There have been a trend in presentation of challenging driven birds, the higher the better the presentation. How high is too high? Is it sporting to use these birds as target practice? I am not talking about the bag, they are raised to be harvested. But to only shoot at high birds and possibly wounding them is not ethical in my humble opinion. Here in the states we rough shoot and the sporting thing to do is not take pot shots at birds that are out of range. I have even seen adverts for Argentina dove shoots touting their challenging "high" bird presentations. Come on how challenging is it to shoot at a flock of hundreds or even thousands of birds, you're bound to knock something down even when you miss your intended quarry.
On a UK driven shoot it is up to each gun to conduct himself in an ethical and sporting manner. It is unsporting to shoot at very low birds; the sporting gun declines those easy shots. The ethical gun also declines birds that are too high. Although generally speaking in driven shoots the birds are going directly or nearly directly at the gunner. The gun is therefor shooting at the most vulnerable aspect of the flying bird and good, clean kills are consistenly possible on birds that I would guess are 45 to 50 yards high. This is in my experience, others' mileage may vary.
Now, it is true that very high pheasants (archangels, to use the common description) have become somewhat trendy in the UK. Those extremely high birds are not for me. But as a previous poster said, those birds are a cash crop to the owner and every effort is made to retrieve each bird.
