This is not just small beer

Of course it’s about the day rather than the bag, but you owe it to the birds you put down to try to maximise your return, advises Liam Bell

- Liam Bell

It is all very well saying that shooting is about the day and the size of the bag is almost an irrelevance. I agree that the number of birds in the bag is rarely related directly to how much pleasure we get from being out with our friends. But at some stage we do need to look at the figures.

Poring over them and working out our returns, the percentage of released birds shot over the course of the season, will help us to plan and, importantly, gives us something to work with. If a shoot has consistently low returns when compared with its neighbours, it should carry out some critical self-analysis and find out why. Work out what it does well and work on improving the bits that don’t. To do otherwise is a waste of time, effort and money.

If we release pheasants and partridges, we have a duty to look after them, feed them, protect them from predators and to manage their habitat in a such a way that they want to stay somewhere near where they were released. Statistically, if we shoot 40 percent of what we release, 10 percent of the birds will be left on the ground at the end of the season, because you cannot shoot them all and nor should you aim to.

Another 20 percent will have been predated between the release date and the end of January, predominantly by foxes. Ten percent will have died from accidents, disease or from natural causes. The remaining 20 percent will have simply wandered off because they preferred the look of the ground over the boundary, or because they have been disturbed and couldn’t settle where they were. I remember a cartoon some years ago of a pint of beer being poured on to a table at a pub and running off on to the floor. The cartoon compared it with a pint of beer being poured on to a table covered in sponges and cloths and strategically placed beer mats that were soaking it up, keeping it in one place and preventing it from running off the table.