The Outdoor Gibbon
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The Outdoor Gibbon
34 From Cartridge Boy to Gun Trade Expert: Jonathan Ward's Story
Ever wondered what it's like to sell shotguns to rock stars or manage one of Britain's most prestigious gun rooms? Jonathan Ward pulls back the curtain on his remarkable three-decade journey through the elite world of British gunmaking in this captivating conversation with an old school friend.
From his humble beginnings as a "cartridge boy" in his father's shop to working at legendary establishments like Harrods, EJ Churchill, and Holland & Holland, Ward's career tracks the evolution of Britain's gun trade through boom times and challenges. His story is filled with delightful anecdotes—like convincing his employers he was from a "council estate" despite his expensive private education, or hoping to meet "Harrods birds" only to be stationed on the fifth floor away from the glamorous perfume counters.
Perhaps most fascinating are Ward's behind-the-scenes revelations about Holland & Holland's historic Kensal Rise factory—a Victorian building he describes as "hallowed ground" for gun enthusiasts, where handcrafted firearms continue to be made much as they were a century ago. The picture he paints of traditional British gunmaking is both reverent and realistic, acknowledging the pressures facing this heritage craft.
Ward doesn't shy away from addressing the challenges confronting today's shooting world—from the precarious state of small commercial shoots to rising cartridge prices and the potential impact of lead ammunition bans. Yet he also finds hope in the unprecedented unity among gun dealers, who now collaborate through WhatsApp groups to solve problems and support each other's businesses.
Having come full circle to rejoin the family business at Ray Ward Guns, Ward's story ultimately celebrates the enduring appeal of craftsmanship, tradition, and community in an increasingly digital age. Whether you're a shooting enthusiast or simply fascinated by specialized industries, this episode offers rare insights into a world few get to experience firsthand.
https://raywardgunsmith.com/
Hello and welcome to the Outdoor Gibbon podcast, episode number 34. So this guest I've got on today. Jonathan Ward and I go back a long, long way, pretty much to the point when I moved to Sussex and moved to my new school while I met him so that's the best part of 30 plus years ago. But Jonathan left school. He wasn't the keenest on education. He left school and he started working in the gun trade and he's worked in some of the most famous places, from Harrods to Holland and Holland. Jonathan tells us in this podcast all about his time working through the gun trade and how the gun trade's behaving at the moment and just what's going on. So hopefully you'll enjoy this. But we'll just catch up on a few bits of news first before we go too far. So where are we in the year? We are now in the end of may.
Speaker 3:The robux have been in for the best part of two months. A lot of stuff going on. I've been out with clients and we've shot uh shot a few. Still plenty to be going at. The season seems to be running away with us. The cover's getting very high already. I know that the pheasants are well and truly underway. At the rear end field, there's many thousands of birds in sheds at the moment. It won't be long before we're catching those up and getting them away to their new homes For all these keepers to start the painstaking task of keeping pheasants and getting everything ready for an imminent shooting season.
Speaker 3:July is just around the corner and we'll probably be starting early on some stags that we've got out on the hill. There's quite a lot still sitting around and we thought we might clear up a few of the not so good ones, probably in velvet, before the season gets really underway. And then it's a busy season with lots of bookings. I think we're tom, has definitely fully booked this year and, uh, potentially I'll be down there helping out quite a bit. I think we've got grouse days as well and some walked up pheasant days on there at the same time. So, yeah, it only feels like yesterday that we were fighting gales and fighting in bad weather and snow just to be be shooting these deer on the hill and all of a sudden we're now coming up to well, it feels like a very warm summer. It could change. It could be miserable and wet, but at the moment it seems to be on the route of being incredibly warm, the last few days certainly have been.
Speaker 3:So a few other dates for the diary I will be, hopefully at the game fair, which is going to be down in oxfordshire, I do believe, and then I will be at the scottish game, for at the same time. Uh afterwards, uh again. So if you are going to either of those, pop along, say hello. I will be on ray ward's stand at the england game fair and I will be on cc powell's stand at scoon. So feel free to drop in, say hello. If you come to scoon, the chances are I might try and sell you something, as I'm actually helping Chris at CC Powell out with selling products. So yeah, look forward to seeing you all at those times. Remember as well, if you want a podcast sticker, drop us a message.
Speaker 3:We've also got those beanies still for sale. We need to get a website sorted out and actually get the merchandise up, and the hoodies are coming through. So something, keep you. Keep you warm in the winter once we get those in play. Anyway, enough of my random ramblings. Let's get a very old friend of mine, jonathan ward, podcast. I have got a very old friend of mine, jonathan Ward of Ray Ward Guns. Uh, we go back to when we were 10 years old, I think at school. So about 30, 30 odd years, if not more. How you doing, johnny.
