Shooting in natural decline?

My, this is a glass half empty kind of thread. Bit like reading Shooting Times often. :)

If shooting is in a natural decline (and I'm prepared to accept that some types of shooting might be, but not all) how can we reconcile this with the ever increasing number of shotgun and firearm certificates being granted?
 
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Just thinking about it i'd say the biggest problem in my area is a lack of pickers up and the age of the existing ones there.

I have never turned down as much picking up as this year, very very unusual to see anyone in the picking line below 50.
Don't think it wil change unless the wages increase/double to a fair working/living wage, when ur shooting 80+ days and turning over hundreds of thousnds of pounds it's unfair to expect the poor workers (beaters, pickers up etc) to fund someone else's sport.
No one can be expected to take all there holidays/time off work to work and do a 8-10 hr job they love for 'desiel' money.
With so many shoots shooting mid week it's very hard for young people (or working age folk) to get involved either at school or working

MS i think u are right it is hard to justify but possibly its a neccesary evil as those are the shoots bringing income into generally poor rural areas off season. Game farmers, feed merchants cover crop suppliers etc would not survive if only smaller diy type syndicates were around
 
I didn't realise the returns were as low as that. Surely 40,000+ birds released on 5000 acres must be pushing the boundaries of whats ecologically acceptable?

40% returns are what is budgeted on,anything over that and you are doing well but can't be expected, some shoots seems to be mostly the small syndicates have an unrealistic expectations of the returns on the modest amounts released.
 
Releasing game birds to then blast them out of the sky is actually quite hard to justify as a humane sport.
MS

I think this is the root of many problems which impact society these days - people have to spend time justifying things they choose to do to others who in any decent society would be told to go away and mind their own business. There are simply too many people queuing up to be offended, to be victims and to tell others what to do on the basis of something they've seen on TV.
 
Just thinking about it i'd say the biggest problem in my area is a lack of pickers up and the age of the existing ones there.

I have never turned down as much picking up as this year, very very unusual to see anyone in the picking line below 50.
Don't think it wil change unless the wages increase/double to a fair working/living wage, when ur shooting 80+ days and turning over hundreds of thousnds of pounds it's unfair to expect the poor workers (beaters, pickers up etc) to fund someone else's sport.
No one can be expected to take all there holidays/time off work to work and do a 8-10 hr job they love for 'desiel' money.
With so many shoots shooting mid week it's very hard for young people (or working age folk) to get involved either at school or working

MS i think u are right it is hard to justify but possibly its a neccesary evil as those are the shoots bringing income into generally poor rural areas off season. Game farmers, feed merchants cover crop suppliers etc would not survive if only smaller diy type syndicates were around[/QUOTE

What you say is true, but I know some retired keepers who supplement their state pension with picking up , they can do quite well during the season , five or six days a week if they are prepared to travel, however take off travel costs upkeep of dogs, vet bills etc, and the tax on their earnings and they are not exactly making a fortune,having said that while the little extra is appreciated, most do it to keep in touch with the scene, not the monetary return.
 
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I completely disagree with the op to be honest. I think shooting is in rude health. There are far more shoots than ever before and the numbers of days being shot seems to only increase.

As as for wishing to return to a wild bird format, it is completely fanciful to think you could apply grouse moor management to an over populated low ground scenario.

Our shoot is about 2200 acres yet there are less than a dozen places I can set a larsen without it being vandalised. Every single field (not an exaggeration) has a footpath on at least one boundary or through the middle.
This makes snaring impossible.

That I can run a pheasant shoot at all here amazes me sometimes. Luckily I can which means my wages are subsidised which in turn means I can do several acres of coppicing every year, restore a few hedges, grow some brood cover and supply lots of winter feed as well as keeping a lid on fox numbers.
I've also been the driving force behind a forestry program designed to save the woods that would have otherwise remained derelict.
Conservation is expensive! Luckily, pheasant shooting is fun enough to stay equally expensive. Long may this continue :)
 
