May is the traditional time to shoot the young rooks before they get strong on the wing, and in late May we caught up with Shooting Show shooting supremo David Virtue to continue the yearly tradition. We have two tools for the job at hand: first the air rifle for a rookery close to a barn, then the shotgun for a larger rookery nearby. David goes after the branches while three English guests take the opportunity to bag some adult rooks. It’s fast, frantic shooting, all the while achieving the twin objective of providing some much-needed population control and filling up the annual rook pie.
Meanwhile, producer Wes Stanton visits Longthorne Guns, an English maker of game guns that’s now cracking the clays. Taking the new Hesketh sporter out for a test, Wes finds out how modern engineering techniques allow Longthorne to make a bespoke gun for less than £13,000 – and just how Longthorne’s trademark barrels are made.
