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Scotland is where the world wants to be in April and May. The combination of great roebuck
stalking and superb pigeon mean shooters will travel thousands of miles, put up with the
often amusing food and brave the uncertain weather for a chance at these two prized quarry.
Alan what does it take to put together a three-day trip like this for a party, of how many, 6
of them?
Six yes, start by doing a lot of reconnaissance work before they arrive, look where the deer
are. Obviously these guys are here for 3 days, 6 stalks. So we spent like 3 days looking
for the deer.
And the pigeon shooting here, do they have this kind of thing in France, they must do?
Very little, very little, they only have a two week window for the migration of pigeons.
Then after that they have nothing.
Really, so they are basically stuck, they have got to come here.
They have got to come here yes.
Or Hungary, which is 25 times more expensive.
Correct.
So you are in a good place here.
We are in a good place and we try to provide very good shooting for them.
We are in Perthshire with a party of French from the giant retail Decathlon. They have
asked some French journalists to try out Scottish pigeons, stalking and Decathlon kit.
You may have seen Decathlon shops outside Reading, Birmingham, Belfast, Glasgow and
other places, and you may have dismissed it for being full of overpriced golf clubs. Not
a bit of it. Decathlon has its own hunting clothing and accessories brand called Solognac
and, if anything, its kit is underpriced. Forget about the width, however, and feel
the quality. Solognac needs to be good if it's going to face pigeon shooting in weather
like this.
Solognac is Decathlons own brand hunting brand.
And Decathlon is a sports shop.
Decathlon is, it is a very well kept secret over here in the UK, but Decathlon is the
world’s biggest sports retailer.
And there are several of them here in the UK.
There are 12 or 13 of them over here in the UK. All over from London to Edinburgh, to
Glasgow, to Belfast.
And they are big aren’t they.
They are big, they are anywhere from 3,000 sq metres to 6,000 sq metres in the UK and
on the continent go up to 10,000 sq metres.
So that is like a Tesco basically.
Yes, it is the Tesco of sport, we might use that.
And you sell hunting gear which is kind of unusual for a sports shop.
It is unusual for an English sports shop, but it is very normal for a continental sports
shop and it is very normal particularly for a French sports shop which is where we come
from originally.
And you don’t have Decathlon written on your hat but Solognac, how does that work?
That is absolutely right. Each of Decathlon’s brands are separated out and given their own
identity and their own name. Solognac actually comes from a combination of Lesse.....the
biggest hunting region in France and the Bordeaux area where every single village seems to end
in ac so ‘ac’ which now has the highest population of hunters.
We are here in Scotland. In terms of Europe what does Scotland mean. What is it to European
hunters?
Scotland means deer stalking, it means hunting, it means everything we know about Scotland,
everything we think about Scotland the Europeans share that view.
So the French consider Scotland a really good place to come to shoot pigeons.
The French consider Scotland a fantastic place to come. We were here testing equipment, there
was only one name in Europe to come and test this sort of stuff and that was Scotland.
Everybody wanted to be here.
The weather might be foul but the pigeon shooting is excellent and tests the guns to their limits.
Birds that normally go past at around 55 miles an hour are breaking the national speed limit
in this wind.
We are also here to stalk roedeer. All of us get either highseats or accompaniment.
I go out with a local stalker, Sean. He shows me lots of animals. We see around 20 in the
morning. But either they are does or in the wrong place or retreating. Finally, we find
a cull buck in the right place and I start my stalk in. It is all going so well. The
buck is just over the brow. It hasn't seen me, nor the camera. But then disaster strikes
and it's off . So no roebuck for me but the French have a good time.
We are in Perthshire with sporting agent Cervus UK. Visit www.cervus-uk.co.uk. And for more
about the kit from Solognac, go to www.solognac-hunting.com