Speaker 2:I've got a bit more facial hair since then as well.
Speaker 3:I think, yeah, a little bit more, but uh it it still feels like yesterday when we were we were chasing around the quad at school and stuff like that. But yeah, I think things have moved on a bit since then and I think you're still down in Sussex and I'm way up north in the arse end of nowhere in the middle of Scotland, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always remember growing up because your parents used to live not far from Ray Ward himself, that's right. Yeah, you were on the road there and you always had it was the Defenders in there. It was a particular car you had always.
Speaker 3:It was that my parents were very keen on their old Volvos, so we used to have a load of old Volvos.
Speaker 2:I remember you were at the top of that hill. I remember it really well, you going through there. That's right, so yeah I don't think the listeners know that we're both privately school educated, aren't we?
Speaker 3:We are yeah.
Speaker 2:So I've got a little bit of an anecdotal story behind that. When I went for my interview at EJ Churchill's with Edward Dashwood and Rob Fennec, throughout the whole process of the interview they kept banging on to me about how they've had lots of public school boys leaving school in the gun room only for a year. That didn't put it on because obviously they were posh go boys. They used it as a bit of a gap stop for their next job. It's a job for what you want, someone like you.
Speaker 2:You know if I've been the trades man and boy, you know council estate off the thing. We're the dealer bit of a dell boy type character and they went on and on and bang on about it. I never had the heart to tell them. Actually I went to heckles parked field. My education cost tens of thousands of pounds, but somehow I managed to convince them that I was a council estate lad and that I was a wheeler dealer. It wasn't until about a year into the job I actually told Rob as we have a dash with that actually I went to public school boy. I had quite expensive education at most.
Speaker 3:That was you through and through, though you could have pulled it off even at school. I remember little Johnny Ward always into his football, and that was it. It was one of those things. So you in the gun trade, let's talk about that. So, obviously, after school, where did your path take you? Because obviously, your dad was a big shooter, your granddad was a big shooter. How did you carry on with this?
Speaker 2:My dad did a right number on me. It was a classic situation where I was a Saturday boy in the dad's shop doing the cartridge for the weekend and earning a bit of cash in hand. And I remember being at school and each Saturday night I'd have a brown envelope with some money in it and none of my mates did and Dad was like, well, you know, forget, forget.
Speaker 3:I mean I had to swear on the podcast, peter, not Well, you can do, I can, I can. I'll just put it explicit on.
Speaker 2:I could have put technical gun trade to you. I was like fucking shit and I would do that. Not, you can do it, it's no problem at all leaving school. So I had, I had this money each weekend. So, and none of my mates did so my dad said to me jonathan, you're not very good at school. I think you should come out of it and we'll put you into being a gunsmith and then you can be a gunsmith, you have a proper trade, you haven't got to do school anymore. So I did school at 15 or 16 years old no exams when I straightened to gun college.
Speaker 2:I'll never forget it, tell you, saw who, enough is a gunsmith. Right by our shop was a gunsmith in our shop and I was pretty repentant of him, had all my work boots on, had my own bench and within I think it was two or three weeks of me working alongside him, stripping down side by side, he turned to me and said Jonathan, you are a lovely, lovely guy. You're shit at this stuff. Go guy, you're shit at this stuff. Go to the shop and sell them. So that that was my very short and brief gunsmithing experience. So after that I was in the shop.
Speaker 2:I literally remember, had to be at the very, very bottom. I was quite lucky in my early days. I had tim king as a mentor he's now managing the bretta gallery as a mentor and a few other real good ones. But I had to start at the bottom, I think, because I was the boss's son. It was very much like you're not going near the guns. The closest you get to serving guns is taking guns apart and cleaning them, taking out the chokes, loading up cartridges so you learn the basics of shooting from the very get-go Handing lots of guns, taking lots of guns apart, putting together and it really is the best way to get yourself around shotguns taking them apart, cleaning them, making mistakes, overtightening chokes, untightening chokes, not cleaning properly to learn how how it all works and how to measure chokes, how to, how to take them apart, how the different guns mechanically take apart and how they put together again.
Speaker 2:So that was a really good grounding for me and I did that for the next 10 years or so and it wasn't until I was lucky enough to work in in harrods in 2008. So sort of yeah, and I was really, really lucky. I got approached by bretton and then gmk to open their concession harrods, which was on the fifth floor of house at the time there hadn't been a government house for 40 was on the fifth floor of Harrods at the time. There hadn't been a government in Harrods for 40 years or that sort of time at the time. So I was there to open that up, which the main attraction I think really was to get near all the Harrods birds. But what I didn't realise it might have changed now but at this time as you go into Harrods you've been there all the beautiful girls were on the on the perfume floor and the higher you go up in the building, the less it goes.
