A shoot from scratch

Even the most ragged and commercially unviable ground will have the potential for establishing a small shoot, as Mike Swan explains

- Mike Swan

Many times in my role as a GWCT adviser, I have been asked about where to put a pheasant pen on a bare farm with perhaps just one small wood on the boundary. My response is that we need to think about the potential of the ground before we address that; there could be lots of other options that do not involve any pheasant pens.

There is a little block of about 200 acres just over the hill in Wiltshire that is a typical example of the problem. It is basically a bare arable farm, running along a gentle valley, with a small spring-fed stream running through. There is hardly any woodland, just a small piece right on the eastern boundary, directly against a huge forest on the other side.

There are some nice hedges though, with quite a few hedgerow trees, and the stream has a narrow strip of soggy pasture running alongside it at the northern end.

I have known the place for many years, and even visited to advise the little fishing club that stocks the stream, but a new owner who took over a couple of years ago wondered about the shooting potential. When I went, there were already some wild pheasants about, so it was clear that there could at the very least be one for the pot. That said, there really was nowhere for a release pen. With all that woodland over the boundary, most of any release were bound to wander off.

So what to do? First off, a modest hopper feeding programme and some spring predation control could easily help the few pheasants to become a few more. This would offer the owner the chance to take a friend hedgerow bashing several times a season, with every prospect of coming in with a couple of brace to share after a morning’s wonderful sport.