Hard work in spring keeps shoot on target

What happens at pheasant shoots out of season? Mark Holdstock reports from one of the leading high pheasant shoots in the country, at Swinton Park near Masham

Once the guns have been returned to their secure cabinets and the beaters are back in their day jobs, at school or college, work starts immediately on making sure there will be a good supply of birds when the new season begins in October.

Pheasants like to live on the edge of woodland and on Lord Masham's estate at Swinton Park, just outside Masham, there are 2,000 acres of forestry alongside 9,000 acres of farmland and another 9,000 of moorland. At the peak of the season the shoot would reckon to bag 250 birds on a day's shooting. That's about 12,000 birds a season, about half of what is put down. Everything which is shot is eaten, and goes to Yorkshire Game at Richmond.

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"Typically a shooting estate would look to establish good game cover," says James Raynar, one of Swinton's land agents. "That will involve co-operation between the forestry department and the game shooting department to ensure that timber production and good game habitat can work together."

Until 1983 a large part of the woodland here was leased to the Forestry Commission and much of it was planted with conifers. "Good cover is important, and having different species in them and different stratification of cover is important", says James Raynar. "A high dense forest is not very good when it's a monoculture of species. If you can put in a variety of trees and some open 'rides' to let the light into the woodlands, that provides a good wildlife habitat."

Cover crops are planted next to the woods where the pheasant will feed, and seek cover from predators. They are encouraged to live here by easy access to food, either through what is being grown or by supplementary feeders.

On shoot days the staff and the beaters will flush them out up over the guns positioned at the bottom of the valley. Not all of the birds will be in the cover crop, some will still be in the woods and it is the job of the beaters to round them up and head them towards the guns. At night, surviving birds return to the woodland to roost in the high canopy.

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The woodland management here is based on principles recommended by the Game and Wildlife Conservancy Trust. These encourage mixed woodland which also benefits song birds, ground flora and woodland butterflies. GWCT research in 2001 at Loddington in Leicestershire showed that combining conservation habitat with vermin control helped the population of songbirds there to double.

The shooting needs the support of the tenant farmers. None of the land is farmed by the estate, so many of the parcels of ground used for the cover crops are in effect rented back from the tenants. A third party is contracted to put in the cover crops.

One of the most common is reed canary grass, which grows up to about three feet high. It has no practical benefit in farming, although it may be suitable as a future bio-fuel. The land is prepared in the spring for the cover crops which are planted between late spring and July.

Lord Masham says that the idea is to recreate the environment which would be present at other times of the year on a normal farming landscape. Birds would be going among the cereal crops bordering woodland.

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"They do that in the summer, but the difference is that we provide winter crops, which no farmer in their right mind would," says Lord Masham.

"We provide something that the pheasants wouldn't find naturally. On a commercial farming operation you would see very little cover over the winter time."

Where to grow the cover crops is decided at the end of the shooting season between Lord Masham and Steve Abbott, the head keeper for the pheasant shoot.

"We look at what drives we want to do and work out where the cover crops might be best sited", says Lord Masham.

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"It might be on rather good farmland, I have to make a commercial decision as to whether I'm happy to give up that area to a pheasant cover crop which isn't going to bring any income as a crop for food."

In effect, the tenants are compensated through a rent reduction for their fields which the estate uses for pheasant cover.

The new generation of pheasants arrive as eggs in April. They are put into an incubator for about 20 days and once hatched the young pheasants go into rearing pens where they will be safe from predators.

This is all done by Steve Abbott and his three staff.

As well as the rearing operation, there are fences

to repair, vermin to control and also many of the surviving hen pheasants to round up.

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They are sent off to game farms to produce the stock for the next season.

This is done by using pens, with feed in to draw the birds in.

Lord Masham says the 2009 season was good for the shoot, and if the hard work is done over the spring and summer there is no reason why 2010 shouldn't be the same.

CW 1/5/10

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