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Mick Dempsey

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5 minutes ago, John Shutler said:

so your better informed to comment on subjects that you know very little about il let you know about game shooting for the common man.

Ours is a working syndicate so 10 guns all pay the same amount of money (£1400 a year for 10 shoot days plus one tenants day) we rent a few hundred acres from a larger estate comprising of several thousand acres for about 3k a year. the greater majority of that land is mixed woodland surrounded by arable land with a small barn in the middle that is the base for the shoot. we have 4 release pens that we built and maintain annually that  eventually feed 8 drives. we release 1600 poults into the 4 pens around july time then try to keep them alive till when mid october when we start shooting ( pheasants are like sheep in the sense that all they want to do is die) we buy growers pellets for the birds then as time goes on corn from the adjacent farm. we all share the workload so i’m usually up there a couple of times a week as a minimum all year round. non of us are gentry, infact ones a teacher, another a welder, i’m a tree contractor and my mates a butcher. one of the guys does admin type work and another is a boat day skipper. gardener, retired cnc machine operator, building site manager and school caretaker make up the rest. we all chip in for the food on a shoot day and my mate who’s the butcher and runs a small farm shop provides the grub. it’s a stand one/beat one type affair so there’s two teams of 5 and on each drive 5 are shooting and 5 are beating. we also have about 20 people who turn up to beat. no ones paid anything but all the additional beaters are fed and take a brace of birds at the end of the day. the beaters are mostly fiends and family who come for the day out and enjoy the day and the exercise plus they enjoy working their dogs if they have one. most of the beaters have been going for as long as i can remember. one of the guns of one of the 5 man teams couldn’t make it today so two of the beaters got to shot two drives each for the day, it’s pretty relaxed. we have a beaters day mid season. the shoots been going about 30 years and generally we will shoot around 40-60 birds on a shoot day. any birds that  are left at the end of the day go to my mates shop. the shoot doesn’t usually have much money left at the end of the season, it just about covers all the costs. myself and another guy usually shoot 30 foxes a year off the ground, most of those are town foxes that come across looking for an easy feed. we also manage the deer on this section of the estate. 

its a lot of work and no ones there for anything apart from the enjoyment of it, guns and beaters alike 

I think this is a great way to shoot, it's enjoyable for everyone for multiple reasons, you get a decent bit of exercise and get to know the land and the animals and really observe nature. What I really can't stand is the chicken farming type shoots, 600 bird days a couple of times a week are common on one shoot around here. How can anyone actually justify that? I'd love to protect shooting, fishing etc, but all the time that ridiculous setups such as those exist the whole industry is going to look bad and the decent arrangements like yours will ultimately suffer.

 

Its the same with fox hunting for me. It looks bad, everyone knows they aren't really following 'trails' and all the time there is a massive show of people actively going out to break the law on what they know is a controversial, divisive subject then everyone involved in reasonable country sports actually suffers.

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19 minutes ago, Big J said:

 

I understand why you organise the shoot and enjoy it. I've eaten plenty of pheasant and have worked for shooting estates in the past in a forestry capacity. May I make a few general observations though?

 

Firstly, from a forestry perspective, pheasant shoots are a nightmare. The infrastructure (pens) left in the woods puts metalwork everywhere, which compromises the value of the crop and makes harvesting awkward and unpleasant.

 

Secondly, there is evidence to suggest that pheasant shoots support larger grey squirrel populations. Taken from Shootinguk.co.uk:

"The possible link between the decline of woodland song birds and grey squirrel predation is now the subject of Game Conservancy research, particularly as it has been suggested woodlands where pheasants are fed may hold higher stocks of grey squirrels due to the abundance of food"

 

Thirdly, from an aesthetic point of view, pheasant holding woodlands are hideous. The combination of the pens, unsympathetic woodland management (ie managed for the shoot as opposed to species diversity of timber quality) and profusion of idiot pheasants and scrounging grey squirrels just ruins any enjoyment anyone might derive from the place.

 

I'm entirely supportive of rough shooting to control pest species (such as grey squirrels). Why is there a need to go to all the effort and destruction of a driven pheasant shoot. 

