I shot my last driven day of the season on Saturday: in the last 5 years I have been invited as effectively a “half-gun” on a driven boar (technically grand gibier; big game) shoot near the Loire, about 2 hours South of Paris.
We typically shoot 20-24 guns, 3 drives, in a mixture of mature forest, wood and heavy scrub, with a few adjoining fields. The typical bag is 20+ animals: mainly boar, but a handful of roe and red deer. The bag/tag limits on reds (sex, number of points etc) are so strict that I seldom take the risk of potting one! My main take-aways come from these years, and perhaps 50+ individuals drives, plus talking to my colleagues, and watching neighbouring guns. I hope they might be of help for anyone going on a driven shoot in Europe for the first time:
I realise this comes too late in the season for most people, but hope it might be of interest for anyone planning a trip next autumn. It’s a particularly addictive branch of our sport.
We typically shoot 20-24 guns, 3 drives, in a mixture of mature forest, wood and heavy scrub, with a few adjoining fields. The typical bag is 20+ animals: mainly boar, but a handful of roe and red deer. The bag/tag limits on reds (sex, number of points etc) are so strict that I seldom take the risk of potting one! My main take-aways come from these years, and perhaps 50+ individuals drives, plus talking to my colleagues, and watching neighbouring guns. I hope they might be of help for anyone going on a driven shoot in Europe for the first time:
- Ranges in forest/wood are seldom long: if you have a scope (see below), zero for 50m and be done with it. My longest shots have all been well under 100m (across fields), and most closer to 30m.
- Don’t get hung up by calibre: boar are big targets, and fall/wound relatively easy, especially compared to most of the deer we have in the UK. We shot with almost everything upwards from .270W through 7mm (x57, x64, WSM, WinMag) to 9.3mm, and all work; we had very few runners. I normally borrow my friend’s 9.3mm x 74R, but would feel perfectly well-equipped with my UK .308 Tikka T3. I would just prefer 180gr bullets.
- There really is no need for a scope in a typical driven shoot: ranges are laughably short. Both my friend and I shoot un-scoped double rifles to no disadvantage. This year on our shoot un-scoped guns have consistently achieved twice the average of the overall bag. I have learned far more by practising with a shotgun on a clay range than any amount of time on a rifle range.
- Learn to shoot with both eyes open, and then practice (see above). You need to keep an awareness of terrain, cover, the other animals and (heaven forbid) other guns (and their dogs) in the drive. A scope may narrow your field of vision unless you consistently keep both eyes open. If I ever start shooting with a scope, it will only be a red dot, not anything magnified.
- Learn to be still (and then practice!). We shoot from miradors: wooden platforms/pulpits raised about 4ft above the allee. Unless you are lucky enough to have a tree directly in front of you, you are extremely visible to the animals being driven out of the chasse and, if they see you (or hear you), they will move along the inside edge until they find what they think is a gap. It is absolutely fascinating when you can watch boar watching you, and working out where to run. It is well known that almost all our quarry animals are super-sensitive to movement, and so I make a point of holding my rifle vertical straight in front of me, butt resting on the rail of the mirador. I stand very still, and just move my head very slowly from side to side, to scan the wood. When I see or hear an animal, I stop moving altogether, and only move the rifle into my shoulder and start turning once the animal is within 5 metres of the allee, and so in effect committed to cross it. Sounds obsessive (and is remarkably tiring), but I got more than twice the number of shots of any other gun last Saturday (and many other days).
- Unlike driven birds, boar, in particular, often come out of the wood well after the beaters and their dogs have passed you. So don’t drop your alert state until the final horn. And don’t start fidgeting!
I realise this comes too late in the season for most people, but hope it might be of interest for anyone planning a trip next autumn. It’s a particularly addictive branch of our sport.
