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Twenty-five years in the same valley
What the lodge does with the birds, with the money and with the people who live around it. Not a mission statement — the specific things, and where they fall short.
Why this page exists
British Guns ask about this. Americans mostly don't
In Britain, how a shoot is run is part of the conversation in a way it often is not elsewhere: what happens to the bag, who owns the ground, what the operation does for the place it sits in. Those are fair questions and we would rather answer them here than be asked them on the second evening.
Sierra Brava has been operating for more than twenty-five years in the same part of northern Córdoba. Almost everyone who works here comes from within a few miles of the lodge. That is the whole basis of what follows.
The bag
Nothing shot here is wasted
This is the question that comes first, so it goes first. Taking birds home used to be allowed and no longer is, and the airlines will not carry the coolers either. So the birds stay.
The kitchen takes what it needs — dove appears through the week as pâté, as brochettes and on the asado, alongside the beef. The rest is cleaned and given to local families, who take it home as food. What is left goes to the farms' pigs, and after that to the foxes and the eagles, which were going to have it anyway.
The eared dove is classed as an agricultural pest in Córdoba, which is why the province sets no season and no limit and why the farmers want Guns on their ground. That is the honest frame: this is crop protection that happens to be superb shooting, not the other way round.
The rest of it
Community, conservation, and the part we can measure
The people. The team is local and long-serving, and the lodge invests in the households connected to it. A guest's week pays wages in a small farming district; that is not a claim, it is arithmetic.
The neighbours. Local families and schools, and regional initiatives, through direct assistance and through employment. The relationships are older than any individual season.
Beyond Argentina. For years Sierra Brava has donated shooting and fishing trips to clubs, conservation organisations and charity fundraisers, largely in the United States. Those donations are auctioned and the proceeds stay with the organisation.
The ground. Responsible practice, habitat awareness, and an operation built to still be here in twenty-five years. We would rather state that plainly than dress it up: it is a commitment, and the measure of it is whether the shooting is as good for the next generation as it is now.
Fair questions
The ones worth asking
Nothing is wasted. The kitchen takes what it needs and it appears through the week as pâté, brochettes and on the asado. The rest is cleaned and goes to local families as food, then to the farms' pigs, and what remains is taken by foxes and eagles.
The eared dove is classed as an agricultural pest in Córdoba, and the farmers lose a real share of their crop to it, which is why the province sets no season and no daily limit and why we are welcome on the ground. It is crop protection that happens to be extraordinary shooting.
People from the surrounding district, most of them for a long time. A guest's week is wages in a small farming area, and that is the most concrete thing we can tell you about the lodge's effect on the place it sits in.
Next
Ask us the awkward one
If there is something on this page you want pressed harder, press it. We would rather answer it now.