A shoot for the ages – and for Tom

We held The Boat Shoot in the last week of the shooting season. This is our annual rough shoot poking about the bits of ground owned by my elderly cousin Tom. It’s a fabulous spot on the river, an old ferry crossing (hence the name Boat).

Over the years he planted up the few acres with native trees and beech hedges, ideal cover for birds. He’d been ill for some time and we knew this was likely to be the last shoot. But I had strict instructions we should go ahead regardless.

So we formed up in brilliant sunshine: myself and Waffle, James from next door and our regular sporting pal Alf with Tippet, his young black lab which is so attached to him she spends a lot of time literally under his feet; so helpful on a 45 degree slope in thick undergrowth.

In fact she excelled herself, much inspired we decided by Waffle who like all cockers worked flat out and Tippet took her lead. (Talking of work rate, friends report a 14km hike up Snowden. Their dog, some sort of hunter pointer retriever, fitted with a GPS tracker, covered 84km.)

As an extra treat we took in a bit of Alf ’s ground nearby, across the river from a big shoot whose birds come over to sun themselves on the steeply rising banks. Three cocks and a rather motheaten pigeon later we repaired to Alf ’s fishing hut for raspberry gin, diet coke and a fag on the veranda in the sun.

Back at the Boat for sausage rolls, we performed the time honoured tactic of bringing the wooded track down with one person and a dog with the other two standing at the bottom. Nothing. If we had thought more about it we would have realised the birds had moved out on the edge of an adjoining wood to sun themselves. No sooner had we arranged ourselves strategically round the wood and sent in the dogs than the place exploded with more birds than we had seen in years, flying in every possible direction except the right one. I missed two. James, through no fault of his own was in the wrong place. But Alf shot a hen which fell the other side of the river. Unbidden, Tippet went for it. Straight into the 30 yard river, across some low but swirling rapids, picked the bird and headed back, swept swiftly for one agonising moment downstream, only to emerge triumphant at Alf ’s feet. Much jubilation and congratulations.

By the end of the day the bag had crept up to eight pheasants and the pigeon, a huge success by Boat standards. Tom would have loved it. It was his sort of day: endless small stratagems and cunning ploys for, after all, not a huge bag. Two hours later we learned he had died, on the day of his shoot. ■