Chateau du Creux

Guests can choose if they want to have the meals prepared in the gite or chateau or to be independent.

You have the option of staying in what was once the steward's house at the Château du Creux, a magnificent 18th-century estate designed by one of the architects of Versailles, featuring a tree-lined driveway and lovely private gardens.

The ground-floor double living room boasts a vaulted ceiling supported by stone pillars and an open fireplace. Both this room and the dining room have doors opening onto the beautiful, sheltered garden with its mature trees, making it ideal for al fresco dining in the summer. From the garden, there are views across the unspoiled countryside sloping down to a stream.

Guest can also stay in a room in the castle.

We recommend guests to come with their own guns. Guns hire is available.

The shoot lies in the Bocage Bourbonnais in the Allier, central France, a short drive from the Forest of Tronçais, one of Europe’s finest oak forests. The estate covers around 1,100 hectares in a single block. It is a classic French bocage: open plains crossed by hedgerows, woodland and copses, rough fallow ground and a lake. Sunflower crops and feeding points provide cover and hold the birds. The land has been looked after by the same family of keepers for three generations. The varied ground gives a real mix of shooting: birds flushing from hedges and cover crops, and duck around the water. Quiet, unspoilt countryside, with no other party on the estate on your day.

Everything on the estate is managed locally. Our full-time gamekeeper looks after the land year-round, carrying on a tradition of keepering that goes back three generations on the estate. He maintains the hedgerows, woodland and fallow ground and plants sunflower cover crops. He also runs the feeding points that support the birds through the winter. These habitats benefit not only the game but also the wider wildlife of the Bocage Bourbonnais: songbirds, hares, deer and waterfowl around the lake. We work with local farmers and suppliers wherever possible.

Guests are hosted by the de Nicolay family, whose home the château has been since 7 centuries together with our gamekeeper, who knows every hedge and covert on the estate. The atmosphere is straight out of Downton Abbey: arrive the evening before and settle in at the château. Breakfast is served before the shoot and lunch between drives. The day ends with billiards in the reception room and dinner on site. It is a traditional country-house weekend, warm and personal rather than stiff. You are guests of a family home, not clients of a commercial shoot, and with only one party on the estate each day, the whole place is yours.

€400 for walked-up shooting Driven shooting: conditional to bag size desired

The castle is 2H from Paris by car or train. You can also land in Limoges or Clermond-Ferrand. We can pickup at the airport.

You come in an exceptional family house. Hunting has been a family tradition for decades. We will be experiencing hunting in the French version of Downton Abbey.