Doing it differently

Covid has seen walked-up days being offered on the Burghley estate, says Jamie Tusting

- Jamie Tusting

As with many shoots this year, the arrival of this unwelcome viral gatecrasher forced us into a drastic rethink of how to go about things. Uncertainty has been the overriding feeling that has gripped the country in 2020 and in our world, front-end nervousness from shoots has had a ripple effect down the supply chain. Shoots trying to plan how they could run yet mitigate risk led to game farms entering a state of stasis, unable to plan how many chicks they would need to hatch.

Determined to run a shoot in some way, shape or form, we quickly evolved a plan of action, with a scaled-back operation within Burghley Park itself, and a few walked-up days on the farmland surrounding it. It was a compromise, but we felt it would allow us to keep things running while reducing our financial exposure.

As the plan was put into action, the first job on the list was ensuring the game farm had our order. This would mean that at least they knew we wouldn’t be ordering the normal numbers and could plan accordingly.

Next, we needed to sort the game covers. With almost 60 acres of cover across the shooting area, it took some thinking about. Maize has been the game cover of choice for many years and often looked out of place within a parkland setting, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to break that cycle. Kings Seeds came to our aid and provided us with two mixes.

Inside the park, we put in a cover mix that would not only provide excellent game cover and overwinter feed but could also be grazed off at the end of the season by the sheep flock. It felt like we were killing two birds with one stone.