At this point I could tell you Steve was a great guy, an excellent shot, a fine shooting instructor and gun fitter, a loving father, and a shrewd businessman. All of that would be true, but it would not capture the essence of Steve Denny as I knew him. No matter what I needed, Steve was right there.
About five years in, Steve’s first marriage broke up and he left E.J. Churchill to become director of the Holland & Holland Shooting Ground at Northwood. There, he lived in a small cottage on the edge of the grounds. When he married Sonia, the second Mrs. Denny, in 2004, I was asked to be an usher at their wedding.
That was kind of a busy fall for me, what with a trip to Botswana to hunt eland up in Kwando in September, and Tanzania to hunt Cape buffalo in November. Fly to London in between for a wedding? “Order my outfit,” I wired back (it was to have an Edwardian theme) and booked a flight. I would not normally cross the street to attend a wedding—any wedding—but I would cross the Atlantic for Steve’s.
For the next dozen years, if I was flying through London, I stayed with Steve and Sonia. No matter how busy he was—and turning the Holland & Holland Shooting Ground into a major profit center for Chanel was a 28-hour-a-day job—Steve met me at the airport. In person. Always.
Around 2011, he was diagnosed with myelofibrosis, a particularly vicious blood disease which had taken another old friend of mine a couple of years earlier. So I knew what it was. In 2012, I went to visit again and Steve took me to his parents’ place in Suffolk, the shire that he maintained was actually the home of God the Father. There, he was a member of a shooting syndicate, and we went out for a day of driven pheasants.
For the occasion, Steve brought a newly finished H&H ‘Royal’ for my use, while he carried a favorite old hammer gun.
Shooting syndicates have their own stern code, and there are no spare pegs kicking around. For the first few drives, I occupied Steve’s, while he coached me. After I managed to deck a bird or two (and miss several more) I handed the gun over to Steve and watched while he showed me how it was done. He was a heavy-set man, but put a gun in his hands and he became as graceful as Nureyev.
We were standing in the middle of freshly plowed mud when a bird came over and Steve casually mounted the gun, twirled, and it came down from on high with three Labradors already racing in.
When the birds were flying, the syndicate’s dogs knew who to watch.
Gray’s shooting editor, Terry Wieland, has a dozen more Steve Denny stories. Hell, two dozen. He expects to sprinkle them here and there for the foreseeable future. Great memories never die, and nor should gratitude.
