ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 29, 1996 TAG: 9601290072
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CLAUDVILLE
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
You get the feeling this hunt is going to be different - really different - when your host, Johnny Lambert, shows up at your lodging door at 8:30 a.m. wearing a tweed jacket and tie.
You greet him in brier-lashed brush pants, a Woolrich shirt and a camouflage cap bearing the name ``Southern Outdoors'' in blaze orange.
Was this to be a bird hunt or a bank meeting?
Welcome to a chunk of Germany or England or Scotland located in the ridges and hollows of Patrick County. It is called Primland Hunting Reserve, and, as its own advertisements say, it may be ``the best-kept secret in the U.S.''
Primland isn't your typical 140-acre, river-bottom shooting preserve. Maybe it isn't bigger than Rhode Island, but it is huge - 14,000 acres - and it is mountainous, ranging from 1,500 to 3,000 feet above sea level in elevation. What's more, its access is limited by elaborate security gates.
``You could hunt two weeks here and not hunt the same field,'' Lambert said.
That is, if you could afford to stay that long. Half-day, upland-style bird hunts for pheasants, quail or chukar cost $249. Half-day duck hunts are $275.
But the novelty of the resort, where the really big bucks are spent, is European-style, driven pheasant shoots. Primland's price list doesn't include the fee for these, saying only ``call for prices.''
If you have to ask, chances are you can't afford one. This isn't for the masses. In fact, it is the sport of kings - literally.
Driven pheasant hunts are a product of Europe, where there is a tradition of gentleman sportsmen gathering on vast estates and having commoners beat the brush to drive pheasants within their range. The sky can darken with the wings of game, and targets can cross the horizon so quickly that shooters often use two guns. Loaders stand beside them to keep the hot-barreled firearms stuffed with ammo.
``It really was a sport of the kings and the wealthy,'' Lambert said. ``I guess you could say that today.''
You could.
A driven pheasant shoot at Primland is a three-day event for eight people, with a 1,200-bird limit. The cost: $6,749.
``Apiece,'' Lambert adds.
That comes to $53,992.
The shoots are garnished with numerous amenities: fine lodging, excellent meals, loaders at your side, well-trained retrieving dogs, someone to open those big, electronic gates for you, a bird-cleaning service. Then, there is Lambert, who works hard to bring it all off under natural conditions, and with the kind of hospitality that makes shooters feel welcome and safe.
``If we have a safe hunt, we will have had a good hunt,'' he told a recent group of sportsmen at the beginning of a shoot. You hear safety preached frequently at Primland.
Participants often arrive in private jets that land in Roanoke or in Greensboro, N.C. They come from Texas, Colorado, New York, and their names frequently are followed by CEO or M.D.
The Primland staff of 26 wears a multitude of hats. Most are local residents, from nearby Stuart or Meadows of Dan. They may be operating logging, earth-moving or farming equipment one day, and the next they are shotgun loaders dressed nattily in a tweed jacket, sweater and English cap, their corduroy trousers neatly tucked into 20-inch rubber boots.
``If you didn't know better, you would think you were in England,'' said Lambert, referring to the rolling terrain and the way hunts are conducted.
Primland is owned by Didier Primat, a super-wealthy Frenchman who lives in Switzerland and visits the property about once a year. He began putting land deals together in Patrick County for a timber operation in the late 1970s, resulting in the ownership of about one in every 30 acres in the county.
Lambert, a West Virginian with a degree in forestry, was hired to oversee Primat's wood products operation, which, in the early '80s included production of packaged firewood, the kind sold in bundles for a bundle at convenience stores.
The driven hunts were initiated in 1986. Considerable work has been done to provide food patches, water and cover for wildlife.
``He wanted to do them exactly like they are done in Europe,'' Lambert said. So for two years, Lambert, who described himself as ``a little old boy from West Virginia who had never been anywhere,'' began traveling back and forth to Europe to see firsthand how driven hunts were conducted.
Early on, Lambert and his workers stocked 14,000 ring-necked pheasants one fall, and by January 10,000 of them had been lost to predators, principally red-tailed hawks and foxes.
The birds now are released closer to the shooting time, and there has been a conversion to more typical upland-type hunting, such as going after quail, pheasants and chukars with pointers, setters and Brittanys.
``Peasant hunting,'' is how Lambert describes it.
The driven hunts remain a major attraction - few other spots in the United State offer them on this magnitude - and Lambert says his boss wants those and other hunting programs to be expanded next season.
``We are trying to double our operation next season. The demand is there,'' Lambert said.
On driven hunts, the beaters flush pheasants by the hundreds, sending the birds whistling across the sky on powerful wings, often gaining lofty altitude by the time they reach the shooters. By then, they are tough, shoot-'em-straight-up targets, and you'd best spend some time on Primland's nationally ranked sporting clays range before you take a crack at them.
``I've seen them shoot 1,500 rounds in a day,'' Lambert said of Primland guests. ``You can figure for every bird they kill, they will shoot three times. The birds are coming over your head, unlike traditional upland game hunting. Most of the people coming here have been to Europe before and shot that way.''
Primland, which is an Orvis-approved destination, also offers deer hunts, spring gobbler hunts, trout fishing, horseback riding and a 5-Stand shooting facility. A price list and information brochure is available by calling 540-251-8012.
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: BILL COCHRAN. 1. When the owner of Primland said heby CNBwanted Old World, driven-pheasant hunts, employees donned
European-style hunting attire. 2. When predators gobbled up 10,000
pheasants, workers began releasing birds closer to the hunts. 3.
Loader Carlton Largen ducks as Mike Zlotnicki takes a shot. 4.
Pheasants are well-fed and fast-flying. 5. Retrievers rush to pick
up downed birds. color.