Holkham shoot day worth £17,500 tops Countryside Alliance draw

A 175-bird day at Holkham, donated by the Earl of Leicester, is the prize in the Countryside Alliance’s Christmas draw, with tickets at £100 and every penny of the proceeds funding the organisation’s work for shooting. The draw closes on Monday, 14 December, with the winning ticket drawn on Wednesday, 16 December.

What does the winner get?

The prize is a day for up to 10 guns at the North Norfolk estate, one of the country’s great sporting addresses, with a mixture of pheasant and red-legged partridge and a combination of wild and released game. The Alliance promises sport across Holkham’s woodland, farmland and historic parkland, with the hospitality for which the estate is renowned and transport around the shoot provided. The day is valued at £17,500. Holkham’s shoot runs across some 25,000 acres of coastal North Norfolk, and its keepering team’s conservation work on the estate, from wild grey partridges to wintering wildfowl, has long been held up as the model of what a great shooting estate gives back to its ground.

Where does the money go?

All proceeds go to the Alliance’s Campaign for Shooting. “Game shooting is coming under increasing scrutiny, with the government’s recent Call for Evidence on gamebird rearing, release and shooting in England being just the latest of many threats facing our sport,” said Adrian Blackmore, director of the campaign, in the Alliance’s mailing to supporters. The campaign works with the Alliance’s political and media teams to promote shooting’s benefits and to make sure decisions are informed by science and evidence, he said. The Alliance thanked the Earl of Leicester for what it called an enormously generous donation, and said the draw is its chance for supporters to back that work while taking a shot at a once-in-a-lifetime day.

What are the rules?

Tickets cost £100 each, with a maximum of 30 per purchase, and the draw is open to residents of Great Britain and Northern Ireland aged 18 or over, under the Alliance Foundation’s Gambling Commission licence. Payment is by debit card only. The winner must ensure every gun on the day holds a current shotgun certificate or visitor’s permit and insurance cover of at least £10m, and only cartridges with biodegradable wads may be used on the estate.

What happens next

Entries close on Monday, 14 December, through the Alliance’s draw page, and the winner will be drawn two days later, in good time to plan the day itself for the back end of the season.