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Yes, we tend to forget the 'fuel' equation.  Keepers vehicles fuel,  lpg for the heaters etc., all have gone up substantially in the last six months and we also tend to forget his is a business and they don't do this on a charitable basis. It has to show a profit.   I already have eight days booked and will look to double that for the season. Just have to cut back on the luxuries.

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£67.50 + VAT (£81.00 to the common man) per bird on my pal’s high bird estate. He’s fully booked and the days paid for, the big days are 600 bird .... £48,600.00 per day for a team. Significantly more than I earn a year, before tax! Per man it looks more reasonable at a mere £6k plus tips each per day. 

To be fair, if I had the money I would pay it as it is a fantastic experience. I was lucky enough to shoot a test drive on a dress-rehearsal day (partridge) about 5 years ago, the food and wine were fabulous and the overall experience was brilliant. 

For comparison, my walked up syndicate is going up to £35 per day. 

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18 minutes ago, Walker570 said:

Yes, we tend to forget the 'fuel' equation.  Keepers vehicles fuel,  lpg for the heaters etc., all have gone up substantially in the last six months and we also tend to forget his is a business and they don't do this on a charitable basis. It has to show a profit.   I already have eight days booked and will look to double that for the season. Just have to cut back on the luxuries.

Will the beaters / picker ups . drivers wages go up as well , as the fuel price for them is the same as the shoot owners ? , as we well know a driven day could not go ahead without the beaters , and if the picker up find one lost bird then he have earn't his pay packet and that was the old price :lol:

As you say , it's not a cheap sport , 

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8 hours ago, marsh man said:

Will the beaters / picker ups . drivers wages go up as well , as the fuel price for them is the same as the shoot owners ? , as we well know a driven day could not go ahead without the beaters , and if the picker up find one lost bird then he have earn't his pay packet and that was the old price 

As you say , it's not a cheap sport , 



For many years big commercial shoots have worked off the back of basically free / cheap labour, whilst looking to make profits. 
 

Getting people to come and do what is essentially a days work for free or a bit of beer money. 
 

What is madness is that many people then say “ah I just come along to work my dog, I don’t do it for the money!”. 
 

 

 

These small DIY shoots that drag along friends, family members etc to do a bit of beating I can just about see it being justified but not on commercial shoots. 
 

 

 

Re the price of driven shooting. I’m seeing a lot of moaning on the Facebook / online groups, saying “it’s becoming unaffordable to the average working man”. 
 

I’m not sure driven game shooting ever was the sport of the average working class man!! 🤣

 

It always was and has been a posh hobby.
 

I can’t think of a time it ever was particularly affordable.

 

I can’t think of many shoot owners who want a load of working class blokes on a shoe string budget to turn up, and spend the entire day bird counting. 
 

My mate who’s a keeper was telling me just the other day how disheartening it used to be when he’d work his **** off to present high sporting birds right over the guns, only to look over and they’re placing their guns in the slips mid drive.
 

He said on an occasion on one of the best drives he’s ever pulled off and they did it, when asked what they’re doing and why they didn’t shoot at the really sporting birds he had put over them they told him “it’s a 100 bird day. We’ve got 5 drives. We were never going to shoot more than 20 on this drive!” 
 

 

Compare that to the stories of working on the big estates, shooting 400-600 bird days. He said one week they had clients shoot every day. They booked 5 days straight of 400+ bird days, he said they shot Mon, Tue, Wed, and Thursday … come Friday they turned around and said they’d have enough sport, didn’t fancy it and paid for all 5 days regardless. 
 

Another story of them catering for a young man’s birthday and having a group of children in to shoot a 400+ bird day. The father of the birthday boy kept agreeing to overages and when they finished on 396 told them to round the bag up to 400, and he wanted each child to get a card with the 400 total noted on it. 
 

He proclaimed what a fantastic experience for each young person to be on a 400 bird day, paid the entire bill himself and was overjoyed his son and mates had the experience. 
 