 

There is also the environmental impact of releasing 57 million non-native birds into our countryside each year....

in your opinion, and once again your basing all your comments on your own dislike for things, the same runs true in your comments about devon, housing and the uk in general 

 

i’d challenge you to find a tidier shoot than ours, we have 4 pens that are all maintained to a high standard, ive been on commercial shoot shoots that release 10-20x the amount we do and the pens are a state. 

the ground our shoot is on has little to no forestry value, infact the money the estate collects each year for our rent is it’s only potential income. 

we manage the squirrel population and there is certainly not an abundance on the site, certainly no more than you’d expect on a holding of that size. 

i think you’d find it hard to call our little shoot destructive if you actually understood the ins and outs of it 

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17 minutes ago, John Shutler said:

in your opinion, and once again your basing all your comments on your own dislike for things, the same runs true in your comments about devon, housing and the uk in general 

 

i’d challenge you to find a tidier shoot than ours, we have 4 pens that are all maintained to a high standard, ive been on commercial shoot shoots that release 10-20x the amount we do and the pens are a state. 

the ground our shoot is on has little to no forestry value, infact the money the estate collects each year for our rent is it’s only potential income. 

we manage the squirrel population and there is certainly not an abundance on the site, certainly no more than you’d expect on a holding of that size. 

i think you’d find it hard to call our little shoot destructive if you actually understood the ins and outs of it 

 

I did say that my comments were general, and your shoot doesn't bear much relation to the estates on which I've worked with huge drives.

 

I simply find the presence of pheasant pens in woodlands to be unsightly and with the associated issues highlighted above, I don't personally see the point. I can think of better ways to enjoy my Saturday than standing in the rain trying to blast some gormless bird out of the sky.


Each to their own.

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Great job!
 
Your key points so far:
 
1) I’m a smug prick
2) Your lass is ex-council estate
3) You use baler twine to hold your pants up and townies are all twats. 
 
Oxford Union debating society?
 
 

1,Yep of the highest order , look at you .. You ooze utter babe in every post you make with your I've got an MBE every one else is inferior..
2, I'll tell you what son I'll ****************ing ram your teeth so far down your throat if I have the chance to meet you now you have brought that into it..
3, yes so what that's what all us cap doffing lower class scum do...

****************ing hilarious ... utter prick
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3 hours ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

Great job!

 

Your key points so far:

 

1) I’m a smug prick

2) Your lass is ex-council estate

3) You use baler twine to hold your pants up and townies are all twats. 
 

Oxford Union debating society?

 

 

 

8 minutes ago, MattyF said:


1,Yep of the highest order , look at you .. You ooze utter babe in every post you make with your I've got an MBE every one else is inferior..
2, I'll tell you what son I'll ****************ing ram your teeth so far down your throat if I have the chance to meet you now you have brought that into it..
3, yes so what that's what all us cap doffing lower class scum do...

****************ing hilarious ... utter prick

 

I see what the problem is here. Isn't it obvious? 

 

It's the gay sexual tension. That's why

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42 minutes ago, Big J said:

 

I did say that my comments were general, and your shoot doesn't bear much relation to the estates on which I've worked with huge drives.

 

I simply find the presence of pheasant pens in woodlands to be unsightly and with the associated issues highlighted above, I don't personally see the point. I can think of better ways to enjoy my Saturday than standing in the rain trying to blast some gormless bird out of the sky.


Each to their own.

What would you do to enjoy your Saturday?

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Just now, John Shutler said:

What would you do to enjoy your Saturday?

 

I'm a great fan of wild swimming, but haven't had much of a chance to do that here. Forest walks (busmans holiday, I know) or fishing. 

 

I was so excited about the fishing when we moved down here, as (with me being a coarse angler) England is much better than Scotland, but sadly it wasn't as good as what I remembered as a kid in Derbyshire. There are the carp lakes, yes, but very few rivers worth fishing as they're all trout and salmon.

 

Beyond that, I'd like to get back into cycling, which is unfortunately a suicidal endevour in Devon, especially as I'd like to take the kids too.

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1 hour ago, Big J said:

 

I did say that my comments were general, and your shoot doesn't bear much relation to the estates on which I've worked with huge drives.

 

I simply find the presence of pheasant pens in woodlands to be unsightly and with the associated issues highlighted above, I don't personally see the point. I can think of better ways to enjoy my Saturday than standing in the rain trying to blast some gormless bird out of the sky.


Each to their own.

The huge drives on the estates that you refer to will bring in far more money than the standing crop the pens are spoiling. 

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