Resilience and hope
Matt Dutton
As the shooting season draws to a close, Matt Dutton reflects on a year like no other for game shoots.
The year 2022 came with some worrying news for most game shoots, where avian influenza (AI) threatened to impede any delivery of gamebird chicks, eggs or poults.
While scores of shoots around the country struggled to get birds initially, many did seem to find some by the time the summer came. Others unfortunately failed to get their birds and were forced to mothball the shoot for the coming season.
The majority of estates I work with were lucky enough to get the birds they needed to have a shooting season, albeit a reduced one. Some birds were delivered in instalments or came late, though the latter did unexpectedly make life a little easier for some shoots – I’ll get to that in a moment.
Reducing time on the ground
The old-time tradition was always for shoots to take delivery of poults (or release them) in early July. This of course came from a time way back when our winters started in October.
In the Midlands, we rarely see any cold weather until mid-December. In this case birds released in July have had a good five months of access to wild food and will have often proved to be prolific wanderers. This is a serious issue for the smaller shoots who take on the management duties themselves and don’t have a dedicated gamekeeper on the ground 24/7 to “dog” them back to the woods.
I always recommend to these smaller shoots that they get their poults as late as possible, while still ensuring the birds are physically ready for the first shoot day. To clarify, the Code of Good Shooting Practice states that birds should be released no later than one month prior to your first shoot day, and that they should have reached full physical maturity by that date.
Reducing the amount of time that birds spend on the ground leaves less time for them to wander off. It also means that you don’t need to feed for as long as you would if you’d released in July, hence the grain bill is less, too.
The issues caused by AI forced many shoots to take delivery of their birds later than they usually would. For the shoots I deal with, this proved to be a blessing in disguise. The result was that the birds were still on their ground by the time their first shoot day arrived and when the cold weather hit us just before Christmas, they quickly hit the feed hoppers and held to the ground better than they ever had.
A worrying time
The uncertainty that AI brought to many had a lot of full-time keepers troubled. This was particularly the case for those with families, and houses tied to their jobs.
The threat of job losses was on their minds from the outset. For shoot owners, the possibility of laying off their gamekeeper and mothballing the shoot with no income from paying Guns. This was a scenario which may have seen the shoot never to re-start.
At BASC we offer shoot visits to any shoot across the country. During the visits we give shoot management guidance and general updates on new legislation or shooting topics in general.
It was while undertaking shoot visits this year that I heard first-hand the concerns of gamekeepers all across the region. The worry was that they wouldn’t have any season at all. They feared this would mean finding new jobs and for many, homes.
With the situation affecting shoots nationwide, they knew they wouldn’t find a gamekeeping job anywhere else, so the need to retrain or change career was a real possibility. For the majority this was unthinkable, let alone even possible.
Thankfully the amount of shoots that couldn’t get birds in my area was in the minority, and most shoots managed to get most (if not all) of their usual number of birds and were able to make a season out of them.
For the shoots that had vastly reduced amount of birds, it did separate the gamekeepers form the “bird feeder” types of people, and shoots that undertook effective predator control, good habitat management and had the knowledge of how to hold their birds were able to produce some great days out of less quarry than usual.
An opportunity for shoots
In my view, what’s important is that shoots and shoot managers cannot afford to lose momentum at this point. The situation with AI is far from over and the disease may very well be here to stay, so shoots need to have already begun plans for sourcing next season’s birds.
Perhaps it’s time that shoots produced their own again rather than relying on imported stocks. When I stared gamekeeping 30 years ago, every shoot I knew had a working incubator and a rearing field; now I don’t know of any shoots that have these, let alone the knowledge to do it.
It’s a sad fact that so many younger ‘keepers I meet have never had to run a laying pen and rear their own birds from eggs. Maybe this is an opportunity that some shoots should look into taking again.
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