Speaker 2:A lot of the girls and doing on the first floor and I was on the fifth floor sport floor, so the choice wasn't. That wasn't that good, but I'm sure they weren't pleased with me either being the first. There's a call me bret boy in there who I always remember that Beretta boy, but, and it was, I only did it for a year. It was quite a tough curve because no one was going into how was the bygones? So you're a little bit of a tourist guide. Right, I was going to say people, I'd tell them about the sport and about, but it wasn't that prolific for sales. The clothing accessories, however, went really, really well.
Speaker 3:And what were the main sort of the clothing line that Harrods would put out for? Obviously, with the gun line, what was the main line of clothing that you were selling?
Speaker 2:It was shooting jackets, it was tassel shirts, it was lightweight trousers, it was tons and tons of ties, a billion baseball caps Right, baseball caps would go out as well. But it was quite a small concession at the time. It was probably only about 20 feet too far by 10 feet, with a little gun on the back which was about 10 feet by 10 feet. It's been about 30 guns in there, so it's quite quite small. I think it's got a bit bigger since and he's run off the back of the gallery and so I did. I did that for a while and then back into Ray Ward. We also, ray Ward, at the same time, had a shop at the West London Shooting School, which I ran from 2001 to 2006, which was really good.
Speaker 2:I was in my early 20s. It was my first sort of manager's job I got and that was really good fun. And that's probably where I started to touch on shooting schools, working alongside shooting schools At the time the shooting school that had Alan Rose as the famous, famous gun fitter. They used to do all the gun fits and purdies at the time. I was lucky enough to serve some mega, mega stars like Eric Clapton. He's one of the ones that most sticks out for me. Ross Kemp was quite a good keen shooter as well.
Speaker 2:All right, I used to serve him. The drummer from Pink Floyd was in there as well, mason. So that that was quite cool as a young 20 year old to run that and also that put me right in the forefront of clay shooting in terms of at that time West London Shooting School was holding world championships there and a little way down the line we had andy cast. We had a little pay and play clay shoot, which is still going today for enough, but on sporting targets. So I had a real mix of high-end game shooters throughout the winter. In the summer we'd have all the clay shooters that. That shot was really really good in terms of picking up both sides of business game shooting and clay shooting and it's now run by Sportum. That was a really good shot.
Speaker 2:We had some tough times around 2006, 2007 and we went into administration. At that point we were purchased by a billionaire called Jim, dr Jim Hay. He's a very Scottish doctor in chemical medicine engineering. Uh, anyway, he he purchased rayward guns and kept the name very much afloat and kept our store in knightsbridge going, but he also went uber luxury as well. So rayward started to um commission their own guns made by london gun makers. So basically, london made guns handmade in london, engraved in london, very, very pricey. Put us right up there against holland's pearly bar. So we found that market really, really, really, really tough. As a relative new boy, even though as a retailer we're 50 years old, oh, yeah, yeah that's, that's nothing.
Speaker 2:You know. You're, you're, you're a baby, so that that that was quite tough. And that means that sort of 2016 where we've we established ray war, we're getting lots of top-end guns, but they didn't want to put in. The bottom-end guns came, part exchange um, into the notches shop. So they decided to have a feeder shop which I was going to run, which was haywards guns, which were you and I that's where we crossed paths again, wasn't it really?
Speaker 2:Yeah, in 2000,. That opened in 2011. And that was really again a real good fun. I was on my own, I was in the field in Sussex but back home and I sort of had free reign. So that's when I pioneered the open day ideas at the next of our gun shops and we did our own label cartridges. And we're very lucky to have George Digweed as our brand ambassador, so I used to write him down sort of every month or so to shoot balloons from the hip.
Speaker 3:Funnily enough you say that, and I did actually find some Haywood's Busters on the shelf the other day, so I still have a box. I think I've got a slab actually of your Buster cartridges.
Speaker 2:Oh mate, they're probably worth about £2 on eBay.
Speaker 3:They probably are. They probably weigh something or they give you a sore shoulder, whichever way. But no, that shot was a lovely shot. It had everything, didn't it? You had a good range of shotguns, you had a good range of clothing in there and obviously, as you say, the open days were always quite good. I think I came along to a few of them and it was lovely. Everybody just got on and it was a good fun. Good fun kind of day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was really good.
Speaker 2:It was at that point there that I started to make my own name to a degree in the gun trade and sort of get noticed.
