South Warwickshire

Sometime around the end of 1977, Norman Young, David Fisher, Grenville Moore and Terry Brown were driving back from The Stewpony Inn at Stourton, Staffordshire in thick fog. The journey took forever.

The reason for the trip was to attend the North Worcestershire Wildfowlers Club meeting as in those days you had access to wildfowling on the Dovey Estuary so long as you attended their meetings.

This horrendous journey sowed the seed for the formation of a local club for the South Warwickshire area and the first meeting of like-minded souls took place at the Red Lion in Kineton on the 16th March 1978

Through the club’s association with The Game Conservancy, British Field Sports Society (now the Countryside Alliance) and what was then WAGBI (now BASC), we started providing bodies and dogs at shows such as the Town & Country Show at Stoneleigh to provide gun dog displays in the Countryside ring.

The club would often be invited to take part in demonstrations including The Game Keepers Fair at Shugborough Hall, the Late Lord Litchfield's residence - this was always a nervous affair but we got away with it!

When we first set the rules of the club all those years ago, one clause was to have a maximum of 60 members and we have bumped along at just under that figure until 2020, when the rules were relaxed to accommodate the ever-growing membership.

The Club is still as vibrant as ever with new (and younger) members carrying on the spirit and ethos started forty-three years ago: We have a wide and varied portfolio of activities including wildfowling, gun dog training and demonstrations, and clay shooting, along with regular social activities such as visiting speakers, trips to places of interest, social evenings, and an annual family day.