Shoots Honoured at 10th Purdey Awards Ceremony

Castlevennon Shoot, described as "an oasis of keepered land"

By Selena Masson

Friday, 27 November 2009

A 100-acre shoot from scratch, a fowling club next to an oil refin ery and a pioneering grouse moor all win top awards

Last week London gunmaker James Purdey & Sons celebrated the 10th anniversary of its annual Game and Conservation Awards with the top award going to Castlevennon shoot, near Banbridge in County Down — the first-ever Purdey Gold award for Northern Ireland.

At the ceremony at Purdey’s celebrated Long Room last Thursday, shoot owner John Gibson was presented with the annual Purdey trophy and a cheque for £5,000 for his creation, from scratch, of a small shoot over 100 acres of former dairy farmland in an area not naturally suited to gameshooting. The award was presented by Vicomte Bernard de La Giraudière, chairman of the champagne maker Laurent-Perrier UK and founder in 1986 of the forerunner to the Purdey Awards, the Laurent-Perrier Awards for Wild Game and Conservation.

Richard Purdey, who has organised the awards since 1999, said: “John Gibson’s entry richly deserved a Purdey Gold Award. Not only is it a firstclass conservation project, the shoot being an oasis of keepered land in the midst of an intensive dairy farming region, but it was the owner’s clear vision, planning and execution which caught the judges’ eye.”

The rest of this article appears in 25th November issue of Shooting Times.