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Aye ur quite right bogtrotter but shoots esp commercail shoots should be paying a decent wage £60-80 for pickers up (and 50+ for beaters with no dogs) so folk are actually making a bit of cash. Esp these bigger shoots shooting fairly large bags, often under dogged bloody hard work at times and pheasants arenae light either if u havea decent bag or long distance to walk

Buying feeding training and vetting a team of dogs is not cheap (plus ur motor, gear etc) and even doing 4-5 days a week it's probably not vaible financially, its only the love/enjoyment factor keeps u going. I'm SE and take a day of work to drive 1/2 hours each way to a grouse moor usually a 14hr day for 50 quid, but love it, need my head examined really. If they asked me to do that for my day job they would get told where to stick it

If u paid a fair wage neighbouring pt keepers, se farm workers/shepherds could make a bit to tide them over a traditionally quiet time. Wasspeaking to a SE herd last year who was sruggling for days/work but said beating isnae worth it, hardly covers his desiel and ties up days when u can't take other work that actually pays some bills.

Wot ever way u look at it because we're prepared to work for peanuts (or quite literally a bowl of soup and can of beer) we're subsidising the guns/toff's birds.
Wouldn't happen in any other industry.
All shoots should put 5 or 10 quid on a bird and pay there staff a decent wage
 
Aye ur quite right bogtrotter but shoots esp commercail shoots should be paying a decent wage £60-80 for pickers up (and 50+ for beaters with no dogs) so folk are actually making a bit of cash. Esp these bigger shoots shooting fairly large bags, often under dogged bloody hard work at times and pheasants arenae light either if u havea decent bag or long distance to walk

Buying feeding training and vetting a team of dogs is not cheap (plus ur motor, gear etc) and even doing 4-5 days a week it's probably not vaible financially, its only the love/enjoyment factor keeps u going. I'm SE and take a day of work to drive 1/2 hours each way to a grouse moor usually a 14hr day for 50 quid, but love it, need my head examined really. If they asked me to do that for my day job they would get told where to stick it

If u paid a fair wage neighbouring pt keepers, se farm workers/shepherds could make a bit to tide them over a traditionally quiet time. Wasspeaking to a SE herd last year who was sruggling for days/work but said beating isnae worth it, hardly covers his desiel and ties up days when u can't take other work that actually pays some bills.

Wot ever way u look at it because we're prepared to work for peanuts (or quite literally a bowl of soup and can of beer) we're subsidising the guns/toff's birds.
Wouldn't happen in any other industry.
All shoots should put 5 or 10 quid on a bird and pay there staff a decent wage

interesting post apart from that!
 
Were lucky to get £25 with a dog and then half the people turn up with dogs that are sh*t. Just for extra money. The guys with good dogs have the **** took out of them and do 3 times the work. This season im looking to shoot more myself than be the wrong side of it.
 
Young people who have no conection to the country side have much more to fill there time than go beating. Why go beating on a wet, cold Saturday when you can sit home and play games on your computer.
I travel over 2 hours to work my spaniels and we don't get payed. Very good lunch though.
The swedish hunting scene was up to a few years ago full of old farts hunting roe and hares, sitting round a fire in the forest and talking sh!te. Now with the rise in boar numbers i see more young people coming into the sport and down the shooting range more young than old these days. Plus more women are taking up hunting, this being encouraged by the main shooting organisations who have there own womens department.
Nearly all picking up teams are women on the shoots i go to.
 
Right, as I promised, here's an insight into the difficulty of recruiting young shooters/hunters/stalkers. Consider if you will the case of a 14 year old who for one reason or another would like to start shooting. He or she is not from an environment where anyone shoots, and probably lives in a town or city. Admittedly this is a difficult starting point, but we're trying to recruit new people. For people from a shooting background or who live in the countryside, you can start removing some the barriers.

1. Agency
This is arguably the biggest hurdle for a youngster who wants to start shooting. They're not really masters of their own lives. They have no income, are mostly dependent on parents or guardians for transport beyond the immediate vicinity of their home, aren't allowed to buy a gun even if they have money and have obtained an SGC. They cannot apply for an SGC or FAC without parental support. They need permission to install a cabinet. Essentially if they can't bring their parents or guardians onside, it's a non-starter. How are their parents to know that this isn't just another expensive whim like the XBox or the mountain bike? From the non-shooting parent's perspective, it means letting their child go off with strangers, probably quite some distance away, to do something potentially hazardous (there are guns, it's dangerous, that's what people think instinctively). Finally, don't underestimate the difficulty for this kid of even mentioning that this is what they want to do in a peer group to whom it is completely alien, and that's most peer groups.

