Colquite Estate (Cornwall)

“A dedicated sporting estate first listed in the Domesday book. Colquite Estate is family owned and run, the estate is largely mature hardwood, located in beautiful North Cornwall nestled on the edge of Bodmin Moor….the deep, wood lined valleys, cut by the river Camel, lead to some very testing birds…The area is renowned for its natural beauty.” So runs the puff on shooting website GunsOnPegs (which we won’t be linking to). It’s astonishing how shooting is happy to put generic descriptions of the beautiful countryside right next to details of how many birds can be killed in it with no sense of irony. As long as there’s money in it, eh… A more colourful view of that description on GunsOnPegs of Colquite comes from the West Cornwall Hunt Sabs who’d come to sab a meet of the North Cornwall Hunt: “On top of letting that criminal filth run rampage, disturbing the peace for everyone else, then there’s this. It’s right next to the beautiful Camel Trail!…Let’s break this PR down into simply letting pissed up little psychos loose with big guns, it’s absolutely anti social behaviour. No difference to a load of drugged up yoofs turning up at your neighbour and rioting about, kicking cats to death. Problem families is what these ones are, no matter how they try and dress it up, Countess…we’d adjust the spelling on that one if we weren’t as polite as we are.”