beaters, overseen by keeper Tom Paul. He managed to spread the line on all of the six drives during the day and at lunchtime the shot count was around 1,000, which is no mean feat. The estate has a commercial farm, but it is set out in such a way that it can balance what it does to work with the shooting.
“As a modern-day keeper, I feel that I am leaving the land in a better state than when I got here”