Speaker 2:And obviously, not being under the Ray Ward flag in Hayward's Guns, I was a little bit more noticeable. And it was at that point as well where I started talking to EJ Churchill's about the possibility of joining their phenomenal team, phenomenal shooting ground, and at that point they were really on the rise and I had whispers that Dr Hay wasn't going to continue with that particular shop. They had other plans for the actual location of the shop, so it just seemed to sort of the moons aligned, as it was quite hilarious because Dr Hay wanted to make it redundant to close the shop, which he did, and then half an hour later I found out I was going to be a farmer, so I got made redundant. I found out I was going to be a farmer in the same half made redundant. I found out I was going to be a farmer within the same half an hour. So that was a massive high and a massive low.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I remember that. But it did spur me on to sort of get myself out there and not rely so much on the family business anymore. And that's when I spoke to Rob Fenwick at AJ Churchill's and very lucky enough went and very lucky enough went out there for the interview, was the barrel boy and got the job and that was really good, to sort of go out for the first time on my own to such a good shooter and a really hungry shooter. The one thing I'll always credit Rob Fennick for is he's got incredible hunger and drive and the word no is not in his vocabulary. So you know, wherever you are in your shooting career, he'll help you. You know, if you turn up there as a new shooter or a very established shooter, tj Churchill's a shooter now very, very good and very accommodating and I think that's why they're at the top of their game at the moment.
Speaker 2:I was lucky enough in the gun room to work with a guy called Chris Cloak. He goes to shoot um o-10 is unfortunately in a wheelchair went. He went to bed one night with cold symptoms and woke up how lies from the chest down. I mean horrific, horrific story. But I always felt a real, a real leveler to go into work each day with someone who's in their wheelchair, and no matter how bad you think it is driving to work in traffic or being late or having a row with your missus or having no money, nothing compares to what he went through daily, the daily struggle, but it's a drive of great humour and great knowledge as well.
Speaker 2:You know, we used to do all the gun fits to Churchill as a two-act. I'd do all the outsides taking the customers out to watch and shoot. He'd do all the theory stuff, all the measurements on bits of paper. But really when that was a brilliant time in my career, learnt so much in three years being outside the family business and in a different environment where I sort of had to start from the beginning again. And the real driver at that shooting ground is a lady called Victoria Tetley, who doesn't like profiling her, but I'm going to mention her on the podcast just so I can tag her in and say you're in it Because she hires one of the better, but she's one of the real powerhouses there. Right, and that was a great experience. And that led on to Holland.
Speaker 3:I was going to say, because you ended up there and I was quite jealous because obviously they had their. Is it Churchill's or Holland? No, it's Holland and Holland that have got their cinema, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we can still get you up there. Well, now you're famous, pete, we better get you easy up there.
Speaker 2:Very good, I'm looking forward to that the outdoor gym is coming down um and then, so that I sort of the phone rang one day and it was. It was. It was a headhunting lady to speak to about buying a gun. I managed to speak to her, got the interviews for um, for Holland, managed to get the job. Actually Got the interviews for Holland and managed to get the job.
Speaker 2:Actually I didn't want to go because I was very, very happy at Churchill's but I was also because I had a young family. I couldn't convince the family at that point to relocate to High Wycombe. So I sort of knew that if I could get a job in London I could just train it into London, train it back, and it would be my opinion. I thought the trajectory was right, as as the thing, in terms of my status and being in the Holland gun rooms, you know, obviously a world, world famous, brown, one of the most iconic English brands of all. Yeah, um is, if they come, cool it's. It's very hard to say no. So I didn't. I went there. It was sort of a tough experience because it wasn't really a world renowned for clay shooting. I'd just spent three years at church doing all the clay shooting. I shot clays myself throughout my whole career to go into a predominantly side-by-side manufacturer and also a big-time rifle manufacturer, which wasn't really my skill set. Yeah, quite tough, I went ahead and got in, also unbeknown to me before I was even there.
Speaker 2:The business was for sale. Chanel were looking for buyers or looking to offload holland, holland. So I sort of went into not I want to say sinking shit, but it was definitely a shit that was just just about floating with no real future in its path. So that that was quite evident once you're inside. They weren't really buying stock, they weren't. They're very cagey about redeveloping any part of the business in terms of infrastructure. I remember they wanted to rewire brunstreet and they wouldn't do, and I always found it weird like okay, chanel's behind it. It might cost tens of thousands, but it's chanel, you know. They've already burnt six6 million a year on it. So I sort of had to. But also they had such great people behind them and great men in the factory.
Speaker 2:If you've ever been in Kensal Rise, it's like a historic museum of hallowed ground for the gun trade. It's a Victorian building built on a hill. Kens will rise. Obviously at that point. There wasn't much that when they built it there wasn't that much electrical lights, they only had it on a big building and natural sunlight going into all the floors. Okay, now you wouldn't have a factory over four floors with lifts and stuff. It'll be a flatbed factory, but it's the victorian factory so.