 


 

Another story. I had a lad down here for some dog training on the weekend told me about an 80 bird day he shot last season. They shot a duck drive at the end on the agreement they were already over the bag and it was £20 a duck over the agreed bag. They all shot a few extra. My mate said he shot 3 on the last drive and said he knew he owed an extra £60. 
 

After they all gathered half the guns departed quickly and there were 15+ ducks over the bag that that hadn’t paid for. My mate said the keeper looked absolutely mortified and my mate gave him the £300 himself as he felt so bad for the bloke. 
 

Which group would you rather cater for? 

 

 

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for many years all my spare cash and freebies from the construction industry went on game shooting.......it was like crack cocaine to me...and i often footed the cost of taking a retired mate of mine with me as long as he coughed up for his tip........

some of the best days of my life were on those days and being part of our wonderful countryside..(ican still smell my dogs in the back of the disco and that is long gone)....i spent more than enough to buy 2 more houses..........and i dont regret a single penny.......i handed my certificate and liecence back in september.........and i would be fretting if i had it now.....trying to find money for a day out now and again

i have wonderful memories.....and smile when i read of peoples days out......and im not jealous anymore........im just sad that it has become an unreachable experience for most people now..........

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25 minutes ago, Old farrier said:

Just wondering here 

does it cost more to rear birds for a high bird shoot 

surely they eat the same amount 

appreciate the extra fuel costs for getting the food out to the top of the hill 

maybe it’s the ground rent that costs more 

just thinking out loud 

The answer is no.   

Great write up from Lloyd90 nail on head as the sport is wide spread.  I as a pensioner am lucky not to have any erious outgoings like mortgages these days so I can look at what spare cash I might have and my decison is to make the driven days I book fit that figure. I am not into shooting big bags and a 200 bird day to me is a bit over the top. I have one booked this year on partridges but all of my other days are 60 to 100 bird days.  In the 60s 70s 80s and 90s I shot all over the UK and mainly walked up and ran a walk and stand syndicate for over 20 years.  Apart from killing tree rats it is my one major enjoyment.  Over those years I have met the good the bad and the ugly. The shot counters and bird counters but also met some fine folks and a large number fo those have been in the beating picking up teams as I make a point of talking to them and also saying thankyou at the end of the day.

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7 hours ago, Lloyd90 said:



For many years big commercial shoots have worked off the back of basically free / cheap labour, whilst looking to make profits. 
 

Getting people to come and do what is essentially a days work for free or a bit of beer money. 
 

What is madness is that many people then say “ah I just come along to work my dog, I don’t do it for the money!”. 
 

 

 

These small DIY shoots that drag along friends, family members etc to do a bit of beating I can just about see it being justified but not on commercial shoots. 
 

 

 

Re the price of driven shooting. I’m seeing a lot of moaning on the Facebook / online groups, saying “it’s becoming unaffordable to the average working man”. 
 

I’m not sure driven game shooting ever was the sport of the average working class man!! 🤣

 

It always was and has been a posh hobby.
 

I can’t think of a time it ever was particularly affordable.

 

I can’t think of many shoot owners who want a load of working class blokes on a shoe string budget to turn up, and spend the entire day bird counting. 
 

My mate who’s a keeper was telling me just the other day how disheartening it used to be when he’d work his **** off to present high sporting birds right over the guns, only to look over and they’re placing their guns in the slips mid drive.
 

He said on an occasion on one of the best drives he’s ever pulled off and they did it, when asked what they’re doing and why they didn’t shoot at the really sporting birds he had put over them they told him “it’s a 100 bird day. We’ve got 5 drives. We were never going to shoot more than 20 on this drive!” 
 

 

Compare that to the stories of working on the big estates, shooting 400-600 bird days. He said one week they had clients shoot every day. They booked 5 days straight of 400+ bird days, he said they shot Mon, Tue, Wed, and Thursday … come Friday they turned around and said they’d have enough sport, didn’t fancy it and paid for all 5 days regardless. 
 

