Introduction To The Mountgarret Shoot
Edd Morrison has now taken on Mountgarret from his dear friend Frank Boddy, who has developed the shoot into what it is today, a Grand day out as Frank would say.
Edd Morrison also owns Dalesport Sporting agency. Which he runs along side his shoots and his trusted team at Dalesport manage the selling of shoot days and administration at The Mountgarret shoot.
The Mountgarret Shoot is made up of two North Yorkshire Estates. Mountgarret Estate covers 1,900 acres and Nidd Estate 2,100 acres. Both Estates cover a total area of 4,000 acres and run together just north of Harrogate in North Yorkshire.
The land is best described as rolling countryside with woodlands established over many years to produce quality sporting birds. These are complimented by areas of well-placed wild bird cover which produce a variety of testing drives.
Our young team of Keepers lead by Callum McIntosh and assisted by Tommy Hesmondhalgh and Fred Kay have shown what can be achieved with hard work and dedication. In addition we have an excellent team of beaters and pickers up who have shown they can present some testing birds.
Cooking Partridge for
Elevenses
We offer days to remember with a combination of testing birds in convivial company with delicious meals and refreshments. All set in Gods own County, our beautiful North Yorkshire Countryside.
A day with The Mountgarret Shoot is “Just how a Proper Driven Shoot Day should be” or should we say, this is what we always try to achieve!
We are often asked what do we enjoy about running a shoot. It certainly does have its challenges but these are soon forgotten once in the company of like-minded people from all walks of life and the real characters driven game shooting seems to attract! One aspect of the shoot we really enjoy is to plan a new drive and to see it work, it may take a few times but we normally get there!
There is no doubt that driven game shooting is increasing in popularity and am delighted to see more ladies and young people are taking up our sport.
So what is different about our Shoot. Although we welcome full teams, we particularly cater for single guns and small parties. We encourage novice guns to join us providing they have had some clay shooting experience and have an experienced shot or one of our loader/instructors standing with them. We would be disappointed if an individual gun joining us for the first time did not feel at home within a few minutes of arrival.
Planning the days is a challenge in itself as everyone seems to have quite different priorities. We plan each shoot day just how we would expect it to be if we were in the line of guns. The following is how we would hope our shoot days will be but as always anything can happen!
• For the shoot to be hosted in a relaxed no rush manner with refreshments throughout the day.
• To shoot with a convivial team of like-minded people.
• Once on your peg not to have to wait ages for the birds to show. A mix of pheasant and partridge achieves this.
• To be presented with challenging birds but not impossible, spread over the whole line of guns on each drive.
• To have fellow guns who are selective and respect their neighbour’s birds.
• To be able to work my dogs at the end of a drive without the birds already being vacuumed up by the pickers up.
• To experience a full days shooting with four or five drives and achieving an excess over the target bag without being charged an overage.
• To have a tasty lunch with decent wine not cheap plonk!
There are many other aspects of a shoot day but if we can achieve these we are sure everyone will go away happy.
We hope this gives you an idea of what to expect. However we must never forget we are always faced with our unpredictable weather and wild creatures. So some days will certainly be better than others.