Jump to content

The Financial Impact The Virus Has Caused On Shooting This Last Season ?


marsh man
 Share

Recommended Posts

49 minutes ago, London Best said:

Before Christmas I was talking with a commercial shoot owner where I had a day booked for January. He told me that during the November lockdown he had lost 18 x 300 bird days  @ £40/bird. Now, of course, he has lost the rest of his season as well, maybe at a guess another 25 days? He is a one man band. His losses don’t bear thinking about.

When you think that most Pheasant only shoots don't start till around the second week of November, the November lockdown couldn't had come at a worse time , nearly a years good money that is invested in the shoot have to be recovered with a good profit in around twelve weeks , then to lose the last six weeks must be a total nightmare and a financial disaster.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 75
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

2 minutes ago, marsh man said:

When you think that most Pheasant only shoots don't start till around the second week of November, the November lockdown couldn't had come at a worse time , nearly a years good money that is invested in the shoot have to be recovered with a good profit in around twelve weeks , then to lose the last six weeks must be a total nightmare and a financial disaster.

I worry that we may see a rise in nervous breakdowns and suicides amongst the jobless/bankrupt game keeping / shoot proprietor fraternity. I do hope not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Lloyd90 said:


Just a worst case scenario tbh Scully. 
 

As I said my mate is going to keep feeding. But I think it’s a bit unrealistic to think they’re all going to do that. 
 

Some individuals or shoots simply won’t have the money to be able to buy the feed considering the sums lost. 
 

Agree with you plenty of food be about for predators this year. 
 

 

I don’t have those pictures and don’t really and to go looking for them, but they do exist don’t they? 🤷‍♂️
 

Just this season a bunch of birds were dumped near my clubs main shoot. Pictures were taken and posted on the local village groups online and there was uproar. 
 

I was confronted by members of the local big shoot whilst out shooting blaming Oowee and myself for dumping the high number of birds. Despite the fact they had a huge driven shoot on the same land and we had a tiny rough shoot with a limit of 4 birds each. 

Ive no doubt there are shoots who won’t feed past the season, but it is short sighted not to do so. Like I’ve said, of all the shoots around here I only ever heard of one who didn’t. 
Regarding dumped birds, I haven’t yet seen, despite all the claims made, and all the rumours which persist, photographs of entire dumped birds. I have seen photographs of processed birds, photographed from several different angles to give the impression there were dozens if not hundreds, still tied together but partly processed by being breasted, but whenever I have challenged anyone who has made the claim, to produce evidence of entire dumped birds, they never have. 
As far as I’m aware, after talking to an NGO rep’ some time ago, it isn’t an offence to dump birds, but it is an offence to dump processed birds. 

Edited by Scully
Link to comment
Share on other sites

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sxsrf=ALeKk03F1lOnrVOnWHIiPvGuwawFeejBVw%3A1610057920495&source=hp&biw=1567&bih=978&ei=wIj3X7jnG4KalwTGla2YDg&q=dumped+pheasants&oq=dumped+pheasants&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoCCAA6BQgAELEDOggIABCxAxCDAToGCAAQCBAeOgQIABAYUIsOWMI8YNFBaAFwAHgAgAFQiAGDCJIBAjE3mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWc&sclient=img&ved=0ahUKEwi4x6qT7YruAhUCzYUKHcZKC-MQ4dUDCAY&uact=5

Sift through that lot and make of it what you will!  I don't doubt it's mostly anti-shooting propaganda, misrepresentation of the facts etc etc...

This one contains a video where it actually looks like some of the carcasses have been breasted out, even though the estate concerned had stated they were birds unfit for consumption and were therefore disposed of.

Regardless of whether the meat gets taken off the birds and used, if shoots are going to dispose of "waste" like this I'd like to think they could learn lessons and do it a bit smarter so as not leave themselves, and therefore shooting in general, open to possibility of being secretly filmed and splashed all over the press.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I handle the vermin control on a dairy farm and no game bird shooting takes place on it but it is a daily occurence to see upwards of 50 to 60 pheasants get off their muck heap and there are always a dozen or more visiting my flip tops, one hen in fact learned to lift the lid.  I really don't think pheasants will be starving if they go 'wild'. There is plenty of food out there for them.  I really do not believe there will be pictures of starving pheasants, they are very resourceful birds.   Supplementary feeding does not have to be as heavy as during the season where you want the birds in specific locations.  Pity the season ends when it does as quite a few cock birds could be thinned out simply with an air rifle and the produce used.   Certainly going to be tough times but as already said it is up to us to give the support or lose it. 

