Fantastic weekend for the Guernsey Boys

Picture: The Guernsey Boys before the start

As most of you know by now, I am a keen shooter and assistant game keeper on two local estates in Newbury. This weekend we had a visit arranged for the Guernsey Boys, who we have known for many years who love to come over and shoot a few pheasants, get drunk and party hard.

This week was no exception!

They arrived on Thursday afternoon so Chris, my game keeper friend and I popped down the pub for a quick one and to meet some of the other guns in the team who we didn't know. As usual, this turned into a bit of a session, however both Chris and I made a carefully planned exit as we had to be up early to sort out the final arrangements and prepare for the day's sport.

Lucky for us we did go early, as the guys arrived at the beaters hut looking a bit worse for wear!

After a few cups of coffee and a carefully planned wind up for one of the new guns who had never shot at live game before (this involved an imaginary game licence which was required, which of course everybody had except Andy, who has been looking forward to this trip for months. After a few moments searching himself for something he knew he didn't have, we could not hide our amusement any longer and he twigged....this really broke the ice and settled him down to the job in hand!).

Picture: Andy looking for the licence he never had!

I wont bore you with the blow by blow account of the day, but they all had a few shots and enjoyed themselves.

The next day, we went off to Thame to Chris's dad's shoot - a much smaller but nevertheless enjoyable shoot, with very different scenery and different type of drives. Again a great day had by all.

Chris also managed to convince me to bring Jasmine, my Labrador pup, out on the Friday for the first time. I was a little nervous as we were still bonding, but as usual he was right.

Jazz performed very well and really got the message of what she will be doing in the future - Holly and Amy did the business as usual and Chris's daughter Becky and her dog Holly were brilliant working with me to pick up dead and injured birds.

I am now on a "no drinking" week - my liver is groaning under the strain of 3 days solid booze, but it was really great to see our old friends - we will of course have to have a re-match away in Guernsey in the New Year....