Kinmel Estate

STOP PRESS: 2006/7 SEASON NO LONGER AVAILABLE

“She laments, sir... her husband goes this morning a-birding” The Merry Wives of Windsor

There is little better enjoyment to be had for the sportsman than to get amongst those quarry species that are truly wild - the ones that cannot be reared and presented by ’keepers so as to satisfy guarantees. Most Estates have followed logic in this respect and have realised that, if their shoot is to be able to balance the books, then reared pheasants can be predictable, reliable and thus they can present a given number of birds to their paying guns. Woodcock, snipe and wild duck are generally now seen as purely the preserve of the pot-hunter out on his own with his dogs. There are still, however, a very few sporting Estates that continue to offer just this type of sport to teams of guns; Kinmel is such an Estate.

Offering this style of shooting is not without its drawbacks, however. There is an old adage amongst the shooting fraternity that, if you find your coverts full of ’cock, you do not write to your guests and say “The woodcock are in, so can you come and shoot here next Thursday?”- you must instead get on the telephone immediately and say “The woodcock are in: come at once !” The great Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey suggested that “here today, gone tomorrow is a woodcock’s motto”. The modern age, of course, does not allow us to drop everything at a moment’s notice, and indeed we cannot organise all of the myriad things that go with a successful shooting day (beaters, pickers-up, transport, accommodation, etc) in under twenty-four hours; instead we book our days in advance and pray that things have turned out as our forecasts have allowed. Accordingly we cannot, for example, offer any guarantees on shots fired or bag sizes, although it may be said that we find our duck and snipe to be (just a little!) more reliable. Species variety is something of a Kinmel forte: on one day during the 2004/5 season a team of eight guns shot eleven different species, eight of them game, comprising pheasant, woodcock, snipe, mallard, teal, wigeon, tufted duck, shoveler, pigeon, jay and squirrel. Indeed, one gun managed to shoot seven game species to his own gun over that single day- a remarkable achievement by anyone’s standards. The last weekend of the 2005/6 season yielded a bag of 27 woodcock, 3 pheasant, 3 snipe, 17 teal, 4 mallard, 2 wigeon and 2 pigeon: a weekend few of us will forget, least of all the beating team who put up over 120 woodcock.

A typical day’s shooting at Kinmel will comprise: a duck flight on the night of arrival, to be followed by supper with the Estate owner, and a day’s driven and walked-up snipe, woodcock and duck shooting, with lunch provided at the Kinmel Arms, Les Routiers’ Inn of Wales and the Marches 2005/6. For more information, including prices and booking, please contact Dickon Fetherstonhaugh at the address below, or by email.

“Getting my first woodcock at Kinmel was fantastic, bettered only by getting my first snipe in the same day- I shall definitely try and come back to get my right-and-left! The atmosphere, scenery, food and company were first-rate.” Will Dobson, Wiltshire

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Hamilton House, Kinmel Park, Abergele, Conwy LL22 9DA

Tel: +44 (0) 1745 826263 dickon@kinmel-estate.co.uk Fax: +44 (0) 1745 833502