A great thread this and good to see some quality contributions from my fellow Englishmen, especially Diggory who I had the pleasure of shooting in the line with several times this season.
Straight off the bat, I would recommend "Classic Game Shooting: The English Art" by Tony Jackson. It is quite an old book now and tough to find, but given that driven game shooting has its origins well over a century ago, it is pretty timeless.
As previous posts have stated, driven days can vary enormously in size, formality, complexity, characters and structure to name but a few factors. I have shot for over 20 years now, and had the privilege of starting young, being tutored slowly and with safety and quarry recognition/respect always at the forefront of my training. I went "beating" in the line of the local shoot for all of my teenage years which provided a superb opportunity to see the workings of a shoot from the ground up and often assisted in the close season. The one "beaters day" which I was gifted at the end of each season for the work undertaken throughout the winter was a cherished day and I still remember many when going back through my shooting diaries.
As time has gone by, I have been fortunate to expand my experiences and have enjoyed many different days across the UK. I have never had a bad day because there are so many facets - it is not about pulling a trigger and indeed some of the best days have been those where few shots were fired, but those that were were always memorable and the company, landscape and quarry more than made up. Equally some of the poorest days have been those with plenty of shooting but with fellow guns who were often there simply to kill things and didn't appreciate the entire day for all of its elements. Each to their own.
My days have ranged from anywhere from 30 birds on an informal walk/stand "driven" day to 200+ bird days with very formal drives, much of the hidden etiquette one rarely learns from books, and birds presented in an incredibly challenging fashion. I have used a number of guns including an over-under 12 bore of 20 yrs age, and now use my 1870 Reilly hammergun for all of my shooting bar wildfowling on the coastal foreshore. Over my time shooting, I have definitely noticed a shift away from side-by-sides to over-unders, and this is in a very "traditional" shooting area of the UK - Norfolk/East Anglia.
