Using lighter loads for high pheasants

Forty years ago our shop manager – noted shot and Clay Pigeon Shooting Association stalwart Chris Cradock – returned from loading on a Yorkshire grouse moor. Asked how he’d fared, he started chuckling, explaining that half of the 10 guns were paying guests from a European country who had brought over thousands of 36gm, No 5 shot cartridges that they were convinced would help them dispatch plenty of the August grouse. Over two days, he recounted, these Mediterranean gentlemen had each fired around 150 cartridges a day (with the result that some of them looked as if they had “done 10 rounds with Joe Frazier”), with an average result of 10 birds a day; while the local guns, who made up the rest of the party, averaged around 30 birds a day each for between 50 and 70 cartridges and had used Eley Impax loaded with 1oz No 7.