doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Dave Carrie Shooting

He has evolved through a series of Miroku O/U's, his early videos show a MK 38 Trap gun. The Forend and 10mm tramline rib identify it clearly...This model was a popular choice with UK Sporting shooters seeking a 32" "Sporter" before they became a wide spread offering from numerous makers.... The usual treatment involved a lowering of the trap stock and custom choking of the fixed 3/4 and Full choke barrels , or the addition of Teague thin wall chokes.....
I believe he may have been instrumental in getting Browning/Miroku UK to introduce the modified MK60 "High Pheasant" Models to the market...

He appears to be shooting a pair of them in later videos.
They incorporate higher stocks, lightweight 32" IM&F tubes and a 6mm game rib to enhance target view at long distance...

In his most recent video releases he appears to have had custom Monte Carlo Stocks added to this or a similar pair....

These MK60 "High Pheasant" guns have been a runaway success in British game shooting circles....

He is a skilled SHOT no doubt about it.

Great video here. He talks about his MK 60 at the 4:07 point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdBVAKwgnyU
JR

And he only has 1 eye.

I saw it, Thanks John.

Ripley Castle is just up the road from me, Its a commercial shoot and very well run and organized from what i know and the people i know who go regularly either to shoot or in the beating and picking up lines.

That being said from what i hear while the birds are definitely very good and i wouldn't want to discourage someone from going i would question weather they are as high as some of the other shoots near by. This is not to say anything bad about the shoot but just that the land over that way is generally flatter lower lying land.

Some of the other shoots a bit further out have an advantage in that the landscape is hillier or because it has been made so for the benefit of shooting, or by utilizing old quarrys or are just on hilly land.

The landscape plays an important part in driven pheasant shooting, every shoot operates at the whim of the wind and weather. Generally the drives will be driven so as that the prevailing wind gives the best advantage to the birds whilst also beating birds towards the center of the land shot over so as to stop the birds from straying on to un shot land or onto another shoot. Round this part of yorkshire there is a lot of shooting going on!

I think what is important to distinguish is that shoots are run at all different levels here in the UK and that commercial shoots run very differently to those which are not run for a commercial gain.

Commercial Driven shooting in the UK is really in crisis though many would like to pretend it is not.

In the old books the sale of the game from the first day of shooting would pay the beaters wages for the whole year, this is no longer the case, back in those days all meat was relatively expensive and game would be a premium seasonal meat with a ready market, hence the prolific numbers of active poachers in those days.

Nowadays beaters are paid ( depending on the ground and how hard the walking is ) between �25 for pheasant beating ranging up to �50 for grouse in my experience, so between $35 and $70 dollars for the day. On a commercial shoot you might have 20 or more beaters and pickers up as well as loaders and other support staff in the season who help with the running of the day, fuel costs and everything else all in, presuming �25 for the day and 20 beaters the wage cost for the one day is already �500 before thinking about any of the other support staff, which might include people driving the game cart, pickers up, chefs. Presuming the guns are a team of 8 shooting a 500 bird day over six drives its only averaging about 10 birds a drive to each gun, which on low birds might be easily manageable within 30 cartridges per drive - If you present higher birds, you can give the guns more opportunity to shoot and it will be harder work for them to get the bag and thus, the guns have a better day out, even if they dont get the bag, they cant complain about a lack of birds if they have 2000 shots between them on the day. If guns complain then they game keeper is safe in his job knowing that the guns have had every opportunity to shoot the bag.

To Guarantee that the bag that has been paid for will be shot they will probably want to be seeing 1500 birds somewhere near the guns all day. The cost of raising the birds in the summer and keeping them and presenting them over the guns for that day will exceed the value of probably all the birds shot all season. Selling 500 birds in the feather at the end of a shoot day is not easy as at the same time every shoot in the country is also trying to sell them. 25 pence per bird is not uncommon (50P per brace) so commercial shoots get bigger and bigger offering more of an experience to the guns and charging more money for it to cover the massive costs involved in running the shoot day. The end product becomes a by product of the sport and this is the sad reality. These commercial shoots are having large bag days twice or even thrice a week, so the number of birds being put down are huge, and respectively so is the glut of shot birds.

Commercial shoots are massive employers, in places like where i live, young and old, men and women are involved in shoot days in the season, and the economic benefit of these shoots in these areas is without question. But i think its important that we consider what the industry might look like from the outside, and also the wider reaching ecological effects of the practice. The facts laid bare is that there a lot of birds being raised and shot that there is no market for, a healthy market for the sport but not a healthy market for the end product, the contamination of lead in the meat makes it difficult to try and sell in international markets or even for dog food - People might not like what I'm saying but the shooting community in the UK is a TINY minority compared to the rest of the population, i think in time we will have to find answers to some difficult questions posed by those who are not predisposed to support shooting in the first place, and I'm not convinced the economic argument will cut the mustard.

The reason this worry's me is that this is not a reflection of the shooting that i have taken part in since my early teens and that driven shooting will be tarred with the same brush. Thousands of small syndicate and family shoots operate across the country, shooting does not happen for commercial gain, on the syndicates i have been part of for the last 8 years, the cost of the whole season is shared out between the 16 guns in the syndicate, we are split in two teams and take turns to beat for each other, known as "walk one stand one shooting", the numbers of birds to go down in the summer is decided at the meeting, and we usually expect to shoot about 50% of what we put down across the season the shoots are generally made up of local people and a community is formed through that syndicate of people who enjoy their sport together, know the land and the quirks of it and over years develop and understanding of how to beat and present the best birds for each team, this sort of shooting is not without its difficulties, but at the end of the day the birds usually ranging from 50, to 100 in the bag are split between the 20 people there and taken home. If your incredibly unlucky you can stand all season and only fire off a couple of shots. A lot of land is managed that might otherwise be neglected through this less intensive shooting and small groups and communities might be lost. On our syndicate we put down about 1000 birds give or take in the summer and have a part time keeper, the cost for each gun is �650, we shoot on average 8, 60 bird days, - in reality you might have only 30 or 40 birds in the bag at the start and end of the season but might get close to 90 birds in the middle of the season. This is affordable shooting and over the season i probably spend �1000, in my syndicate subs, fuel, cartridges, and whatever else i need for the day.

I'm not saying commercial shoots are evil and they definitely have their place, but for a long time shooting has been getting more expensive and if a market could be found for the end product it would be the best thing that could happen for the industry.

Insightful commentary. Thanks you, DW444.

SRH

I love shooting and got involved at a young age beating on local syndicate shoots. There is an image or heritage and tradition and good company sold with shooting which is a passion of mine and has shaped my entire way of life, that being said standing in echo chambers is great, but it doesn't solve problems, the shooting community in the UK is a fantastic asset and massively important for rural areas BUT what we must remember is that most of the population has a pretty poor opinion and understanding of shooting and "blood sports" and that with the internet just as we form our own communities here anti's are highly motivated, with little education of the facts to work against us and are more likely to win the support of an uneducated public who think all pheasant shooting is for toffs and aristocratic hangovers living in the past. I think we need to face facts sooner rather than later else in my lifetime i might be traveling to America for some driven shooting, and i don't think i could bare the shame!!! ( Only joking guys! ).

If you come Demonwolf bring one of those James Purdey shotguns with you and I'll take care of it for you. Just so you won't have to carry the thing across the pond all the time.

Very interesting discussion. Those Miroku shotguns are far better looking than what Browning sells here and can be had with fixed chokes. Can they be imported to the US?

Splendid reporting. Demonwolf. Thank you.