Speaker 2:But nowadays they're not making anywhere near the number of guns they made back then. So it's quite a weird experience just having one or two people on each floor of this massive factory in kensal rise. But I really I really enjoyed my time there seeing how they make guns, seeing how the top end gun makers work and being around the shooting ground online, which is really nice. Like you said, they got they got that cinema there. I find I find frustrating I haven't managed to to get it more busy than it is I was going to say because cinemas in scandinavia and places like that are.
Speaker 3:Everybody uses them. They are the one of the places that people go to train, to get them set, to get their eye in to test a new, new gun uh, anybody that's listening that doesn't know what a cinema is. Basically it's a video screen where you can take a full-bore rifle and you actually shoot at the screen. And then there's some clever electronics and camera work that basically works out where your target goes, where your shot was, and the computer basically tells you whether you hit the target or not, it's only.
Speaker 2:I think it's the only one that privately owned, or it's non-military that you can, that you can go and go and shoot, that's right. It's a military ones. Maybe it's price point, I'm not sure, but it never. It never seemed to fulfill your potential there. But when I was there, it's just.
Speaker 3:I suppose it's one of those things though in this country we don't really do a lot of. We don't do driven shooting, whereas obviously the scandinavians and europeans driven shooting is is quite a big thing. So I suppose going to the cinema is cheap when you want to join a syndicate to go and shoot ball or or other game, whereas in this country it's kind of one of those.
Speaker 2:It's a bit of a gimmicky type of thing, I suppose, unless you're going over to scandinavia to do it I always thought if I was going to shoot some dangerous game, I probably would like to spend like, whether it's a 300 quid or whatever it is to get, to get myself going, as you're going to say, make sure. The reason why I remember one of the selling points that I was told during holland was that the reason why they want the Holland 375 doubles is because it's just bomb proof. You know it's not going to misfire, because you don't want to misfire in Africa with dangerous game, because it might be the last before trigger that's, that's it.
Speaker 3:When you've got like a Cape Buffalo racing towards you, you, you want to pull the trigger. Once I've hit it, it's not stopping. I'm going to do it again. Yeah, that's it, it, it, it's down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't want any misfires, I suppose do you. You don't want anything to go wrong.
Speaker 3:Nothing to go wrong at that point, because it's you and some very angry thing coming towards you.
Speaker 2:And it was always nice, I think, for anyone that's been saying that Royal Action is the most copied side-by-side action, now, today, Gru would still make it the same. The AOA number one, number two is the same. Arias have copied it as well. He is the most copied side-by-side action, right? So if you're looking to buy a side-by-side, you probably end up, is it technically?
Speaker 3:over. It's all right. We're still there. We had a slight technical glitch.
Speaker 2:Technical glitch and then.
Speaker 3:So you obviously left there. What back of 2020?
Speaker 2:um 2020, 22, I think 22, 23. So back to focus on my dad got diagnosed with throat cancer. He's in full remission now so it's all good. But at the time it was very touch and go and also, to be fair to my dad, he'd re-got Ray Wilkinson's back from Dr Hay and just started at a very, very small in a local shooting ground called North Hall, going to East Sussex, and it was a really nice family run club hammock and chips for breakfast, assembly bird sporting competitions, skeet, abt and some compact sporting layouts. We're a club. It's where charlotte kerwood, our famous commonwealth girl, um medalist, her dad runs it and she practices as well.
Speaker 2:Um, my dad just put a little pop-up shop there and he just got lots of traction, lots of business, and then he went into a purpose built business park, put a container in full of guns and very quickly outgrew it and said Jonathan, you need to come back because it's getting too.
Speaker 2:It's getting too big for me and I've I think I'd sort of with Holland and Churchill's, I've been in in it a lot and obviously having to be managed and take orders is not my forte. So I just thought actually what may be is it'd be nice to come back, make my own mistakes, make my own things and answer to myself a little bit and be working for the family name again and also just have a little bit more time with my son, being a little bit closer to work a little bit closer to be able to go and see him on the four o'clock after school swimming, or go and see him play football on a saturday morning isn't such an issue now when you're working for the family. I suppose that's one of the benefits. The plus, the minuses are you don't get paid as well. You're never off duty. You're 24, 7, yeah, yeah, and if you don't, if you don't sell stuff, you don't get paid. There's no, there's none of this stuff, you know no, that that's.
Speaker 3:That's the only kind of downside to running your own business, isn't it? It's uh, yeah, it's up to you. You've got to be there to make it happen yeah, and if you don't, if you don't work, you don't get paid, you know but I suppose I suppose it has its benefits because at the end of the day you know that everything that's coming into the business now is it's kind of from your hard work really yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's also you know, you can, you, you can a bit. You'd like to think, hopefully, now it's in our hands of control, now it's in my dad's and my hands now to make sure it fries or doesn't fry. You know, it's up to us, yeah, whereas when you work for these big companies and this can be ruled by a committee to a degree or you can have directions that you may not want to follow. But I've been very, very lucky in terms of the people I've worked with and worked for, I've been very, very blessed. It's sort of given me a great standing also now, whenever I go into a game fair or I'm always welcomed back nicely to Churchill's and Holland. So I've been really, really lucky to make sure that you've ended your career well, and I think you can spend a long, long time making a good reputation for yourself and you can destroy it in minutes if you're not careful.