Another story of them catering for a young man’s birthday and having a group of children in to shoot a 400+ bird day. The father of the birthday boy kept agreeing to overages and when they finished on 396 told them to round the bag up to 400, and he wanted each child to get a card with the 400 total noted on it. 
 

He proclaimed what a fantastic experience for each young person to be on a 400 bird day, paid the entire bill himself and was overjoyed his son and mates had the experience. 
 

 


 

Another story. I had a lad down here for some dog training on the weekend told me about an 80 bird day he shot last season. They shot a duck drive at the end on the agreement they were already over the bag and it was £20 a duck over the agreed bag. They all shot a few extra. My mate said he shot 3 on the last drive and said he knew he owed an extra £60. 
 

After they all gathered half the guns departed quickly and there were 15+ ducks over the bag that that hadn’t paid for. My mate said the keeper looked absolutely mortified and my mate gave him the £300 himself as he felt so bad for the bloke. 
 

Which group would you rather cater for? 

 

 

Wow that does sum it up really.. there is few driven shoots over here in Ireland,  but absolutely nothing compared to England. I'd say there is 3 times the amount in one county in England compared to the whole island of Ireland. But the few there is ,do be well booked.  I have done a few,  but would only ever be rare, in my younger years. Mortgage,  children, life, soon knocks the any thoughts of a driven shoot.  Even small 100 bird days are too much money now. But over here rough shooting is our tradition. And rough means rough.  And  Anyone doing regular driven shooting are wealthy boys. But the few I did,  I always enjoyed them. 

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36 minutes ago, Krico woodcock said:

Wow that does sum it up really.. there is few driven shoots over here in Ireland,  but absolutely nothing compared to England. I'd say there is 3 times the amount in one county in England compared to the whole island of Ireland. But the few there is ,do be well booked.  I have done a few,  but would only ever be rare, in my younger years. Mortgage,  children, life, soon knocks the any thoughts of a driven shoot.  Even small 100 bird days are too much money now. But over here rough shooting is our tradition. And rough means rough.  And  Anyone doing regular driven shooting are wealthy boys. But the few I did,  I always enjoyed them. 


The bonus over there is that the type of land and type of game you get. 
 

There's a lot of boggy and rough ground, that is ideal habitat for rabbit, woodcock and ducks. 
 

I know lads right down the South of Ireland who will go out for 3-4-5 hour walks with the dog flushing woodcock all day long, shooting and picking birds. 
 

They could the success on the number of flushes of the day not birds bagged. 
 

I’m not sure there’s many places that are similar over here. 
 

High quality rough shooting over a good spaniel I would take over driven shooting any day of the week!! 

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4 hours ago, Old farrier said:

Just wondering here 

does it cost more to rear birds for a high bird shoot 

surely they eat the same amount 

appreciate the extra fuel costs for getting the food out to the top of the hill 

maybe it’s the ground rent that costs more 

just thinking out loud 

I think you know very well that it won't cost much, if any extra. Supply and demand dictates the price, as it does in most walks of life, particularly free enterprise.  I only wish I was in the position to demand, good luck to those who can . Regards

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38 minutes ago, benbobailey said:

I think you know very well that it won't cost much, if any extra. Supply and demand dictates the price, as it does in most walks of life, particularly free enterprise.  I only wish I was in the position to demand, good luck to those who can . Regards

So it’s increased demand that’s pushing the price up not increased costs?

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11 hours ago, Lloyd90 said:



For many years big commercial shoots have worked off the back of basically free / cheap labour, whilst looking to make profits. 
 

Getting people to come and do what is essentially a days work for free or a bit of beer money. 
 

What is madness is that many people then say “ah I just come along to work my dog, I don’t do it for the money!”. 
 

 

 

These small DIY shoots that drag along friends, family members etc to do a bit of beating I can just about see it being justified but not on commercial shoots. 
 

 

 

Re the price of driven shooting. I’m seeing a lot of moaning on the Facebook / online groups, saying “it’s becoming unaffordable to the average working man”. 
 

