Twenty years ago, former Shooting Sportsman Editor in Chief Silvio Calabi and Ken Duglan, then Managing Director of Atkin Grant & Lang and owner of Broomhills Shooting Ground, began assembling teams of Americans to shoot driven birds in the UK. The goal? Never make a profit, and introduce Americans to driven shooting. Check and check.
Enter the Anglo American Shooting Society—or, as Calabi and Duglan relish calling it, AASS. “Driven shooting can be intimidating to newcomers,” Calabi said. “AASS was never meant to be ‘serious,’ but there is a practical side to it. Our members, guests and newbies can know that the nuts and bolts of shooting in the UK are 100 percent taken care of. You pay your money, you show up at the airport on a certain day and the rest is taken care of, including guns and Visitor’s Shotgun Permits from the police. We were the first shoot organizer to charge one inclusive fee. Our Guns appreciate that.”
AASS membership numbers approximately 30, with a handful of “repeat offenders”—shooters who have been on several trips—potentially voted in each year. Calabi and Duglan arrange three shoots from Scotland to Devon and anywhere in between. With extensive experience across the UK, the duo informally polls the teams and sets the shoots for the year, occurring between Halloween and Thanksgiving. And each November the Society’s fabled “Foster Cup” (in truth, it’s a lawn-bowling trophy that was bought for £10 at a “car boot sale”) is fetched from the vault and awarded to a member “who has committed a faux pas so egregious that it cannot be overlooked.” The poor sap then has his or her name engraved on the cup for all time.
If you would like to become an AASS repeat offender, learn the intricacies of driven shooting and, by the sounds of it, have a heckuva lot of fun, visit angloamericanshootingsociety.co.uk.
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