Speaker 3:No, absolutely, and yeah, yeah. So let's talk about the shop then. Obviously your shop predominantly sells shotguns. You've got some clothing in there, yeah, and I think you said you had an airgun range. So if there's anybody down in sussex that's looking for somewhere to go and plink, obviously you guys have got something that's quite unique yeah, we've got a 20 20 yard air rifle range.
Speaker 2:I've managed to manage to find a local air rifle shot with a bit of a range master. He's absolutely inside of pitted knowledge of air rifles and range master and he loves to bring out little targets and he's really really good safety officer. So if you've got any young children we've had kids as young as eight and nine there and they get go with junior rifles and low springs just to get them handling firearms, handling handling air rifles, because obviously that's that, that's the future, isn't it?
Speaker 3:and it is really we yeah it, does, it, does.
Speaker 2:It does feel like a precarious stage that the gun world's in now, isn't it in terms of new blood coming through. It does feel like we do really need to look after the next generation, because it's going to be tough yeah, well, with with the scottish law, change is obviously now that all air rifles are on license.
Speaker 3:Uh, I, you can't. Just as a kid we had an air rifle, no problem at all. Didn't really matter what age you had an air rifle for a a child in scotland they have to be 18 to have an air rifle. You can actually have a firearm or a shotgun at a younger age, but you can't have an air rifle until you're 18.
Speaker 3:that was it? It's just, it's just a joke really, but that, that take and that's how well, when you look back, most of the team gb actually quite a lot of team gb actually comes out of scotland, through through the universities, through shooting, through all of those sports. So whether this will see a massive change. But is this just the future? And, as you say, um, it's.
Speaker 2:It's becoming harder and harder for for us to bring that next generation on yeah, yeah, it's really tough, um, but I think we do our little bits when we we offer kids to shoot for free, just just to get them going and include pellets and gun home and stuff, just just to try, and a bit, a bit greedy me trying to get the parents to buy, to buy a bit of clobid, or look at buying guns. That's how it works. It's sort of the Happy Meal McDonald's marketing strategy.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Keep the kids happy. Mum and dad buy something.
Speaker 2:That's it, yeah.
Speaker 3:But so the next thing is obviously how is? How? Have you seen a big trend in the market in terms of shotguns? Is there still an uptake of people going out to do clays and game shooting, or is it dropping off suddenly?
Speaker 2:I think the figures of new grants is like record numbers of grants coming through Right. What I don't tell you is how many people don't renew. So I've always felt as much. People go, seem to join, so they always think, oh my God, there's so many grants, licenses, coming in and we can't get the grants quick enough because the police aren't operating to the best, because obviously they've had cutbacks as well, I think I think the numbers are pretty steady. The only the only thing that really really worries me, pete, is, is the state of the game shooting now. We had, you know, nowhere near the little days we had. I think the state of the game shooting now we had nowhere near the little days we had. I think the terms of the 100-bird days or the 50-bird days are in real, real trouble of being extinct, whereas only the biggest states are putting down thorns and those little ones are suffering.
Speaker 3:Well, what is it? It's like buying a pheasant pole. I think pheasant poles have come down this year, but I've heard prices already. I was down in leicester chalking to the guy down there uh, six pound down to five pound fifty a pole. But then that's not still equating when you get out actually on the field where there's estates wanting 60 pounds a bird plus to that yeah yeah, and suddenly a hundred bird day becomes very expensive for your average person to go on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the disposable income. To find that sort of money to shoot pheasants for a day is tough, isn't it Exactly?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's it. I think the little farm shoots may stay, but the actual small commercial shoots are probably. Their days are numbered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I know here we used to balkan. That's a fantastic little shoot run in here, they, they, they. They did high story any days last year. Yeah, they're available. So yeah, that's the worry.
Speaker 3:I can't speak well enough about it, but it just seems from what people come and stop and say that that's something we should be really concerned about but obviously the next thing on top of that though we've got is is the potential, the lead ban, which, for the old guns that that a lot of your clients will have used. They're not lead, uh, they're not steel rated, are they?