I’m not sure driven game shooting ever was the sport of the average working class man!! 🤣

 

It always was and has been a posh hobby.
 

I can’t think of a time it ever was particularly affordable.

 

I can’t think of many shoot owners who want a load of working class blokes on a shoe string budget to turn up, and spend the entire day bird counting. 
 

My mate who’s a keeper was telling me just the other day how disheartening it used to be when he’d work his **** off to present high sporting birds right over the guns, only to look over and they’re placing their guns in the slips mid drive.
 

He said on an occasion on one of the best drives he’s ever pulled off and they did it, when asked what they’re doing and why they didn’t shoot at the really sporting birds he had put over them they told him “it’s a 100 bird day. We’ve got 5 drives. We were never going to shoot more than 20 on this drive!” 
 

 

Compare that to the stories of working on the big estates, shooting 400-600 bird days. He said one week they had clients shoot every day. They booked 5 days straight of 400+ bird days, he said they shot Mon, Tue, Wed, and Thursday … come Friday they turned around and said they’d have enough sport, didn’t fancy it and paid for all 5 days regardless. 
 

Another story of them catering for a young man’s birthday and having a group of children in to shoot a 400+ bird day. The father of the birthday boy kept agreeing to overages and when they finished on 396 told them to round the bag up to 400, and he wanted each child to get a card with the 400 total noted on it. 
 

He proclaimed what a fantastic experience for each young person to be on a 400 bird day, paid the entire bill himself and was overjoyed his son and mates had the experience. 
 

 


 

Another story. I had a lad down here for some dog training on the weekend told me about an 80 bird day he shot last season. They shot a duck drive at the end on the agreement they were already over the bag and it was £20 a duck over the agreed bag. They all shot a few extra. My mate said he shot 3 on the last drive and said he knew he owed an extra £60. 
 

After they all gathered half the guns departed quickly and there were 15+ ducks over the bag that that hadn’t paid for. My mate said the keeper looked absolutely mortified and my mate gave him the £300 himself as he felt so bad for the bloke. 
 

Which group would you rather cater for? 

 

 

Brilliant post Lloyd , I am not complaining about the pay we get as we are well looked after with food at lunch time and a very good beaters day .

What I can't understand on the bigger commercial shoots is why don't they pay the shoot helpers , such as beaters , picker uppers and drivers the minimum pay , whatever that is ? , as not all the people involved shoot on the beaters day , we have to give our name address and I can't remember if we had to give our N I number but we have to sign for our ( wages ) when they are handed out after we have had our lunch . Are we employed for the day , or is the pay to cover expense's ?

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4 hours ago, Lloyd90 said:


The bonus over there is that the type of land and type of game you get. 
 

There's a lot of boggy and rough ground, that is ideal habitat for rabbit, woodcock and ducks. 
 

I know lads right down the South of Ireland who will go out for 3-4-5 hour walks with the dog flushing woodcock all day long, shooting and picking birds. 
 

They could the success on the number of flushes of the day not birds bagged. 
 

I’m not sure there’s many places that are similar over here. 
 

High quality rough shooting over a good spaniel I would take over driven shooting any day of the week!! 

Yes we are very fortunate to have to have ample ground to shoot. Woodcock and duck shooting is what i spend the winter at,especially woodcock (woodcock shooting with springers is addictive) when im not working!! Work is a awful interference to the shooting man 😕.. but the few times I stood at a peg on a driven pheasant,  partridge shoot it was more a novelty than anything else. The prices quoted on here per bird for a driven shoot  now is absolutely eye watering crazy. But different people live in different worlds,  as you said Lioyd90 nothing compares to good quality rough shooting with hard working dogs.. I've often wondered how many that shoot driven shoots often ,would go pulling themselves up rough hills,  briars, bogs, etc with their own dogs?? Its definitely at the other end of the  spectrum when it comes to shooting.  But every bird you shoot is earned by you and your dog, you are a team, when you come home after a hard day's hunting/shooting  you are tired and content, and you spend the rest of the evening reflecting on the day,  and make plans for next day out!And no amount of driven birds no matter how good can compare to that in my eyes. 

