Day 1 - 7 Species in 3 Days - Shooting the Scottish Highland's

Alex had seen one of my posts on a UK shooting forum, and having enjoyed hunting, shooting and fishing around the world himself, and knowing how difficult it can be, he was quick to email me and invite me up to the Scottish Highland's between Christmas and New Year's. The trip got off to a horrid start, with the bus from London to Inverness running 2 hours behind schedule, not great when I was meant to get in to Inverness at 11pm. To make matters worse, the bus left us at a layby at midnight, and told us taxis would be taking us the last 2 hours! Eventually a 5 seat taxi turned up to transport 11 of us. After another delay, a van finally arrived and we were off.
No sooner had we left Perth, than our taxi driver and an oncoming car drove right into a herd of cattle that had escaped and were on the open road. Both cars were written off, and several cows killed. It was horrific, but the fact that there were no human fatalities was a miracle.
After waiting two more hours, I finally got to Inverness where I was met by Alex and his lovely wife Elsa just before 4am. We got two hours sleep, before we were off to hunt Red Castle, where we all hoped, my luck would improve!

Red Castle, was until recently, one of the oldest inhabited houses in Scotland, with its last residents being recovering RAF pilots during and after the Second World War. The original castle here was first constructed in 1179 and was known as Edirdovar. The present building is dated at 1641 - making it 200 years older than my home country of New Zealand!

Day 1 at Red Castle was very warm, as had been the preceding weeks, and Alex and the rest of the crew explained to me that that was bad for us. The warmer than usual weather meant the pheasants were likely to roam, rather than continue to feed at the feeders which meant  numbers would be down as they left our hunting area in search of naturally available food. That being said, many of the crew turned up, with us split into two teams. One team would beat and drive the birds to the other team who would be standing guns, then after each drive, we would swap around. This was to be my first driven Pheasant shoot, anywhere in the world.

My team and I started off beating, and I flushed 3 cock birds as we walked the hill country. Those, along with other birds flushed gave the standing guns plenty to shoot at, and we had our first pheasant in the bag!

The second drive gave me my first chance as a standing gun. A cock bird came through, but it was flying behind trees and shrubs, which deflected the pattern - another way of saying I missed him! I was lucky enough to have a Roe Doe walk right up to me before taking my shot, she stood there for 10 seconds, 15 meters away, then wondered off into the forest - Awesome!
Throughout the day, we saw a number of birds, and one of the lads even managed a couple of Woodcock! I was happy for him, but very jealous at the same time, having missed a tough shot on one myself. It was one of the birds I was hoping to bag while away from New Zealand. The Woodcock are migratory birds that come over from Finland and Russia to winter in the UK. They are tough to hit, and taste delicious...or so I've been told!
On the last drive of the day, I had two cock birds flush towards me, about 20 seconds apart. I dropped them both, giving me my first ever driven pheasants. It was nice to be shooting them in the head and chest, rather than as they are quartering away, which is how they normally present themselves over dogs, They were moving a bit faster than I'm used to, flying up high, having the wind behind them. They were great sporting birds and I was chuffed to have been given the opportunity to bag them.

After we had finished the drives for the day, where I had seen a good number of Pheasant, Woodcock and Roe Deer, a few of us decided to have a crack at some Greylag Geese that were feeding in a nearby field. 5 of us were to pick a spot on a fence line, while another one of the lads flushed the geese up. It was only a small mob of about 20, so this seemed to be a logical way of targeting them, rather than trying to decoy them the next day. I hadn't hunted geese with anything other than a semi-auto in years, and never with a side by side, so this was to be a first - especially as I'd never shot Greylag Goose before either, as they are only farm-yard geese back home, not game birds. These Greylag Geese were a totally different story, having migrated to Scotland from Iceland for the winter. I took a look around, noticed a few tress along the fence line, and read the wind. I hoped that these geese would perform like ours, so I figured the wind would blow them into my line, and they would stay away from the trees on my left and right. Soon enough, with their traditional honks, I heard them take flight. chancing a glance up, I saw happily they were coming within range of me, and with a pull on each trigger of the side by side, I added Greylag Goose to my days bag! What a first day shooting the Scottish Highlands. My first Goose outside of New Zealand, my first truly pure-bred, wild Greylag Goose ever, and shooting driven pheasants in the shadow of a castle older than my country - it just doesn't get any better than that! I couldn't wait to see what Alex had planned for the next day!