On the question of dumping carcases, I remember seeing two brace thrown in a ditch at the side of a lane up in Lincolnshire obviously by a gun leaving a days shooting and one of the beaters said the birds where tied with similar if not the same string as theirs, now that had to be a departing gun.  The mind boggles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have just had notification from guns on pegs for shooting dates for the next season having lost several days this season and lots of stalking I am going to wait until it is certain that I can book with confidence, I understand the difficulties for shoot owners but like most people on here I cannot afford to throw good money after bad. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Jim Neal said:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sxsrf=ALeKk03F1lOnrVOnWHIiPvGuwawFeejBVw%3A1610057920495&source=hp&biw=1567&bih=978&ei=wIj3X7jnG4KalwTGla2YDg&q=dumped+pheasants&oq=dumped+pheasants&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoCCAA6BQgAELEDOggIABCxAxCDAToGCAAQCBAeOgQIABAYUIsOWMI8YNFBaAFwAHgAgAFQiAGDCJIBAjE3mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWc&sclient=img&ved=0ahUKEwi4x6qT7YruAhUCzYUKHcZKC-MQ4dUDCAY&uact=5

Sift through that lot and make of it what you will!  I don't doubt it's mostly anti-shooting propaganda, misrepresentation of the facts etc etc...

This one contains a video where it actually looks like some of the carcasses have been breasted out, even though the estate concerned had stated they were birds unfit for consumption and were therefore disposed of.

Regardless of whether the meat gets taken off the birds and used, if shoots are going to dispose of "waste" like this I'd like to think they could learn lessons and do it a bit smarter so as not leave themselves, and therefore shooting in general, open to possibility of being secretly filmed and splashed all over the press.

Same old same old. Nothing new there I’m afraid, photos of only one half of a story. For example, the one relating to the digger was from last year unless I’m mistaken, and concerns the sacking of at least one shoot employee, not because he was burying carcasses, but because he was disposing of processed remains by the wrong method. Once you start the processing of birds bound for the food chain, you are legally bound to dispose of what is left in the correct manner, this applies to individuals as well as shoots. It isn’t just BIG commercial shoots that this applies to, despite what some claim. 
How do you dispose of the remains of all those birds you claim you are forced to process when other guns refuse to take them? 
According to the NGO rep’ I spoke to regarding the above, unless you give birds away, complete and in feather, the laws ( including those regarding storage of said birds prior to processing ) apply to you too.
I had to clear this up as I was supplying a local restaurant at the time. 🙂

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just to be clear I wasn't trying to present evidence to back up the claims that there's loads of perfectly good birds being dumped.  I was demonstrating that a simple google search brings up lots of results on the subject, and most of it we can perceive as being anti-shooting propaganda as I said above.  In my opinion it's mostly just highlighting a few places with bad practices and sloppy procedures that need to sharpen up a bit.

I bag my carcasses etc up in bin liners, double-wrapped, and put them in the general waste bin.  Took a bit of stamping on, the week I had 12 pheasants, several pigeons and a brace of geese 😲 I can't imagine that's illegal if the birds are for my own personal consumption and not being sold or given away.

I know of one very well known estate in my county that uses an incinerator.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One important part of game shooting we haven't mentioned is the game farms , with so much game left over and all the uncertainties still to come , who is going to put in orders when the time for ordering arrive , we have lost getting on to two thirds of our booked dates , some Partridge shoots might have done better with having an early start , but if you took the country overall would you say we have got 50/60% game left over ?

By the time ordering arrive we are still going to be some form of restrictions and could still be in them for many months to come .

In some of the last posts the subject of dead game is a problem , well how many game dealers are going to survive , up until this season a lot of game dealers were totally full up with game , one large dealers where I take my pigeons employ several overseas workers , the Summer before last I took some pigeons and they had all gone home for a holiday , I was talking to the owner and I asked him if he had enough work in the Summer to keep them all employed , this was around July and he said when they come back they still had 15,000 Pheasants to process and the new Partridge season was only a few away , then he had a good market for the game which was mainly in Europe , now this last year they have been in lockdown like ourselves with all the eating ou.t places shut , so the dealers are full of game that had been paid for with very little signs of selling anything abroad .

Like the shoots , some can weather the storm and come back from where they left off , but for a lot,  the storm will be to much to over come .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 06/01/2021 at 20:11, marsh man said:

Who could have imagined this time last year where we would be in twelve months time , we finished the season last year as we normally do with two beaters days , three Saturdays in February and one in March were spent roost shooting , one beaters and helpers meal in February and another shoot I go on we had a meal in early March , no one at the time knew what lay ahead in the months to come .

