Mrs Down's Diary
With no shoot organised for the last weekend of the shooting season, John and I arranged our own exclusive outing. I walked up the game strips with Holly, our spaniel and John waited with Meg our labrador to see if any game was flushed.
A covey of five English partridges whirred away to my right, but they were safe, as John never shoots them. Far tpo precious. What we were after was cock pheasants. The birds are already starting to pair up and at the moment we have far more cock pheasants than hens. A little culling is called for to even up the numbers.
The plan was for John to stand at the edge of our wood to cover any birds flying back to the safety of the trees. Most flew too low for him to lift the gun and many flew too wide for him to take a safe shoot.
For the full feature read West Sussex Gazette february 16