The Country Girls Game Season has now come to end, this was our first full season since officially starting as a business in November 2020 and at 1 year old, we could not have wished for a better season.
With a total of 14 sold-out days, 120 women attending game days and a whopping 39 firsts!
When we say firsts, we mean our ladies who got their first-ever birds. We are so proud of every single one.
Most of these ladies started their shooting journey with The CGUK by attending our tuition days, then our simulated days and now attending and smashing our live game days.
The determination of our ladies to learn, improve and just get out in the field, fills us with so much pride.
Thank you, ladies this is why we do, what we do.
We added 2 new types of days this season that we haven’t previously done before, Beaters Days and a Wildfowling Day, the first Beaters Day sold out within 10 minutes!
We Kicked off our Game Season on 30th October in the Midlands, nestled in the Severn Valley at the Arley Estate with David Beardsmore shooting which was solely a driven duck day. 8 out of our 16 ladies got their first ever ducks and for 5 of those ladies it was their first ever live bird, what an amazing start to the season and after torrential rain the day before the sun shone bright for us all day.
On the 6th November The CGUK headed up North to Durham to our main Country Girl herself, Tania Coxon’s hometown for her local shoot at Plawsworth. This weekend saw everyone come together for a wholesome weekend where all the ladies stayed together in accommodation and celebrated the nights away. 2 more of our ladies got their firsts that weekend. A particular season highlight for me was those high pheasants on the very last drive coming over the thick woodland, meandering the River Wear, putting on a fantastic display of fantastic gamekeeping, simply wow!
The following day was our Wildfowling weekend which was lead by Alex McDonald and his team of 5 guides from the Norwich and District Wildfowlers club. This whole weekend was a fantastic package, it included one overnight stay in a luxury spa hotel, a morning flight on the geese and an evening flight on the ducks. This was all bar one of our ladies first attempt at Wildfowling and was described by Tania as a completely different ball game. The opportunity to be guided into the marsh by experts of the land and the hard graft that went into it by all, was bloody awesome, unfortunately due to the lack of wind the geese didn’t play ball, but our ladies still had an amazing weekend and learnt a lot from their respective guides.
One of the following shoots was Farr Estate which lies in the magnificent scenery of the Monadhliath hills about 20 miles south from Inverness and we had 9, yes you read that right, 9 firsts on this shoot… wow! Our ladies travelled from all over England and Scotland for the chance to shoot at such a gorgeous shoot and what a weekend it was. We had ladies getting their first pheasants, partridges and ducks that weekend. A shoot that won’t be forgotten for a very long time by all that attended.
1st December was a time for a few more firsts, one of which was for our founder Tania, where she celebrated getting her first Canada and Greylag Goose in one night. A few of the Country Girls arranged to go flighting one evening when an opportunity was presented to our founder to get a team together extremely last minute. The ladies had a fantastic evening in Yorkshire and ended up going back more than once after this evening with different groups of ladies from our Yorkshire membership.
Our ladies are always learning and always wanting to try something new, we were asked several times “how can we try a day’s beating?” from that we decided to trial a Beaters Day, the response was phenomenal, and the day sold out within 10 minutes! On 20th November we had our Beaters Day at The Nutwith Cote Shoot in Masham, after a full English and a day in the field with a lot of walking but a lot of fun, our ladies were educated on how a shoot day properly runs and our ladies left with a wealth of knowledge to help them on their beating and shooting journey, a goodie bag from Stoney Creek, some cash at the end of the day and a smile on every single face.
Ever been on a shoot where you’re feeling like you’ve experienced all 4 seasons that day? This was our day at on 4th December at Clerkhill Estate settled in the heart of Langholm on the Scottish boarders. The day started off very mild and sunny, clear blue skies where you could see for miles across the gorgeous views in the hills of Dumfries and Galloway, the temperatures started to drop throughout the day and by the last drive there was a snow blizzard, and you could see 1 meter in front of you. The ladies were asked if they wanted to call it a day or to continue shooting as the birds at this point were getting a bit fed up of the cold weather too… like true Country Girls they continued to shoot. 2 more ladies went on to get their first.
This season we ran 2 Christmas Shoots on 11th December, our shoot at Ampton Estate was so popular in 2020 with a huge waiting list and this season was no different. We also put a Christmas shoot on for our Scottish ladies at Edradynate Estate in Perthshire.
Ampton is set in the gorgeous county of Suffolk, this is the popular shoot with THAT duck drive, this shoot saw quite a few of the same faces as last time along with some new faces – 3 of which shot their first. Edradynate Estate offers over 30 drives on 2000 acres of the estate with the varied topography that stands on the high sharp valleys on the River Tay that allows for some phenomenal high quality pheasant shooting.
Unfortunately, with Covid still around causing havoc the gamekeeper and most of the beaters at our next planned shoot came down with the dreaded C-19 and had to call off the shoot 4 days prior to us all arriving at Wrekin.
Our Tan determined not to let her ladies down and to get them out shooting again before the season ended. Somehow managed to pull it out the bag and organised a fantastic last-minute shoot and that’s how we ended up at Leigh Manor on the Shropshire – Powys border. The team at Leigh Manor were absolutely fantastic and so helpful with the circumstance the ladies found themselves in. Everything happens for a reason and what a day that turned out to be with two more of our ladies getting their first birds.
Our last day was finally upon us, did we save the best till last? All our shoots were amazing in their own way, and we’ve only touched on a few in this blog post to give readers an idea of the range of shoots we offer. Pretswold Hall on the 22nd January was a perfect shoot to finish the season, with 2000 acres of beautiful arable land in the Leicestershire countryside, our ladies were smiling from start to finish. The laughter and cheers along the gun line were contagious as the beaters and pickeruppers got involved in the banter throughout. The hospitality was second to none and the newly converted barn was the perfect location for our final shoot dinner. Safe to say we will definitely be going back to Pretswold Hall next season after another 6 of our ladies got the buzz with their first ever birds throughout the day.
We are so excited for our next game season after the huge success of our first. The atmosphere on our days really is second to none and you can see that throughout the imagery and videography on every single one of our shoots. We are so excited for the future of CGUK!
See you next Season…