2. Initial outlay
Suppose the above problems are solvable, this kid will need a gun. Realistically, they don't know much about it, choosing a second hand one is a minefield if you have no-one knowledgeable to help you. You have very little money anyway. A second hand gun is going to be a risky purchase, it's a big ticket item and you don't know if it's going to be worth the outlay. Neither do your parents. On the plus side, you have years and years to do your research while you save up. Actually handling and trying out guns before you buy them is very difficult to organise.

3. Transport.
Shooting and stalking tend to happen in out of the way places. You don't have a car, there may not be a handy train station within cycling distance of your destination, or the train times don't match the sometimes unsociable hours of shooting. You certainly don't have any money for B&Bs to overcome this barrier. So realistically, you're going to need an adult to drive you there at possibly inconvenient times, and pick you up. This could be considerably more demanding than dropping you off at the football up the road for instance.

4. Timings.
This kid who wants to get into shooting realistically only has weekends and holidays in which to do it. A lot of shoots operate midweek. Only the Christmas holidays take place during the game shooting season. Admittedly there are pigeons in the summer. But it does limit available time. It's not a thing you can do after school.

5. Access to somewhere to shoot!
This is the probably where our notional aspirant shooter is most likely to give up. There is no way he can afford driven shooting. He or she doesn't know any friendly local farmers or landowners and meeting them is hard, although forums like this are by a long way the best way of overcoming that. This is the bit where those who can need to really help out, because this is otherwise insurmountable. I'd mention at this stage wildfowling clubs which can offer fantastic shooting at rock-bottom prices for people who can make the best of them, but I refer you back to the timings and transport sections.

All of the above assume the the person really wants to do this in the first place too, that there is a demand. That's not actually a given. But the barriers to entry or really quite formidable when you think about it and take a step back outside our world.
 
And then you get Sky news today and the rest of the media scaremongering about youngsters 'owning' guns, which they can't, and the general view of todays society that guns are bad and should be banned!!
 
Interesting topic.

As a young shooter (22) I am very lucky to be invited onto several shoot days a year from friends. Every year from when my friends and I were 13 we have all shot on driven days together, inviting each other in reciprocate invites. I myself do not have a farm to host a shoot but I do it in other ways, such organising duck flights, rough shoot days, etc. We as a group have paid to go on some driven days, large and small but generally it is a cost we cant afford.

If i didnt have the friends I do I would shoot far less game.

I think shoots justify themselves in other ways, see here -

The Economic and Environmental Impact of Sporting Shooting

BASC has a lot of information on the matter
 
our walk one stand one shoot has one lad at 25 now, another at 18, the next (still beating but shoots once or twice a year) at 14, and the last at 8,

all have fathers in the shoot, we tried getting them to bring a mate, but most kids dont want to know, one turned up in trainers??

the younger end is still there but its coming from within,
I asked my next doors lad at 12 if he wanted to come, but he was still in bed when I went for him 3 weeks on the trot so never turned up.
 
All credit to you for extending the invitation and keeping the doors open. As regards turning up in trainers, well I was once laughed at on a work outing for turning up in wellies to an event that was going to be wet and muddy. It seemed outlandish to them that anyone should actually own wellies. Never forget how weird we seem to others! Assume no knowledge whatsoever.
 
our walk one stand one shoot has one lad at 25 now, another at 18, the next (still beating but shoots once or twice a year) at 14, and the last at 8,

all have fathers in the shoot, we tried getting them to bring a mate, but most kids dont want to know, one turned up in trainers??

the younger end is still there but its coming from within,
I asked my next doors lad at 12 if he wanted to come, but he was still in bed when I went for him 3 weeks on the trot so never turned up.

