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Introduction to The Falkland Syndicate


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I plan to keep a diary here over the shooting season so here is an introduction to our syndicate.

 

The Falkland Syndicate takes its name from the village of Falkland in Fife around which our shooting is based.

 

We shoot over three farms within a 5 mile radius of Falkland and shoot every Saturday from the middle of October until the end of the season.

 

The syndicate has been in existence in one form or another for about 10 years starting out shooting over two farms in a relatively small way but expanding 5 years ago when we leased the shooting of a third farm which was especially laid out for shooting. The first season of expansion did not live up to our expectations for one reason or another and we considered giving up the new ground and scaling back down.

 

However we decided to give the new ground another year and as luck would have it this coincided with me having to take early retirement due to ill health so I was able to devote all my time to the shoot.

 

Three years ago we were lucky enough to obtain some rearing equipment from the mother of one of the guns (she had been a large scale game farmer and was retiring) free of charge and so set about rearing our own birds from day olds. Initially there was some scepticism about whether we should do this due to the horror stories some had heard about disease and the 101 ways pheasants find to die. However having worked in the feed and poultry trade for a large part of my career I was convinced that rearing would be a success and so it proved. On our first year we reared 97% of the day olds to release despite continuous rain that turned the rearing field into a bog.

 

Rearing our own birds has transformed the economics and performance of our shoot and this year we reared

 

2000 Blackneck Pheasants

100 White Pheasants

400 Red Legs

400 Ducks

 

We have 16 guns to spread the cost and it is walk and stand although we have gathered a regular crew of beaters who come for a day out in the fresh air.

 

Our biggest cost is Rent followed by feed (We use 11 tonnes of pellets) and about 18 tonnes of wheat and barley) and then day olds.

 

Our first day is tomorrow and I am really looking forward to it!

 

I will follow this post with some pictures from previous seasons

 

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Anyway the picture above is of dayolds which we get delivered the last Tuesday in May from Lindsay Crisp in Alnwick, He has his own closed flock of blackneck pheasants meaning that they are always the same strain and are disease free.

They are hatched Tuesday morning and we get delivery by 3pm in the afternoon so that they have not been trailed around the countryside like some so called "Day olds" that can be 2-3 days old before you get them.

They go straight into 8 x 8 brooder huts which have had the gas heaters on for 24 hours.

400 per hut inside plastic brooder rings.v

 

They are fed on A-One Feeds game feed which in my experience is the best on the market. For the first 2 weeks they get starter crumb which includes 10% fishmeal and ensures they are off to a good start. Then they are on micro pellets for 2 weeks and then on to grower. These diets all contain Avatec a coccsidiostat but no other drugs are used. Paper bedding is available but very little is used as the droppings are very dry due to the high digestability of the diets.

 

The brooder huts are checked every three hours day and night to ensure the correct temperature and until the birds are bitted at 3 weeks light levels are kept to a minimum to prevent feather pecking.

 

The birds are fed and watered at 8am and watered again at 5pm

 

At 3 weeks of age after bitting the birds are allowed out into the night shelters for increasing amounts of time but are locked up at night.

 

From 4 weeks the birds are allowed out into the main enclosures but are walked back into the shelters at the first hint of rain and are walked back in at night.

 

From 5 weeks the birds have learned to take shelter when it rains and depending on the forecast can be left out at night

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The first outing of the season was on Saturday at Little Ballo which is a hill farm nesting between the East and West Lomond.

 

The shoot here consists of a 15 acre coniferous wood on a steep hillside, a small 3 acre wood on a hillside and acres and acres of rough hill pasture of white grass, rushes and heather. There is a wide bank of reeds around the reservoir.

 

This year we released 450 pheasants and 250 partridges. The pheasant release pen is in the small wood at the back of the farm and there are three small partridge release pens, two out on the open hill and one on a clearing in the big wood.

 

We have two small areas of stubble turnips as game cover but the birds are very difficult to hold here as conditions are pretty inhospitable here in the winter. There are no shoots on our borders and as a result we suffer a lot of leakage to the low ground . As a result we struggle to get a decent return here averaging about 30% on pheasants and 15% on partridges.

 

The day dawned bright and chilly on the lowground but when we arrived up the hill the sky was overcast with light mist and no wind.

 

The order of the day was partridges, sporting pheasants but no ground game.

 

We started on the furthest drive from the farm and blanked the small gamecrop by the castle up onto the hillside and several partridges headed in the right direction.

The first drive involves the longest walk of the day as it requires a pincer movement out into the heather encircling the top partridge pen. It takes about half an hour and starts slowly as very little rises way out in the heather but it built quite nicely as we approached the pen.

There was little bursts of shooting as birds went forward in singles and pairs and then a pack of about 60 birds got up and flew across the face of the hill following the contours of the ground and because they were between the beaters and the guns they were no shots fired but at least they had gone into the next drive

It is always a challenge to get the partridges over the guns here and despite putting a flagger on the side of the hill they went that way anyway. Our guns are used to shooting pheasants and they will often leave perfectly shootable partridges because they are too low. We really need hedges here to get them up and over but the little shelter belts that are planted along the roadside are to immature to have any effect. There was a good flush of pheasants from around the little pen and most of them provided very sporting targets with the ones that just glided down the hill being left for another day.

Once the horn had gone my little spaniel flushed a reluctant white pheasant from the roadside and as it skimmed at knee level down the hill there was much hilarity among the guns that they had escaped a fine!

