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It was a wonderful end of year 3 days shooting in East Anglia, for myself, my wife and two great hunting / shooting friends of ours from Germany. Nick Elsdon of Anglia Sporting UK put the programme together for us at my request - 3 very different days of exciting sport in Norfolk and Suffolk between Christmas and New Year's Eve.

We drove from Germany on the 27th December in two cars through Holland, Belgium, France, under the English Channel on the train - Le Shuttel - and then up to East Anglia, where we checked-in at the 'Bell at Sax', a comfortable village hotel in Saxmundham, with a good bar stocked with local plus international beers and spirits plus a great restaurant serving really excellent food!

The first day was just the four of us shooting over HPRs. Nick arranged for 4 HPR owner / handlers to join us at the Walberswick shoot and with them working two dogs at a time we enjoyed a wonderful day of mixed sport hunting woodlands, hedgerows and crop fields. The dogs - two German short hairs, one German wire hair and a Spinone Italiano - worked wonderfully pointing, flushing and retrieving shot birds throughout the day for a total bag of 21 birds. We finished the day with an alfresco buffet of cheeses, cold meats, beers, wine and sloe gin and champagne in the beaters hut before heading back to Saxmundham, tired from a days walking and shooting but very happy!

Saturday December 29th, we drove up to Norfolk where we were joined by 4 more guns for a day of rough shooting. It was a mix of walked up and mini driven where we walked fields of sugar beet, kale, barley and plough and worked some smaller woods and hedgerows finishing the day with a bag of some 26 birds between us including an English grey partridge that I shot out of a large covey of greys that we put up on the plough and a very high teal that Anja dropped in the last light walk up / drive on the marshes. Our friends had brought along their German hunting horns and played them when we laid out the bag at the end of the day. Something different on a Norfolk farm rough shoot!

With no shooting on Sundays, we had the day off and after a late and lazy English breakfast, we visited the coastal town of Southwold along with thousands of other holiday makers. We skipped the fish and chips but enjoyed tea and cakes in a traditional English tea house. Fun.

Monday, New Years Eve, was the climax of the trip with us all out for a day of formal driven pheasant and partridge - tweeds, ties, breeks, shooting socks and flashes, the full works! We meet at the shoot at 08.45 and after introductions to the 4 other guns that we were shooting with plus a short safety briefing from Nick (all legal quarry allowed except ground game, live on pegs, we would try for 6 drives and stop for 'elevensies', shoot safe and have fun!) we drew our peg numbers and boarded the shoot bus. We shot through the day, breaking for elevensies and sloe gin and champagne (again!) and managed 7 drives before calling it a day. The beaters, dogs and all the helpers worked superbly with some great partridge and pheasant flying over us throughout the day. Drives 3 and 5 were great with plenty of fast and tall birds. We laid down a bag of 178 birds at the end of the shoot, not far off the 200 planned bag. And we then sat down together for a shoot fish and chips dinner at the local pub in Walberswick, The Anchor. It was then thanks to Nick and the keeper, Nigel, and with a brace of oven ready partridge each, we headed back to our hotel for a fun filled New Years Eve dinner and drinks.

Here the photographs to add colour to the text on a day by day account.

Day 1 - over pointers




































Day 2 - rough shooting












































Day 3 - 200 bird driven day!







































From the Beaters Shed wall ....





For those that are interested - between us we were shooting a 12 bore Purdey, a 12 bore Lebeau, a 16 bore Sauer and a 20 bore Browning. On the rough shoot one of the other guns commented on the number of side by sides on the day, whereupon another guest replied 'well they are all Europeans'! That made me smile. We shot Hull size 5 fibre wad cartridges which seemed to do the business pretty well and all birds that were hit fell pretty much straight away. We had a couple of runners over the three days which were 'collected' by the dogs.

Nick arranger our Visitors Shotgun Permits with the Sufflok police. Pretty easy process. We declared our guns at the Channel Tunnel on entering UK, showed our licenses and were waived through without the guns being checked. The same on leaving the UK.

The dogs included the 2 German shorthairs, 1 wire hair, the Spinone, various labs, springers, cockers and a sprocker or two. It was great seeing the dogs work. Thats half the fun in my opinion. I really enjoyed shooting over the Spinone on the first day, he was much slower than the GSPs, but worked very confidently and methodically, perhaps more matched to my slower aging years than the faster German pointers! A great dog to shot over.

We saw a lot of game during the trip - whilst shooting we saw woodcock, pheasant, partridge, snipe, pigeon, duck, geese, crows, magpies and jays, muntjac, roe, Chinese water deer and fallow deer. I saw one muntjac that was huge and would have made any stalker's heart beat faster! Interestingly we also saw a lot of road kills including stoat, badger and fox. East Anglia clearly has no problems with game numbers!

Richard, the hotel Chef, cooked and served partridge one evening. We brought back 4 of the birds that we had shot. That was a memorable meal!

It was a fantastic end to our 2018, great mixed shooting with great friends and it did not rain once over the 5 days that we were there!

A big thanks to Nick and all the dog handlers, beaters, flankers, pickers up, bus and game cart drivers and all others that were involved making our three days sport so enjoyable! And thanks to all AR readers for coming along too!

Happy New Year 2019!!



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Wonderful report! Exiting days, love the variety of drives!

Now that is a GRAND way to close out the year! Well done, and thanks for sharing.

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Just found this one - love it!



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Excellent report ,great photos ,everything perfect .I loved these dogs .Thanks for sharing Charlie ,im always waiting for your posts .
Cheers Juan

Wonderful report and photos. Congrats on a fantastic time, thanks for sharing.

Very nice pics Charlie, what a hunt!

Looked like an excellent mix of rough and driven shooting with just a hint of tourism thrown in to keep the ladies happy! Well planned and executed.

Great dogs ,birds and traditions ,thank you for sharing .Hope to meet you soon .By the way im drs Pozzi son .
Cheers IKY

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Iky, Thanks and look forward to meeting in 2020! Have promised your father that we are coming over!!

Cheers

Charlie

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Wonderful experience! One ofbtgsss days...