Keeper of the month

Beating the drum for the benefits of game management is hugely rewarding, Miles Bentley tells Will Pocklington

- Will Pocklington

Speak with a dozen gamekeepers about various aspects of their jobs, from rearing and releasing to predator control and driving birds, and they’ll all have their own way of doing things. But the best of them tend to share common goals that go much further than return figures for the birds they put down.

I first met Miles Bentley when I was a teenager on a college trip to Pollybell Farm in the Isle of Axholme. Fifteen years later, I still distinctly remember his infectious passion for biodiversity as he showed us around the shoot.

Miles’s open-minded approach is inspired by a varied career. He started out on a YTS (the now-defunct Youth Training Scheme) gig at Bartlow estates in Essex after leaving school. Later, he studied game and wildlife management at Sparsholt College then secured an under keepers job at the Stonehurst estate in Sussex. He stayed for a season before enjoying a seven-year stint working single-handedly at Birkholme Farms in South Lincolnshire.