Speaker 2:it's frightening and I I had a slightly different view on it is that I always felt like you just said if someone's willing to pay 60 pounds plus that to shoot a pheasant, why would they not buy a business cartridge or tungsten matrix cartridge, which, okay, six pounds, the price of lead, or every four times the price of lead, we're still going to be the cheapest part of the day and you're not going to put a substandard ammo, which I think still is, into your beautiful handmade shotgun built in the 1930s there. And but they ignored me or ignored the advice, and they'd be in holland, holland, stripping out all the choke, making it quarter quarter or cinder quarter, just so they could put steel. I thought it was mental and we all rushed out to build steel barrels because everyone else did. It was like it's not even here yet. America will probably never come in, which, luckily, is a big part of the market.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's I heard today. I heard this week that Biomark's going out of business.
Speaker 3:Oh, has it yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh right, this week that was quite sad because that had quite a nice cheap alternative and I'm hoping that at some point the cartridge manufacturer will come out and say we've got this wonderful alloy and it's non-toxic, and if the bank comes in, it'll only be I don't know another 25, but it doesn't look that way, is it?
Speaker 3:but even the price of cartridges. It's like you used to be able to buy like a slab of a thousand cartridges to go clay days and it wasn't expensive. And now suddenly it's it's doubled in price.
Speaker 3:It yeah it's kind of one of those things. Again, I was talking to another lad the other day to do around the clays. If you wanted to go and do a hundred clay day or something like that, suddenly it's an expensive day out by the time you've bought the clays, put your cartridges in there, had a bacon sandwich in the morning you could be. You could be looking 100 pounds just for for a morning out yeah and it's.
Speaker 3:It's kind of crazy really, but yeah, gone, gone are the days of you'd nip out and do a round of clays and it wasn't going to cost you, cost you a great deal I know.
Speaker 2:No, I know, it's a big money now and the prize money. This has gone down well, that's it. If you were doing it for prize money, exactly, yeah if you've got a kid out there, that's good at it. You want to earn some money. Don't take the the shooting. Get them playing darts like Luke Littler. Honestly, I'd go to the pub and just get them playing darts all day now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but then you can't go to the pub anymore and it costs you a fiver now for a pint. So you're lost whichever way you win, aren't you at that point?
Speaker 2:I think a fiver's pretty good mate.
Speaker 3:It wasn't a particularly good pint, but I suppose you are further south than me so it probably is more expensive. You probably need a mortgage to get a pint down there.
Speaker 2:I quit someone's telling me for a pack of knobbies and a pint somewhere. Good grief.
Speaker 3:It's just mental. It's like yeah, you don't go out with 20 quid in your back pocket anymore, do you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the shop's doing well other than that, but it's just a bit slow. I take it at the moment. Obviously, I've done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, as we were saying before, before we called on the site was if we're a little bit, I wouldn't say off the beaten track, but we're not that near main motorway. So the last we're sort of 15 miles south of Gatwick Airport. The last 15 miles is all little arrows with the worst potholes you can see. So getting people that little bit actually has been a bit of a challenge, but we'll keep battling. For me, these shops take time. I remember at Hayward's Guns, years one to three were very, very sporadic and there were some tough, tough weeks. We've had some tough weeks. We've also had some great days as well. So hopefully, hopefully, it's in the right directory.
Speaker 3:So are you going to any of the shows this year?
Speaker 2:We're doing all of them, but you're going to come and join us, aren't you?
Speaker 3:I believe. So I think I'm coming down to the game fair to start with, and then we'll discuss the rest of them after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got Costa Del 10. You're going to stay on Gunmakers.
Speaker 3:Row Sounds like a plan. I snore badly, you'll have to ask the last boy.
Speaker 2:I see, edward, we um and um, but I've got to tell you, mate, since, from from the start of my game for experience, I must have over 100 of them. Um, the toilet is now really good, showers are really good. Well, that's the main thing. It's the gun maker's arms, so you'll be right so.
Speaker 3:So how do you fight? Obviously you've done a few game fairs in your time. Obviously the game fairs change quite considerably as well. Is it a good place for selling what, what's your sort of the best thing that sells for you on those days?
Speaker 2:I. I've always thought it's a strange place to buy a gun as a customer because you're going to go there, you're going to go into a situation where it's normally very hot or very wet and you won't have a lot of people. You have a lot of people around you all the time we're looking at guns. You won't have a great deal of time with the salesman in terms of one-on-one service. So I've always thought it's a strange place to buy a gun. However, if you know what you want and you know what budget you've got and you want to see I don't know 15 bretta, 682 gold d's, then you might be in the right place to do it.
Speaker 2:But in terms of going there for service and listen to what, to what you want to hear and hear, not know what you want to do for your first gun I think it's a strange place to go. But if you know what you're doing, then you've got. All the big deal is in the same place at the same time. But because of the way the Google works and gun trader works, if you think you're going to pick a bargain, you're wrong because the bargains are there all day long. They've gone on the days now where a gun dealer can nick a gun off you and sell it cheap. The internet now is so powerful you can price check literally as you're tricking someone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I think. I think everybody said that the day of the game fair, the show deal and all the rest of it. It just doesn't really happen anymore because, as you say, somebody gets on Google straight away and you've already found that. Yeah, I can get that at this price.
