**Syndicate now full for 2010/11**

We are taking bookings for individual days. Click here for details.

We sometimes have vacancies for our Shooting Syndicate situated 5 miles West of Barnard Castle. Close to the A66 and the borders of Cumbria, Durham and North Yorkshire it is convenient for travel from a wide area. The shoot is laid out over undulating and challenging ground in Upper Teesdale, the shoot is south facing with steep banks down towards to River Tees and amazing views over the North Pennine Grouse Moors.

The shoot extends to about 450 acres of woodland which was planted on Heather Moorland from the 1950’s onwards. Over the years large areas have been cleared and replanted meaning there is a good mix of ages and species of Timber. Unlike many areas of woodland we have excellent ground cover with areas of heather, bilberry or bracken cover – all hold Pheasant’s and Woodcock. An extensive felling & regeneration programme has left us with about 50% of our ground “open” and this combined with deep gills, valleys and hills mean we can present very testing birds. Shots vary from high curling birds from hilltops over open ground to snap shots in mature Larch.

Syndicate members have access to excellent closed season Pigeon flighting and Rabbit shooting.  Rabbit shooting with the shotgun, rifle and air rifle is good from early spring onwards. The best of the Pigeon flighting is late in the afternoon from late June until September. Members are welcome to utilise these facilities after “booking in” via our own internet forum to check no one else is on site.

Commencing early October we start formal Driven Days and these take place every fortnight until the New Year, these days take place on a Saturday plus one day over the Christmas/New Year Holiday. On a formal day the bag is made up largely of Pheasants and Mallard but we do also have excellent falls of Woodcock, an odd Grouse appears in the bag. Bags vary immensely but at their best may top the 100 bird mark before falling in late season to somewhere nearer the 30 mark. That said potential guns do need to view our shoot to appreciate just how testing the ground and our birds really are – we have witnessed some terrible cartridge/kill ratios on both our Pheasants and Duck! To illustrate this we have just had a couple of guests at a Driven day and 49 cartridges fired on the duck drives saw a return of 4 birds and there was a similar figure on the 3 Pheasant Drives!

On driven days we employ a small team of beaters and syndicate members must either bring their own beater or pay £25 per day and the shoot captain will arrange a beater for them

A good bag from a cold December Rough Shoot Day.

This season we have 14 shoot days scheduled of which 12 are on a Saturday.

We have 5 ponds on the shoot and 3 of these are used to release our own Mallard. From September until Christmas the 2 “spare” ponds are used to flight wild ducks at evening flight and after Christmas all ponds are used for wild duck flighting. This duck flighting is on a rota basis.

New for 2010/11 we are setting aside an area of rough ground that members can shoot on their own on a limited number of days during the game shooting season. This area will be well fed to attract Pheasants and it will perhaps give members the oppurtunity to combine a visit to the shoot to do some work with chance to walk up a few Pheasants thus making the journey more rewarding.

On site we have cooking and rest facilities that members can use to make a days visit more comfortable. 

Shoot subscriptions for 2010/11 will be £899 for "working guns" and £999 for "non-working guns". Working guns are expected to attend seven work parties a year and to help with the feeding and welfare checks on a rota basis. These feeding duties and welfare checks will require members to visit the shoot to work on a further 14 occasions per year but they can combine this with shooting activities to make a journey worthwhile. There is a one off joining fee of £50 and BASC membership is extra.

The syndicate has 11 members.

contact info@paddlesdown.co.uk for an appointment to view.