Then the dreaded Virus starting to affect our way of life , some shoots took a chance and carried on as per normal , while others either cut down or gave it a miss for the coming season , then when the virus started to take hold in the early Spring a new way of life came into play called lockdown , this was at a time when people who had booked days had to hand over there deposits and the people who ran the shoots had to start ordering poults , feed stuff and getting holding pens sorted out .

Time went by and the first lockdown came to a end after more weeks than first thought , after a slowdown in infected cases during the Summer we were then eagerly looking towards the shooting season , September arrived and the Partridge days began , this only lasted till late September and we were back on lockdown with the first days cancelled  and shoot owners trying to rearrange the dates later on in the season , little did we know then that we were going to lose around six of the best and busiest weeks of the season .

We now accept that this season is finished with no chance of any more shooting and money coming in .

So what do we do ( if we are still here ) for this coming season , this lockdown is expected to go on well into the Spring or longer , god help us if we get another strain of the virus that the present vaccine can't cope with as today we passed 1000 deaths in one day and over 60,000 infected cases 

This crisis is not only affecting game shooting it is a disaster for everyone involved  in all sorts of field sports , the game dealers have got no one to sell there game to and the traders who rely on game fairs to sell there stuff are in for a rocky road with no fairs last year and our two local ones like the Norfolk show which can attract up to 100,000 people and the Suffolk show which see around 80,000 go through the gate are both cancelled .

I was talking to a chap the other day who knew a keeper on a well known estate in Wales and he was saying a lot of shoots are in serious trouble money wise with one owing several thousand to the feed merchant and I dare say there are a lot of worried shoot owners in UK , 

So if you had a crystal ball , How do you see next season operating ?   

STAY SAFE everyone .

 

Brilliant Post MM I feel very sorry for the gamekeepers who work all year to provide shoot days I was gonna book a driven day at a pheasant estate I myself haven’t bothered Wildfowling pigeon shooting clays or even pest control at the moment due to the R rate rising in N Ireland I agree I can see these lockdowns being a regular occurrence until the people in power start getting Hopefully this vaccine rolled out 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Our small syndicate decided to write off 20/21 way back in March as a few of the helpers are elderly and we w acted to protect them, at our pre season supper that we Went ahead with in September i voiced the opinion that 21/22 was done for and was accused of being even more miserable than usual, sadly however my pessimism is coming true, these out breaks down just evaporate and despite everyone’s hard work (ignoring the F wits) the vaccine task is almost immeasurable. 
 

We fed this winter even though the birds in the ground were left over from 19/20 and should be established but will continue to do so, as it stands we won’t be having a 21/22 season at all and have advised game dealer accordingly (although our 1,000 or so birds don’t make him rich)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Gerry78 said:

Brilliant Post MM I feel very sorry for the gamekeepers who work all year to provide shoot days I was gonna book a driven day at a pheasant estate I myself haven’t bothered Wildfowling pigeon shooting clays or even pest control at the moment due to the R rate rising in N Ireland I agree I can see these lockdowns being a regular occurrence until the people in power start getting Hopefully this vaccine rolled out 

Cheers Gerry ... We might be slightly better off than you in N / Ireland , I say slightly but our numbers of infected cases were fairly low at one time but sadly that is no longer the case as the numbers are going through the roof and with record numbers today in the UK the virus don't show any signs of slowing down in fact if anything it is getting worse and the hospitals are filling up at an alarming rate.

We can still take our gun out as long as you stick to being local and only go by yourself , or one other person , I take my gun out when I and my dog need exercising but the virus is always on your mind , but it do you good getting away from the News on the t v and filling your lungs up with fresh air .

Good Luck in N / Ireland and STAY SAFE .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, marsh man said:

Cheers Gerry ... We might be slightly better off than you in N / Ireland , I say slightly but our numbers of infected cases were fairly low at one time but sadly that is no longer the case as the numbers are going through the roof and with record numbers today in the UK the virus don't show any signs of slowing down in fact if anything it is getting worse and the hospitals are filling up at an alarming rate.

We can still take our gun out as long as you stick to being local and only go by yourself , or one other person , I take my gun out when I and my dog need exercising but the virus is always on your mind , but it do you good getting away from the News on the t v and filling your lungs up with fresh air .

Good Luck in N / Ireland and STAY SAFE .

Cheers MM unfortunately here in NI That. Virus is very high I agree getting out into the field not only good for your body it’s very great for our mental health Never again I’m I gonna take it for granted getting out hunting As I say hopefully we All over the Uk we get the vaccine sorted On a side note I was talking to a junior game keeper who thinks a lot of estates over here are gonna take a massive hit on revenue like main land Britain He’s estate gonna try new season off just having a Lot more mini driven days with limited number of guns well spaced apart He’s boss thinking no more walked up days wither that works I’m not sure I know shooting in general gonna take a long time to get back to the way it was HERES HOPING 👍👍

Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, grahamch said:

Reading all if these posts makes me wonder if reared game shooting on current scales is really is sustainable as folk claim? 

