Across the pond

Gamekeeper Andy Gray had to be on his mettle when a group of Americans visted Yeat Wood Farm, says Nick Ridley

Most shoots will have at least “one big day” in their calendar. This means that either the Guns are looking for a good number of birds in the bag or it is a day when some important guests are shooting. This puts pressure on everyone concerned with running a shoot day.

Towards the end of the year Yeat Wood Farm hosted a day for some American Guns, business associates of the owner of the shoot. The aim was to give them an idea of how a driven shoot is run here and a chance to bag some driven game.

Difficulties

Andy, the gamekeeper, had to remain flexible as timings kept changing and, due to other commitments, the guests could only make a weekday afternoon. This in itself made things challenging as trying to get beaters and pickers-up who were available during the week was not easy. Fortunately, a few of the regulars managed to rearrange their diaries and a small team of six beaters and two pickers-up met on a very dreary afternoon. If nothing else, the Guns would experience some proper British weather. It was decided that due to the timings of the shoot, the duck would be flown from three of the six ponds and then there would be two short pheasant and partridge drives out of a couple of the smaller blocks of cover crops. Andy did not want to shoot too late into the afternoon so as to give the birds time to get back to roost.

Advice

All of the Guns had loaders, mainly to advise them as to what was happening and when it was OK to start shooting as none of them had experienced driven birds before. The first lot of duck were pushed off the pond from behind the farm buildings and it wasn’t long before they were at shootable height. The duck on Yeat have been a real success and although driven duck may not be to