How To Hold Your Birds

As we enter the season, Tim Weston offers some sound advice to keepers on how best to hold their birds; really, they just want a safe place to stay and some decent grub

- Tim Weston

At this time of year all our pheasants are probably out of the pen and hopefully heading towards cover. For the part-time keeper, the long days are shortening slightly now, the Guns are all looking towards the shooting season, and the excitement of that first day is getting closer.

However, for the keeper this can be a time of worry – are the birds going to be in the drives? Have they all walked off the shoot? Will my neighbour have a bumper season at my expense? There are a few things you can do to help keep your pheasants where they should be, to help ease that worry as the season approaches.

Take cover!

There are, of course, so many variables involved in holding pheasants on your shoot, many of which are out of your control (the weather and the direction that your woods face being the two that spring to mind). Unless you have some kind of mystical X-Men-type power there is no way you can control the weather (much like King Canute was unable to tame the tide), and if all of your woods face north and you have no other option you will struggle in the winter months.