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1 hour ago, marsh man said:

Brilliant post Lloyd , I am not complaining about the pay we get as we are well looked after with food at lunch time and a very good beaters day .

What I can't understand on the bigger commercial shoots is why don't they pay the shoot helpers , such as beaters , picker uppers and drivers the minimum pay , whatever that is ? , as not all the people involved shoot on the beaters day , we have to give our name address and I can't remember if we had to give our N I number but we have to sign for our ( wages ) when they are handed out after we have had our lunch . Are we employed for the day , or is the pay to cover expense's ?


 

That’s the thing, a lot of people do the days in exchange for something else. 
 

Pigeon / vermin shooting, deer stalking, being able to do a bit of dog training on the ground on game etc. 

There’s nothing wrong with that and if you get a good keeper you are better off in many ways not being paid but having a bit of land you can crack on. 
 

 

 

 

I just like rough shooting over my own dog.

I don’t think beating or picking up really helps with the type of shooting and dog work that I want to do.  
 

 

I did go picking up the other day me and a mate to give 2 young keepers who have started a new shoot this year a bit of help. 

 

Their main picker up got too drunk the night before and never even turned up. But doing a full day, 08:00 - 16:00 for £40, I can’t really blame him for not going massively out of his way to turn up. 
 

I only went because I had nothing else to do and I wanted to get my young dog a bit more experience picking birds. That experience to me was worth a lot more than the £40. 
 

 

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14 hours ago, Lloyd90 said:



For many years big commercial shoots have worked off the back of basically free / cheap labour, whilst looking to make profits. 
 

Getting people to come and do what is essentially a days work for free or a bit of beer money. 
 

What is madness is that many people then say “ah I just come along to work my dog, I don’t do it for the money!”. 
 

 

 

These small DIY shoots that drag along friends, family members etc to do a bit of beating I can just about see it being justified but not on commercial shoots. 
 

 

 

Re the price of driven shooting. I’m seeing a lot of moaning on the Facebook / online groups, saying “it’s becoming unaffordable to the average working man”. 
 

I’m not sure driven game shooting ever was the sport of the average working class man!! 🤣

 

It always was and has been a posh hobby.
 

I can’t think of a time it ever was particularly affordable.

 

I can’t think of many shoot owners who want a load of working class blokes on a shoe string budget to turn up, and spend the entire day bird counting. 
 

My mate who’s a keeper was telling me just the other day how disheartening it used to be when he’d work his **** off to present high sporting birds right over the guns, only to look over and they’re placing their guns in the slips mid drive.
 

He said on an occasion on one of the best drives he’s ever pulled off and they did it, when asked what they’re doing and why they didn’t shoot at the really sporting birds he had put over them they told him “it’s a 100 bird day. We’ve got 5 drives. We were never going to shoot more than 20 on this drive!” 
 

 

Compare that to the stories of working on the big estates, shooting 400-600 bird days. He said one week they had clients shoot every day. They booked 5 days straight of 400+ bird days, he said they shot Mon, Tue, Wed, and Thursday … come Friday they turned around and said they’d have enough sport, didn’t fancy it and paid for all 5 days regardless. 
 

Another story of them catering for a young man’s birthday and having a group of children in to shoot a 400+ bird day. The father of the birthday boy kept agreeing to overages and when they finished on 396 told them to round the bag up to 400, and he wanted each child to get a card with the 400 total noted on it. 
 

He proclaimed what a fantastic experience for each young person to be on a 400 bird day, paid the entire bill himself and was overjoyed his son and mates had the experience. 
 

 


 

Another story. I had a lad down here for some dog training on the weekend told me about an 80 bird day he shot last season. They shot a duck drive at the end on the agreement they were already over the bag and it was £20 a duck over the agreed bag. They all shot a few extra. My mate said he shot 3 on the last drive and said he knew he owed an extra £60. 
 

After they all gathered half the guns departed quickly and there were 15+ ducks over the bag that that hadn’t paid for. My mate said the keeper looked absolutely mortified and my mate gave him the £300 himself as he felt so bad for the bloke. 
 

Which group would you rather cater for? 

 

 

Good post. Bang on the money. 
We’ve had a pay rise and now get £45.00 for the day, basically 8 or 9 hours! 🙂 The owner is a billionaire! 

Beaters are a mix of people who don’t shoot but just enjoy the day ( two travel 1.5 hours up the M6 and back, and neither shoot ) some like it as a means of keeping fit, others just like to walk their dogs, and others are shooters who just do it because it’s what they do. Some are relatives and press ganged into it! 
The shoot caters from anything from 150 to 400ish bags, and the 150 days are the worst with shooters leaving perfectly shootable birds as they’ve booked for four drives so are keeping strict quotas per drive. A real pain in the aris! 

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12 minutes ago, Scully said:

Good post. Bang on the money. 
We’ve had a pay rise and now get £45.00 for the day, basically 8 or 9 hours! 🙂 The owner is a billionaire! 

Beaters are a mix of people who don’t shoot but just enjoy the day ( two travel 1.5 hours up the M6 and back, and neither shoot ) some like it as a means of keeping fit, others just like to walk their dogs, and others are shooters who just do it because it’s what they do. Some are relatives and press ganged into it! 
The shoot caters from anything from 150 to 400ish bags, and the 150 days are the worst with shooters leaving perfectly shootable birds as they’ve booked for four drives so are keeping strict quotas per drive. A real pain in the aris! 


Yes, and then if they don’t shoot the full 100 will moan.
 

Some keepers then scrambling around to try and add an extra drive, and keeping the beaters and others late.

 

If they shoot over the 100 they then don’t want to pay for the extra birds.

 

 

 

£45 for 8-9 hours. 😮 

 

Imagine if all the people involved had to be properly paid at least minimum wage.
 

How people would moan about the cost per bird then.  

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6 hours ago, Lloyd90 said:


The bonus over there is that the type of land and type of game you get. 
 

There's a lot of boggy and rough ground, that is ideal habitat for rabbit, woodcock and ducks. 
 

I know lads right down the South of Ireland who will go out for 3-4-5 hour walks with the dog flushing woodcock all day long, shooting and picking birds. 
 

They could the success on the number of flushes of the day not birds bagged. 
 

I’m not sure there’s many places that are similar over here. 
 

High quality rough shooting over a good spaniel I would take over driven shooting any day of the week!! 

Yes, nothing really beats seeing your dog work then flush a bird .  Unfortunately my walking days are over so driven days are the only way. In the past I loved nothing more than walking the steep hawthorn covered hillsides of Wales with my vizslas for one or two woodcock and maybe an old crafty cock pheasant hiding up there from the estate below.  I was very lucky back in the late 70s and early 80s to have access to tens of thousands of acres of such country and an annual visit for a week up to Northern Scotland and Thurso estate provided some fine sport.

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1 minute ago, Walker570 said:

Yes, nothing really beats seeing your dog work then flush a bird .  Unfortunately my walking days are over so driven days are the only way. In the past I loved nothing more than walking the steep hawthorn covered hillsides of Wales with my vizslas for one or two woodcock and maybe an old crafty cock pheasant hiding up there from the estate below.  I was very lucky back in the late 70s and early 80s to have access to tens of thousands of acres of such country and an annual visit for a week up to Northern Scotland and Thurso estate provided some fine sport.


Had a nice walk through the woods earlier hoping to get some pigeons coming in to roost. 
 

Both dogs running in a brace.
 

We didn’t see any pigeons but the pair of them smashing into a Holly bush, flushing a big cock pheasant and both sitting to the flush and watching it away was well worth the walk. 

 

 

E4988026-A855-4130-8402-4143039EF66B.jpeg

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