I'm in a small syndicate and our team of beaters are all young , son's of guns or friends of son's of guns , it was a real privilege to beat for them on their day , small compensation for the effort they put in over the season ! yet there are guns that begrudge it and it's a real effort to get them to turn out ? ironically these are the same guns that complain at the small return at the end of the season yet I watch them banging away on nearly every drive with little to show for it ! I'm a big fan of judging a shoot by shots fired rather than birds picked............
 
Our youngest beater is six. We have an 11 year old and a 17 year old, who is now half way through his course at Newton Rigg on gamekeeping. In fact his father buys him a gun with us, lucky chap.

The general thing is that they like to come until around their mid teens, when things such as girls and cars tend to take over, possibly further education away. It then depends what course life takes. But if the seed is sown when people are young, often when circumstances allow a bit later in life, they return.

The game scene (that somehow sounds wrong) is very variable though. Shoots, especially small local ones are always closing, but that's mostly local conditions. The keeper gives up or the owner of the land changes or other localised conditions. But there are as many starting up, or re-starting. So it's easy to come to the conclusion that things are dire if in your experience a couple of shoots local to you go. But I'm not sure nationally that's the case.
 
By not incurring the insane costs of the driven shoot format and focusing on low key sustainable harvests from low intensity shooting methods focused on actual hunting, not shooting. That's authentic and environmentally responsible, people like that. Difficult, yes, but it wouldn't take that much to start heading that way. Shoot for the Moon and at worst, you'll land in the stars...
Once the Scottish Parliament applies rates to the sport it will be more expensive still.

Blackpowder
 
Releasing game birds to then blast them out of the sky is actually quite hard to justify as a humane sport. Deer need to be culled as they are a prey species with no viable predators and they breed accordingly. Pigeon numbers are increasing at an alarming rate as game shoots won't allow people to shoot them for fear of disturbing the game birds. The gas guns and bangers merely move the problem elsewhere without addressing it. Pigeons (and rabbits) can drastically affect human food production. I believe that deer and vermin shooters have a future but game shooters days are numbered. Pheasants and partridge don't really need to be shot. I do shoot them for sport, but I also have to accept the reality of the situation..
MS

I do enjoy the odd 150 plus bird day each year, but as you say, blasting away at pheasants being launched over you is a tough one to justify as sport. Come the day that the raving PC liberals take over we might find it a tough argument to win. When you get into the city boys and their 500 bird corporate days it becomes even more difficult, if not impossible.

I'm not saying there is not a good economic argument for it, direct jobs, indirect jobs in the industry, local hotels/restaurants etc., but we are an easy target for the PC brigade.

The Italians have a good model that I like. Now you can say lots about how they shoot, and I have been scared by a few on more than one occasion, but they do much more walked up shooting with their dogs. And it is all about working the dog. They take huge pride in them. A good day might be 5 birds to your own gun, but your own dog has flushed or pointed all of them.

They pay to be part of a club which has a few hundred hectares, releases birds and keeper it well - very much like a golf club or any other sports club. You buy the right to take say 30 birds a year and go as often as you like during the season until your bag is reached. Most go with mates, groups of 3 or 4, most with their own dogs, and make a day of it as we do. If you look at it as a cost per bird it will be a lot more than the £35 or so we are used to paying, but the Club model is very different.

We are very fixated about driven shooting over here, and quite rightly so, it's part of our rich heritage, but I have just as much fun going out with the HWV and four mates who will take turns to shoot over his points. On a good day we might shoot 30 birds, mixed pheasant, partridge and the odd snipe or woodcock, followed by a seat at the spashes waiting for the teal to flight in. It's the sport and the crack that counts, not the size of the bag.

Shooting isn't doomed, but with the way the world is going it might have to change shape a bit over the next 20 years.
 
I didn't realise the returns were as low as that. Surely 40,000+ birds released on 5000 acres must be pushing the boundaries of whats ecologically acceptable?

Being on the edge of 'ecologically acceptable' is the problem that has to be addressed, even as a shooter/hunter I can see this is bordering on unacceptable, it is not being done for sport, it is being done for money, so within the great hunting debate this becomes the example offered when discussing the pro's & con's.
 
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