The next drive is a long one too coming off the hill down into the valley and it allows us to set the guns much further down the hill resulting in much higher targets. It was my turn to shoot. I has drawn peg 4 a really good peg for pheasants as they curled down across the valley into the big wood.

I stood nervously watching as a huge pack of red legs went high over the end of the line resulting in guns 6 7 and 8 getting a flurry of good shooting and then a speck caught my attention on the horizon. A cock pheasant had got up way back and was curling in my direction. I resisted the temptation to lift my gun to erlyand waited until it set it wings and started to curl to my left shouldered my gun swung through and folded it. It landed with a satisfying thump in the wood behind me. This was followed quickly by another identical cock which I did not kill so cleanly. I could have had several more shots but I left them for another day and headed for the bothy for elevenses.

There were four more drives in the afternoon the best of which was off the loch side back up into the big wood. The birds flew well up the hill and I accounted for 3 good pheasants and missed two partridges.

The drive out of the pen wood produced a good number of pheasants but they did not fly well and few were shot.

On the last drive high birds off the hillside were too good and I fired 6 shots for nil return. I often find that my shooting gets worse as the day goes on.

 

Overall it was a successful day with a final bag of 18 pheasants 15 red legs a pigeon and a crow for 178 shots. The guns were selective in what they shot but 3 pheasants and 4 partridges were shot but not picked despite considerable efforts. The partridges have held well this year I think due to the really settled weather but I was disappointed with the number of pheasants we saw in the woods. We were finding them well out on the hill and I could hear cocks crowing on the far side of the loch. I was left with a sense of dissatisfaction about the bag but on reviewing last years records found the same day last year to be broadly similar.

 

Well that's the first day of the season out of the way, there were a few birds about and I didn't shoot like a drain.................................result!

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.murphy.75286100

 

I am having great difficulty posting photos here so I have included a link to my facebook account

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Well Saturday dawned bright and breezy , real shirt sleeve weather , most unlike October and it was the much awaited first day of the season at Glentarkie.

 

Glentarkie is the best of or three shoots as it has great topography being built around a series of hills and valleys and having a number of small woods atop the hills ideal for launching birds from. It is surrounded by other shoots on three sides so it tends to give us the best returns together with the most challenging birds.

 

This year we released 1000 pheasants and for the first time on this ground 100 partridges to add interest.

 

The day was unusually warm and the wind was getting up nicely as we had coffee and bacon rolls at the portakabin in the farmyard.

 

The first drive was The Car Park so called because of its proximity to the car park. It is always done first thing because our activity around there during the day tends to clear it of birds if it is left to later.

 

I had drawn peg 4 and stood down in the valley with my back to the duckpond watching in growing excitement as the beaters blanked in the adjoining gamecrop and a steady stream of birds dropped into the wood. I made the mistake of taking a picture of the setting and missed the first bird that rocketed from the wood until it was too late sending it on its way with a single hurried shot. I then missed another two shots at a long crosser before dropping a challenging hen in the duckpond. I reloaded and dropped a rocketing cock and then a nice hen that my neighbour (the shoot captain) had missed. A right and left and an eyewipe to boot! A few other birds tempted me but were not challenging enough so were left for another day. All the guns along the line had some shooting and as the horn went I gave Biscuit command "Get on" and sent him towards the pond only to see him set off up the hill after a hare that had been clapped down by the hedge. No amount of whistling our shouting made any difference has he disappeared over the hill out of sight. I felt a fine coming on but hoped nobody had noticed!

 

I was beating in drive 2 which was to be the Low Pen Wood and was reunited with a rather guilty looking Labrador as we waited in line. We pushed the top strip of woodland down into the bottom pen wood and then realigned and walked it out. I took the dog into the pen and made him sit patiently as I shooed a covey of red legs out a couple at a time. As we tapped our way through the wood birds shot up through the mature trees and set off into the open to a regular fussilade of shooting.

The drive lasted nearly 30 minutes as we took our time to set the birds off in ones and twos but there was not as much shooting as I would have expected. After the drive was over comment was made about the large number of bird but as the wood is at the lowest point guns had been very selective about what was shot. The birds were rocketing up through the trees but then just gliding over the guns. (It is noticeable how as the season goes on how much stronger the birds get)

 

The next drive necessitated a change of plan because so many birds had escaped into the drive above the cattle handling area from the previous drive it was decided to give that a go. This proved less than successful since the birds just all flew low over one part of the line back to whence they had come. I shot one long crossing cock which was gliding down to earth when the rather inexperienced gun next to me finished it off.

 

The fourth drive was the High Pen the best on the shoot. This drive involves pushing the birds up the hill away from the guns before allowing them to curl back over the guns down in the valley below. Again there were a good number of birds flushed and shooting was fast and furious but a large number of birds didn't get as far as the guns and merely rose and curled back into the woods further round.

 

After 4 drives we stopped for lunch before completing a further 5 drives in the afternoon.

 

They were The Top Game Crop where I shot 4 birds including a real screaming high cock that on its own made the day memorable!

The Jungle which only produced a few pigeons (It is a boundary drive and comes in to its own as the season progresses)

Middle Wood which produced some excellent high birds.

Grossarts in which the guns are placed in rides in a conifer wood and snap shooting is the order of the day. I dropped two birds in a whinny bank and stayed behind to pick them with my dog whilst the rest of the team went to do the last drive Roadside.

 

As we enjoyed our soup afterwards everyone agreed the day had been a success with a bag of 80 birds and plenty left for the rest of the season. Encouragingly too the partridges were deemed a success as a few were seen in most drives.

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.murphy.75286100

 

 

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