Finding old historical game records

[lochty]

@countrryboy that was 1880s so it would be breech loaders. Up there it would be all wild birds, I doubt if they would have had time to rear anything. Fascinating book if you ever get the chance to read it.

 

[countrryboy]

@countrryboy that was 1880s so it would be breech loaders. Up there it would be all wild birds, I doubt if they would have had time to rear anything. Fascinating book if you ever get the chance to read it.

I might do just that.
Im about to order that silent fields book someone recomnened earlier.

Still astounded producing 7000 brace back then.
Thats a serious amount of birds.
Most modern keepers would cut their hands and arm off to produce a bag like that nowadays and thats with all the modern equipment.
Infact i bet not a moor in scotland shooting that nowadays

 

[weblyish]

I might do just that.
Im about to order that silent fields book someone recomnened earlier.

Still astounded producing 7000 brace back then.
Thats a serious amount of birds.
Most modern keepers would cut their hands and arm off to produce a bag like that nowadays and thats with all the modern equipment.
Infact i bet not a moor in scotland shooting that nowadays

7000 brace
17 week season (was it the same back then?)
=800 birds a week
2 days a week of 400 birds a day for the entire season?

Definitely do-able if you set 15,000 birds down on a commercial estate today but seems unlikely for wild to be sustainable off the resident population

But 1880s is the era of Lord Walshingham and his 1000 bird days with the introduction of triple gunning breech loaders, butts and formal driven rather than walked up so it is possible the starting density was very high

 

[Covert]

Not doubting the general size of the predator bag nor that it was a shoot on sight for pretty much anything People didn't pay to shoot
but I do know a old stalker who had a job as a boy running the same dead foxes round 3 different farms of a morning to show the farmers how productive the lampers were

There may have been a bit of that going on as well inflating the bag

I remember reading, and it was VERY many years ago when I was in my pre-teens, about the reintroduction of caper' from Scandinavia. My recollection says there were quite a number of attempts over about a decade and a half and that they were fairly widely dispersed but one name sticks in my mind and that is Breadalbane. In the same chapter it related a tale about a cock caper' that attacked cars in Morningside in Edinburgh in the1930s! At school in southern Pethshire some friends and I chased the caper in the Keillour Forest and occasionally caught them in the fences. I also, in my 20s in the late 1970s, shot driven caper on Deeside, to reduce damage in the scots pine there as they were very numerous. The Victorian reintroductions must have been genuinely successful to have as widespread a population sixty and a hundred years later. The decline has largely been since the 1970s as gamekeepers became more poultry keepers and less fixated on vermin destruction; that is very sweeping and generalised but contains an element of truth as the post-war keepers used more poisons, until The Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 took effect. Thereafter more effort went back into trapping and snaring and the skills required for that. I am emphatically not being derogatory to 'keepers as for all of my life they have been a hard-working [far harder than me], group prepared also to share their knowledge and expertise with a wet-behind-the-ears young assistant factor, land agent and stalker.

Back in the late 1980’s I was approached in regardis to a job involved in the reintroduction of Capercaillie in the Caledonian pine forests in Scotland. If my memory services me correctly it was a joint venture between the Game conservancy and the RSPB for a 3 year fixed contract .I do remember it was primarily for the predator control of foxes and corvids. Not sure if this approach would even be considered now.
Back in the 19th and early 20th century game shooting was primarily based on producing a harvestable surplus of wild birds mostly by predator control. In the case of pheasants some small scale rearing supplemented this. Habitat management on the whole was unnecessary due to the less intensive land use. Estates were larger many more staff were employed and the use of large numbers of traps was much more prevalent. The old adage was they worked 24/7 when a man didn’t.
This continued until the advent of commercial shooting in the 1970’s , no we are at the point where lowland game shooting is based on rearing large numbers of stock and is basically agri business

 

[countrryboy]

7000 brace
17 week season (was it the same back then?)
=800 birds a week
2 days a week of 400 birds a day for the entire season?

Definitely do-able if you set 15,000 birds down on a commercial estate today but seems unlikely for wild to be sustainable off the resident population

But 1880s is the era of Lord Walshingham and his 1000 bird days with the introduction of triple gunning breech loaders, butts and formal driven rather than walked up so it is possible the starting density was very high

Im not going to say too much on an open forum as most grouse keepers like to keep their bags/returns fairly secret.
Or atleast within the industry.

Many english moors will manage to produce that sort of surplus fairly easily with not a lot of keepers.
Many will produce more than that.

But to produce that volume of birds is unheard off nowadays in scotland.

I think if memory serves me, