Shooting Times & Country Magazine
STUART MAUGHAN
In 1976, fresh out of Sparsholt College,
Stuart Maughan knocked on the door of the then headkeeper at Whitfield. He was in luck — there was a vacancy for a trainee underkeeper. Today, Stuart heads a gamekeeping team of eight and is widely regarded as being at the top of his profession. Whitfield is famous for the quality of its driven birds, attracting repeat visits from some famous names. About 60% of Guns come from right across the UK, with the rest coming from continental Europe and North America.
lengthy random flurry, which was great fun and allowed the teams of two to practise changeovers on their pegs. Then it was back in the vehicles and off down into woodland to lunch at an outdoor barbecue site, with game burgers and sausages aplenty courtesy of Ox Close Fine Foods. The event organisers were keen to ensure that the youngsters experienced the social side of shooting.
At the end of the lunch, the youngest of each pair of shooters came forward to pick a peg number. Then it was into the 4x4s and off up a rough, rocky track on to higher, open ground with spectacular views. The Guns lined out at 10 pegs spaced along a stream-bed gully littered with
boulders. Only sporadic patches of moving water were showing after the dry summer. Grassy banks clothed in patches of white grass, gorse and bracken loomed above.
Perfect terrain
Whitfield’s terrain could have been specially designed to show gamebirds at an advantage. The fact that the estate has changed hands only once since the 12th century gives you an idea of the way they take the long term seriously here. The estate shoots over a total of 15,000 acres of remarkable landscape, officially designated an
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in south-west Northumberland.
Well-managed mixed woodland perched high above an incised river valley produces some of the most challenging driven pheasants in the country. As for partridges, the high grassland intersected by stream beds can show really strong-flying birds right from the start of the season. Higher up, the estate has 7,500 acres of highly productive grouse moor.
There were two successive partridge drives, each lasting nearly an hour. The birds just kept coming and they did unpredictable things that clays can’t — they accelerated, climbed, turned and curled. The challenge of picking a target out of a blizzard of birds is considerable, but this is where the chaperones come in. Is it a safe shot? An ethical one? Not surprisingly, people get excited when the sky is black with birds.
Sixteen-year-old Amber, whom I watched smashing clays with great success in the morning, couldn’t manage to hit much on that first drive. Yet when I spoke to her after the second drive, she had started connecting, as evidenced by her broad grin. Thomas, aged 14, got three with his trusty .410.
The second drive went much the same as the first. Ben, aged 15, shot well and among his birds were two real screamers. Louis, aged 13, managed six. His 12-year-old team-mate, Jack, dropped five and was hoping to equalise when the horn blew. I had seen young Annabel swatting birds out of the sky. I later asked her how many she had got. “Enough,” she replied, wisely. She’ll go far.
The excited babble of voices at the end of the second drive included tales of who did what that will undoubtedly become part of family folklore. Once everything had been picked, we set off back down the roller-coaster track to the valley, returning to the lunch site. Here there were refreshments and demonstrations of gun cleaning and how to prepare a partridge carcass. It marked the end of a wonderful day of shared enthusiasm for old and young alike.