Shooting Times & Country Magazine
True birds of paradise
Will Martin spends a memorable first day of the season in Wales, shooting beautifully presented partridges that fly high and fast
The air goes still. Silence descends, like a mist filling the valley, a thin veil of peace. The Guns stand waiting; in the words of Shakespeare they “imitate the action of the tiger: stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood”. Guns raised in anticipation, waiting, waiting, then a flutter, a cry of “over”, and it begins.
The first day of the season is akin to a military operation. Weeks of planning and apprehension; breeks to be drycleaned; shooting socks, intent on losing their partners, to be found; guns to be serviced and a quick run on the clay line, proving once again that a summer of fishing hasn’t improved my shooting.
But, oh! The excitement, the adrenaline! I carefully placed my gun in its case, barrels gleaming, set the satnav to Tregoyd, Hay-on-wye, pulled out of the drive and hit the M5.
As the traffic closed in, so did the weather. Buckets and buckets of rain poured from the heavens, lashing my windscreen and only worsening the already gridlocked motorway. Five hours later and having been diverted on several wild goose chases down small Welsh tracks, I made it.
I was welcomed at Tregoyd farmhouse by my host, keeper Clive Hussell, a fellow Devonian. He cut his teeth as an underkeeper at Castle Hill shoot in Devon before taking over Tregoyd five seasons ago. In those five years Clive and his team have created what is widely regarded to be one of the top 10 shoots in the country.
With the backdrop of the Black Mountains and steep valleys, I was in for a treat. I was staying, along with four other Guns, at Tregoyd’s farmhouse bed and breakfast. Hillary and her family moved into the house three seasons ago and provide 24 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE Tregoyd with its shoot room and the most fantastic feasts, which I was later to sample. My room was huge, with an even bigger bathroom. I changed and went down to meet my fellow Guns before we set off to the pub.
As with all shooting, it is as much about the team you are with as anything else. And what a team we had — all bar two with a connection to the legendary Castle Hill. Stories of high pheasants and, more importantly, the frantic efforts to keep them where they should be, bounded round the table. I have never learned more about holding pheasants and how gamekeeping has changed over the years than during that dinner.
After the best chocolate cheesecake I have ever eaten, it was back to Tregoyd for much-needed sleep. I would need to be well rested to shoot to the standard of this lot.
After dreams of coveys of partridges, I was woken to the smell of breakfast cooking and quickly donned my breeks, shirt, tie, waistcoat and cap and headed downstairs with all the excitement of Christmas morning. After
“Then the senses heightened, waiting for that first flutter — that wingbeat, the crack of a beater’s flag”