Price of driven birds nowadays

foxdropper

Well-Known Member
The shoot I beat on has just had a block booking for next year with a price set at £62 a bird + vat !!!!!
Mental .
Prices average Joe out the game for sure .
Any advance on this price for predicted days next year .
 
Aye even the price of shells now on top, althou to be fair shooting driven pheasants has never really been affordable to an average joe working class bloke, 30 years ago in my area hardly a commercial shoot existed and all just lairds days no matter how much money u had u wouldn't buy a day or get an invite back then. U seen the same group of guns ( local land owners) just doing the rounds on all the local estates.

Its only been the last 20 odd years u could buy a day.
Still a few shoots round me around the 30-35 quid mark, but a couple around 60 + vat

Went the other way now, hardly a lairds shoot left and all shooting tennants/commercial shoots


And thats the thing u see posts about commercial shooting and big bags and everyone claiming them to be the devil etc, and to be fair they have a point.
But the demand for these commercial driven days is just unbelievable, i just can't understand where the money and the guns keep coming from.
A couple of local shoots keep putting more birds down for more days and still there is a demand

Some off the bigger local estates used to do quite decent deals for local lads esp towards end of season but so busy now u have no chance.

I just dont see how u can curb all the bad things about commercial shooting when the demand is so high, if u limit bag size or amount of birds released it will only serve to push the price up and the guns with plenty of money will have 2 or 3 smaller days instead of 1 big day they used to have so again creating more demand and ur working class joe loses out
 
This will descend into the usual crucifixion of driven bird shooting by all the holier than thou "I only shoot for the freezer" brigade.
£35 cash about the best this season. £38 no vat a good price if the birds are of a reasonable height.
See established places churning out decidedly average stuff at £45+vat, others putting out tremendous stuff at £38+vat.
The big boy places are £60+, debatable whether the height of birds presented are ethical, big bags and gourmet scoff.
It's horses for courses, pay for what gives you pleasure, but think given the high demand, the spiralling costs, most places would be looking to jump by £2/bird next season.
 
yet no one wants the dead birds ! i have four remaining oap,s that like a brace now and again but they are all in their 80,s lost two of the oap.s last year and no one younger wants them! i have always given game to any one who wanted it but sadly only these last four now. so to see what happends to the birds these days is so wastefull ,into the dead pit or burnt hundreds at a time. the polts last year were .£7 each next year due to a shortage the game farm says they will be over £9 its not cheap so the costs go up and up and so it returns to only the RICH can buy a syndicate or corperate day. like so much in the shooting world now :-|
 
I
The shoot I beat on has just had a block booking for next year with a price set at £62 a bird + vat !!!!!
Mental .
Prices average Joe out the game for sure .
Any advance on this price for predicted days next year .
Is that for real ffs? I shoot ten birds and it will cost me £620 quid?
 
You can still do it very cheaply if a few of the syndicate members put some time in.

Aye but how often does that actually happen??

Was quite a few good syndicates around me and some very decent affordable shooting, but 1 by 1 closing down as the few folk doing the lions share of the work are either getting sick or old and not enough folk willing to take them on.

Works very well and good craic when they do work thou
 
Aye but how often does that actually happen??

Was quite a few good syndicates around me and some very decent affordable shooting, but 1 by 1 closing down as the few folk doing the lions share of the work are either getting sick or old and not enough folk willing to take them on.

Works very well and good craic when they do work thou
I was in a wee syndicate, about a dozen members and only put down 250 birds, lucky if we shot 70 a season and we all had days when the barrels were never dirtied. Good craic for a few years. until we got a new member from "outside" but was a friend of the farmers. With good intentions he tried to "improve" the shoot but the bickering set in soon set in.

At £250/year to shoot 6 or 7 birds plus at least one feeding/keepering session a week it wasn't exactly cheap really
 
Although.... you'd be paying £350+ vat plus tip to shoot a red hind or two, then dealers rates for the carcass. Whereas, most pheasant shoots would likely be happy for you to take 100 birds these days since they're getting 10 pence at very best, in f not paying to have them taken.
 
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