Much work and little play

The tasks mount up for Tony Bracci and his helpers as the first season of their shoot approaches, but things are starting to come together

- Tony Bracci

The birds were definitely coming. They were going to be late but at least we were going to get the birds we ordered. This was great news but it did have a knock-on effect; the birds would normally come mid-July and be ready to shoot mid-October, but now they were coming in mid-August and we wouldn't be able to shoot until mid-November.

The first day was booked as a let day so they had to be fully grown and flying well, so we couldn't start too soon. This also put pressure on getting the eight shoot days into the diary that we needed to happen to get the income to pay for everything. The let days needed to be on Thursdays, about a month apart, which meant we could get a syndicate day in between them, but then with Christmas holidays in December it looked like we would have no option but to shoot every Saturday in January to fit all the days in.

Uncertainty

I wasn't sure how that would work out as it is nice to have a couple of weeks in-between shoot days (as it worked out, the weather in January was wet and windy, the birds held well and all the shoot days went OK). Hopefully I will be able to spread the shoot days out this forthcoming season and shoot every other Saturday to help the birds have a chance to get back to where we drive them from on a shoot day.