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What price a pheasant ?


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Has any taken the trouble to work out the real cost of every pheasant shot on a DIY shoot ? We have six work parties a year ,on our shoot,plus a feeding team that springs into operation when the birds arrive .The man hours involved run into hundreds.The rent,birds ,pellets , wheat,pen construction and maintenance,cover crop,fuel ,straw and a many more expenses.When I tell my wife" just nipping out for half an hour" she knows it will be several hours before I'm back from the farm.I'm sure non shooting people would consider us totally mad.

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Aye i usually do it every year just for interest. Just simply all the money in from guns or total cost for the year rent/birds/feed etc which on most diy shoots is the same as money in and divide it by the pheasants shot and by the headage shot.

 

We're usually around 25-28ish quid a pheasant (althou have been as low as £22) but comes down to about 15 quid per head. And thats shooting 35%-40% returns and not counting any man hours desiel quad etc and begging and borrowing as much stuff as possible for pen building etc.

I'm amazed some comercial shoots can only charge 25-30 quid for a bird when wages, desiel, motors, quads etc

I usually think it cost about £7.50 just to buy and feed a bird to shooting age, so by time only shooting 1/3rd of them ur up to 20 odd quid per bird

 

It is crazy the ammount of work some people put into shoots, i'm self employed would probably be far cheaper working all the hours i put in to shoot and joining a fancy fully driven keepered shoot

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Most of the people who are the driving force behind DIY syndicate shoots do it because they enjoy it, every aspect of it, I usually find they're also the folk with working dogs!

:yes: There speaks the voice of experience! We spend 4 hours every Sunday morning all year round and several Saturdays doing one thing or another on our rough shoot. There are 6 in our little syndicate but usually only 3 who do all the work, and it's the same 3 every weekend. It's starting to become more than a little annoying now so no doubt words will have to be spoken.

Since the end of last season we have constructed more feeders, planted 4 new hedgerows with 2000 cuttings, sown cover crop, shot foxes, shot rabbits and deer to sell for proceeds towards the shoot and then delivered them to game dealer, built new and repaired old stiles, constructed a new high seat in the bowl of a tree, collected birds from supplier and fed and watered them until they had settled in, collected eggs for incubator, repaired hen huts where broodies live and felled who knows how many trees in wood to encourage ground cover to grow, and once we start feeding in earnest we'll be doing that on a regular basis also.

I have no idea how many man hours we've put in, but it's all unpaid and we do it for the love of shooting, but since this thread I think I'll start making a note from the end of next season of our hours and present the result to the others who make up excuses of how busy they are but never fail to turn up come shoot days.

Your comment about the working dogs rings a bell, and I would add it's usually those same people who end up doing the majority of beating as well. :yes: You often find those with working dogs are the only ones with game bags also. 'Can I shove this in your bag....?' 'If you carry the bag you can'. :yes:

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Aye echoing the above comments a few shoots have folded around my area as the same few people have either eventually got sick of doing all the work or got too old.

Doesnae matter who u speak to wether gamefarmer, farmer that sells feed or other shoot captains it is generally a hard core of 1 or 2 people keeping most shoots going with another 3-6 helping.

And those are generally the boys with the dogs and do more beating or offer to stand in the less good pegs as they appreciate there is far more to it than pulling the trigger as often as possible

 

Must admit i am very lucky with my syndicate great bunch of boys and while if i get 6-8 on a work party once a month i'm happy, but there all decent boys with common sense and can do jobs to a decent standard. If anything our syndicate has to many young/middle aged folk in it as often folk are working shifts or young kids/wifes to keep happy, which is fair enough.

Some of the other shoot captains i speak to have syndicates full of numpties with very little common sense and cause more damage or slow u down on a work party

 

We started some new rules a few seasons ago everyone carries a game bag and pen knife and have introduced forfiets, that have still to be decided on the day, more fun or silly things than money. Everyone now brings a game bag, althou 1's more like a man bag fits about 2 snipe!!, his wife bought it for him, prob cost a fortune too

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Alycidon multiply your 1000 hours by the minimum wage then taking your other costs into consideration divide by the number of birds shot and it gets really scary.However after the first shoot of the season sitting in the pub ,pint in hand, chatting about the days sport nothing could be further from my mind.

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Alycidon multiply your 1000 hours by the minimum wage then taking your other costs into consideration divide by the number of birds shot and it gets really scary.However after the first shoot of the season sitting in the pub ,pint in hand, chatting about the days sport nothing could be further from my mind.

Couldn't agree more, when it all comes together and we've had a good day, all is more or less forgotten about, and even though I say 'words' will be said, as frustrating as it gets at times, none will be said in malice as we've known each other for years.

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