Read about last year’s winner and the unforgettable day’s driven grouse shooting he enjoyed
With the grouse shooting season now underway it seems the perfect time to offer you this unique opportunity to win a day’s driven grouse shooting for eight in the heart of the Angus Glens.
You can find out more about the prize here but first why not read Claire Whitehorn's account of the unforgettable day enjoyed by last year’s winner, which first appeared in our members’ magazine:
A grand day out
Hampshire farmer Lindsay Marshall has religiously bought raffle tickets from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust each year for more than 30 years. It never occurred to him that he might actually win anything.
When he received a phone call from the Grand Grouse Draw organiser Hugo Straker in December telling him he had won for himself and eight friends a day’s driven grouse shooting on Scotland’s fine Garrogie estate with all associated accommodation and hospitality, he took some convincing that this wasn’t someone playing a trick. It wasn’t. “Happy Christmas!” said Hugo.
Lindsay personally issued the eight invitations and eight times experienced again, vicariously, delight and surprise at his luck. It turned out that three of the nine guns, including Lindsay, had been grouse shooting before but not for some time, and the rest had always meant to.
Beautiful moors, great weather and warm hospitality
When the nine guns and supporters finally drove over staggeringly beautiful moors past blue and shining lochs to Whitebridge, they were met with blazing sunshine.
The Whitebridge Hotel provided warm hospitality, small acts of kindness, outstanding country cooking and allowed dogs to treat the place like home. Soon the party was beginning to feel that they’d won not one raffle but three. The weather raffle, the hotel raffle and, finally, the grouse raffle.
The Garrogie estate is owned by the Connell family, who warmly welcomed the guns at the lodge. As they arrived they could see a long line of beaters’ vehicles already snaking up the hillside. Surprisingly, some of the beaters were violinists from the great orchestras of Europe who for many years have enjoyed spending their summer holidays stomping across this wild terrain in the fresh air.
Soon the convoy was threading its way up slopes that felt practically vertical. From time to time it passed a group of birds chattering to each other at the trackside. Then they took off suddenly and simultaneously like small, speedy, low-flying arrows. Mr Connell Senior smiled.
So many grouse
The grouse count was already beginning to look like a gross underestimate. He said: “You don’t know how happy it makes me to see so many grouse.”
Stopping at the top of nowhere, 360° of moor stretched as far as the eye could see. Underfoot was a treacherous combination of heather, boggy peat ravines known as hags, small rivulets and hummocks of flora.
The guests stumbled into hags, tripped over heather, slipped into water and had to be dragged up steep sides as they looked for their pegs, well-camouflaged in their butts of peat and heather.
Guns who had asked for guidance on their first grouse shoot were joined by a Connell or our good-natured organiser, Andrew Dingwall-Fordyce. After much discussion about safety, they were finally all at the ready.
Listening to the moors’ deep, deep silence they waited. And then...Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a host of tiny Exocet missiles flew towards the butts.
The beginners quickly learned the rules. The beaters appear in a line on the horizon and, as soon as they are 200m away, a horn blows and you turn and fire at the grouse as they are driven over you from behind. Easy, eh? No. But by the end of the first drive all nine guns were addicted.
A chance to unwind
There were four drives that day and when the Connells invited us all for a slap-up homemade tea afterwards, no one could stop smiling, not even the dogs. Norman Stoddart, the patient and kind gamekeeper who ran the day so efficiently, announced that we had shot an almost respectable 86 and a half brace.
After that, dinner was an even jollier affair. I surveyed the happy faces around the table, not least that of the lucky winner, and it seemed that everyone involved had conspired to deliver a prize none of us would forget.
Enter our 2016 Grand Grouse Draw
If you’d like the chance to enjoy a day as memorable as Lindsay’s enter our 2016 Grand Grouse Draw online. Tickets are £2 each, sold in books of 20.