19/02: Report from a customer
Last week we had the pleasure of hosting a very fun crowd of british gentleman at Estancia Ninette. Mr James Major, Mr David Cliffe, Mr Franck Goodall and charming Ms Rachel Morrison were brought by a long time friend of the house Mr Martin Price. They had an oustanding five day hunting trip with a "one day break" they use to feel familiar with the area and go visit some of the cities near by (Mercedes and the british influenced Fray Bentos). Here is a one day report written by one of the gentleman Mr David Cliffe.
We were certainly glad to have Mr Price once again visiting our place and all his fun crowds.
SATURDAY 13TH FEBRUARY 2010
We had a good nights sleep after a very good dinner (a type of indoor bar-b-q) so now its on to the main thing-shooting. We leave c9.30am in two pickups complete with guns (over & under 20bores), cartridges, stools, cool box of water and beers etc and ‘the boys’ [they are loaders, carriers and general dogs bodies but very pleasant and a smattering of English]. We drive approx 5 miles onto a neighbouring property to find random clumps of trees and somewhere to ‘pitch camp’. The ground is generally poor grass but does support many cattle-mainly Herefords.
Each gun places itself some distance apart although James and Frank tend to be close together and compete for numbers shot!! Your writer is in a different numbers’ league!. What we are shooting are grey doves. They bear little resemblance to English white doves being much more like a smaller pigeon. It has to be said at the outset that there are literally thousands of them and they eat grain, sunflowers and saw gum (this fact has been proved by James ‘dissecting’ some with his fingers!) so they are a real pest. They tend to fly in random directions and ‘duck & dive’ making shooting quite difficult (at least to me). We tend to shoot for say 1hr, have a drink break and chat & then resume for a further hour finishing around 12.30 to return for lunch, a siesta (depending on the volume of red wine at lunch! [but not your writer!] and then back out for a further 1½ hrs till about 7.00. It doesn’t get dark here till around 8.45/9.00 pm. Today has been v hot-up to >35°C!!. Tonight there are been some spectacular lightning in the sky a good distance off but it did not rain here (but there was a power cut-interestingly although a very long way from anywhere here, they are on a mains electric supply (11kv I suspect) although Hector no doubt paid heavily to have it installed (with a generator backup)!
The shooting here is spectacular and Hector has to be congratulated on ‘getting it all together’ here and providing such enjoyable sport. The doves provide really good sport-many birds at some distance and only for the best shots!
David Cliffe
Your Friend
Hector
We were certainly glad to have Mr Price once again visiting our place and all his fun crowds.
SATURDAY 13TH FEBRUARY 2010
We had a good nights sleep after a very good dinner (a type of indoor bar-b-q) so now its on to the main thing-shooting. We leave c9.30am in two pickups complete with guns (over & under 20bores), cartridges, stools, cool box of water and beers etc and ‘the boys’ [they are loaders, carriers and general dogs bodies but very pleasant and a smattering of English]. We drive approx 5 miles onto a neighbouring property to find random clumps of trees and somewhere to ‘pitch camp’. The ground is generally poor grass but does support many cattle-mainly Herefords.
Each gun places itself some distance apart although James and Frank tend to be close together and compete for numbers shot!! Your writer is in a different numbers’ league!. What we are shooting are grey doves. They bear little resemblance to English white doves being much more like a smaller pigeon. It has to be said at the outset that there are literally thousands of them and they eat grain, sunflowers and saw gum (this fact has been proved by James ‘dissecting’ some with his fingers!) so they are a real pest. They tend to fly in random directions and ‘duck & dive’ making shooting quite difficult (at least to me). We tend to shoot for say 1hr, have a drink break and chat & then resume for a further hour finishing around 12.30 to return for lunch, a siesta (depending on the volume of red wine at lunch! [but not your writer!] and then back out for a further 1½ hrs till about 7.00. It doesn’t get dark here till around 8.45/9.00 pm. Today has been v hot-up to >35°C!!. Tonight there are been some spectacular lightning in the sky a good distance off but it did not rain here (but there was a power cut-interestingly although a very long way from anywhere here, they are on a mains electric supply (11kv I suspect) although Hector no doubt paid heavily to have it installed (with a generator backup)!
The shooting here is spectacular and Hector has to be congratulated on ‘getting it all together’ here and providing such enjoyable sport. The doves provide really good sport-many birds at some distance and only for the best shots!
David Cliffe
Your Friend
Hector
