For those who haven't done driven shooting, the shoots featuring mostly tall birds (around 50 yards or higher) are the exception rather than the rule. Mainly because those shoots require a combination of the right terrain (and trees) to cause the birds to fly that far above the guns.
Just your standard, every day driven shooting--where a 40 yard bird is unusually "tall"--is sufficiently challenging for those who haven't done it. And it's the kind of shooting the big shots (like Ripon etc) did back in the day. Basically relatively light and not very tightly choked sxs. For high birds, you're talking something like a sporting clays gun, long-barreled and quite tightly choked OU. Heavy. 1 3/8-1 1/2 oz loads of Brit 5's or 4's, compared to the 1 1/16 oz loads of Brit 6's (close to US 7's) that were the classic driven bird load, and still work quite well on shoots where a really tall bird is the rare exception rather than the rule.