Speaker 2:A lot of the Gunders like me actually get a bit offended if you come up and try and lowball us. See what you're doing there, mate. You don't want to take it home with you, do? Colleague spud? He's got, he's got zero patience. He's like I'd much rather put this in the box right now instead of to you get away home. Muster the elephant hell. He's always had three days of people trying to knock him for money it is crazy, though, but I suppose that's just the way it is.
Speaker 3:Once upon a time, though, that's probably how to get that game fair work like that. You all went in with a slightly higher price and you had a bit to play with, but nowadays there's there's virtually nothing in it, there's nothing in the cartridges, there's there's nothing in anything at the end of the day. I think the only markup that's still good on stuff's probably clothing at the end of the day, and you've got a bit of play with that there's a great say in the gun trade.
Speaker 2:I think it's any trade, but through the gun trade if you want to make a little bit of money in the gun trade, you starve a lot pretty much, isn't it pretty much?
Speaker 3:do you find that the gun shops are working together or are you all sort of distruggled?
Speaker 2:you all fight each other I've got to be honest with you, I've never known the unity that it has been so good as it is right now. I mean there's a whatsapp for the great dealers. There's loads of trades going in sam Sam and if you get an issue with certain collars we want to find a certain thing you can put a message on there. Nine times out of 10, you'll get a message about your in-hour. For instance, recently I had to get a deactivated gun done for a customer, put it on the group and they gave me two or three gun dealers to do. Activations in seconds work together pretty well.
Speaker 2:I mean we have a great relationship with, say, for instance, chris potter guns. We're forever swapping stocks and and supporting each other and my lads and I know your mate something hadfield yep, he's a great, he's a great power button. We're always doing this, doing stuff together. There's times when when he'll have guns at stick that you can try and trade out of, but sometimes it feels like we're just swapping guns. There's no real money changing the hand, there's just loads of stock turning over.
Speaker 3:Yes, but you never know, shoving something up to the Midlands, it suddenly goes when it doesn't actually go down in Sussex, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Correct, correct, correct. Yeah, but as a whole the gun trade is in a pretty good place. There's not too many Cowboys and Sharks out there anymore.
Speaker 3:It's many cowboys and sharks out there anymore, so it's all pretty good. That's good. That's the main thing. And it's nice for people to be able to hear from like inside, because obviously a lot of people just look at the shop and they turn up and that's it. But to actually hear from the inside, so you're kind of given an inside view of how the gun trade kind of works, kind of thing the manufacturers gmk.
Speaker 2:Really good, they'll support you as long as you keep your lines of communication open with your suppliers or and and your colleagues, you'll be fine. If you, if you get into trouble and you ignore people, that's when you get in trouble yeah, oh, that's good.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm glad that everything's going well and it's kind of nice to see that you've. You've kind of gone full circle from starting off as the the cartridge boy to sort of the the manager of the shop now, and back in the family business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to come down and have a shot with us, Gerard.
Speaker 3:I will do, definitely. It's just a hell of a long way. I've just done seven and a half hours to get from the Midlands back home, so I think it's about nine and a half to get down to you.
Speaker 2:What's up there for you then. You're doing your own stalking experiences now? Yeah, lots, lots of things the deer, stalking, the way of life, the lack of people. It's like sussex was when we were at school. It's quiet, that's the most important part. And you're doing the. You're doing the stalking experiences now, or is that just a little testing?
Speaker 3:offshore. No, no, we, I do. I do a lot of roe stalking up here. Uh, also help a friend out. Uh, just down at the angus glens we do a bit of red stalking down there, just basically giving people, getting people out on the hill. I think I've got a couple of. Well, we're drawing a competition which we had at the stalking show that comes out tomorrow, so there's a few nice prizes out of that. But yeah, it's just one of those things that keeps me up here.
Speaker 2:Good man, good man.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I uh that brings us to a pretty nice conclusion, so thank you for your time and we'll wrap it up there all the best mate cheers.
Speaker 3:So if you're down in sussex and you're looking to, uh, to get yourself a shotgun, possibly a rifle or an air rifle, why don't you pop in and see ray ward guns and see what they can offer? You mention my name and, you never know, you might get some discount. You probably won't, but you might find another tall tale that johnny's got about me or something along those lines. So always worth it. But do tell him that you have listened to the podcast and he will, I'm sure, be very happy about that. Well, that brings us to the end of episode 34. Thank you ever so much for still listening and obviously helping this this grow. Please keep sharing this podcast. The more you share, the more people get to hear about it and the more reach we get. But thank you again and we will catch you on the next one.