10 hardy souls turned out for the Fuellers 18th Game Day, held this year on Tuesday 10th December at Brook Farm, Cuffley, Herts. This is our third year shooting at Brook Farm, a very conveniently located shoot, close to London, just outside the M25.
We usually start organising the Game Day a year in advance, as many shoots are booked up that far ahead. We take the whole day for Fuellers and friends and this year we fielded six Fuellers, two Plumbers and two colleagues.
The event was billed as a 175 driven bird day, with a mix of partridge and pheasant. The weathers was mixed, starting with some hazy sunshine, turning to squally showers later on.
Although we aim to shoot 4 drives in the morning, have a hearty luncheon and then finished with a drive or two after luncheon, we agreed with the shoot that, due to the declining weather conditions during the day, we would push for the full bag before luncheon on this occasion – No one likes to get back in to wet cloths after a nice warm luncheon.
Brook Farm present birds well, plenty of them and reasonably spread out over the drive and a good mix of partridge and pheasant on each drive. We fielded a good team of guns this year, with everyone shooting well. In fact, we agreed to only take the more challenging shots during the first two drives, so as not to take too many birds too early in the day.
This worked well as we achieved 86 birds by the end of the second drive, with two drives still to go. We therefore relaxed the restrictions for the final two drives.
For the first three drives, most of the guns were positioned in the fields, around woodland cover. The last drive however was in woodland, which was a nice change in shooting style. I had an interesting moment as, half way through the drive, what appeared to be a rather large pheasant heading my way, landed on a tree branch about 30 yards in front of me and I realised it was in fact a Peacock. It remained sitting on the branch for the remainder of the drive, so I continued shooting but avoided shooting in its direction.
After finishing that drive, we headed back to the farmhouse for luncheon. Part of the fun of the day is a sweep stake, to guess the total number of birds killed and the number of shots fired. Each gun put in £10 and the proceeds are shared between the winning gun and the Farm’s chosen charity, the Countryside Alliance.
In the end, we shot 198 birds, of which 104 were pheasant and 94 partridge. A total of 614 shots were fired, which equates to a reasonably respectable 3.1 cartridges per bird.
On this occasion, team captain, James, won the draw and announced that the £50 would be donated to the Fuellers Charitable Trust Fund.
If you would like to join us next year, please contact James Hill for details.
The Guns relax beside the shoot bus during a midmorning refreshment break.
Left to right, David (shoot owner), Archie Smith, Ashley Parsons, Nick Hazlett-Beard, Bill Barr, Arthur English, Mike Ball, James Hill, James Cripps, Penny & Simon Malik.