Perhaps the whole 'industry' should consider operating on a smaller scale?

Our syndicates biggest bag is about 48, what figure do you suggest we reduce it to? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Scully said:

Our syndicates biggest bag is about 48, what figure do you suggest we reduce it to? 

That is being disingenuous. He obviously was not referring to your size shoot. I agree and hope the day of big bags [200 up] are numbered. Fire away anyone who disagrees. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Tadorna said:

That is being disingenuous. He obviously was not referring to your size shoot. I agree and hope the day of big bags [200 up] are numbered. Fire away anyone who disagrees. 

Do you want to restrict pigeon shooters to only shooting about twenty each/day as well?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, Tadorna said:

That is being disingenuous. He obviously was not referring to your size shoot. I agree and hope the day of big bags [200 up] are numbered. Fire away anyone who disagrees. 

I disagree. He said the ‘whole industry’ which includes anyone who shoots reared driven game. Anyone who buys birds to put down with the intention of shooting is part of that ‘industry’, and anyone else who shoots walked up birds but doesn’t buy nor feed those birds, is taking advantage of birds supplied and or fed by others. 
There are twenty two shoots that I know of within a fifteen mile radius of me, and more than likely a few more that I don’t know of, from small walk about days to BIG commercial bought days, and everything in between.
On our little rough shoot we shoot maybe 12 a day, on syndicate days like I’ve said, anything up to about 48. 

I know of several shoots locally which bag around 300 per day, one which shoots more than that per day ( a BIG commercial shoot ) several which bag up to around 180 per day and several which shoot any number in between, but mostly over a 100 per day. 
If we call the average bag a 100, multiplied by the twenty two shoots that I know of locally, that’s 2,200 birds per day every other Saturday.  
If you want to be more generous and call the average bag 50, that’s still 1100 birds shot each day for each days shooting throughout the season, and that’s just in my little local area. 
Using your figure of 200 birds per day, on our BIG shoot ( which shoots at least three times per week ) that’s still 7200 birds per season. That’s just one shoot. 
Now what makes you think those who oppose what we do ( including a lot of shooters who also shoot for no other reason than recreation apparently ) will find this more acceptable than they do now, considering that all those birds shot are shot by people who are doing it for no other reason than personal enjoyment and recreation? 
Can I ask what you shoot and why you do it? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, London Best said:

Do you want to restrict pigeon shooters to only shooting about twenty each/day as well?

What are you smoking? Pigeon shooting is pest control, not sport.

4 hours ago, Scully said:

I disagree. He said the ‘whole industry’ which includes anyone who shoots reared driven game. Anyone who buys birds to put down with the intention of shooting is part of that ‘industry’, and anyone else who shoots walked up birds but doesn’t buy nor feed those birds, is taking advantage of birds supplied and or fed by others. 
There are twenty two shoots that I know of within a fifteen mile radius of me, and more than likely a few more that I don’t know of, from small walk about days to BIG commercial bought days, and everything in between.
On our little rough shoot we shoot maybe 12 a day, on syndicate days like I’ve said, anything up to about 48. 

I know of several shoots locally which bag around 300 per day, one which shoots more than that per day ( a BIG commercial shoot ) several which bag up to around 180 per day and several which shoot any number in between, but mostly over a 100 per day. 
If we call the average bag a 100, multiplied by the twenty two shoots that I know of locally, that’s 2,200 birds per day every other Saturday.  
If you want to be more generous and call the average bag 50, that’s still 1100 birds shot each day for each days shooting throughout the season, and that’s just in my little local area. 
Using your figure of 200 birds per day, on our BIG shoot ( which shoots at least three times per week ) that’s still 7200 birds per season. That’s just one shoot. 
Now what makes you think those who oppose what we do ( including a lot of shooters who also shoot for no other reason than recreation apparently ) will find this more acceptable than they do now, considering that all those birds shot are shot by people who are doing it for no other reason than personal enjoyment and recreation? 
Can I ask what you shoot and why you do it? 

Don't shoot pheasants etc, only wildfowl. Full time beat keeper on large estate with mix of let and family days. Turkey voting for Christmas for the industry. Industry being the operative word. Big day for us is about 200

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, London Best said:

I dare bet you are doing it for sport and because you enjoy it. If it was purely pest control you would poison them.

You cannot shoot pigeons for sport. Simple. Semantics. I thought this was about game shooting. Never mind, bored now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...