More Or Less?

Despite authorities stating a recommended number of birds per release pen, it is a frequently debated topic amongst keepers, and rarely is an agreement reached; Adam offers some advice.

- Adam Smith

According to the powers that be – those with shooting’s best interests at heart – a sensible release-pen density for pheasants is between 300 to 400 per acre, or around 1,000 per hectare. So, let’s say you’ve got a 2,000-acre shoot with some nicely testing topography and, with careful management and well-sited cover crops, high hopes for the future. You have four almost ideally positioned release pens of an acre or so apiece, and you keep to the guidelines and put 350 or so birds in each of them. Once the pen wire is lifted and the birds spread out to colonise the whole area, you should finish up with a ratio of around one-and-a-half birds to the acre, which doesn’t sound particularly dense, does it?

Some might go so far as to say pretty thin on the ground – but don’t forget those birds will not be evenly sprinkled over the whole patch. Except for specific cover patches, all the large open fields which very probably represent most of the average shoot’s area, will hold very few and they will be confined to thicker hedges around the perimeter. But the vast majority of pheasant shoots are a mixture of arable, pasture and woodland, more often than not linked by hedges, so for the shoot to be viable, the birds must be spread within the shoot’s confines, yet inevitably concentrated in and around the cover crops, copses and woodlands. Which, let’s face it, is a pretty significant part of a keeper’s job.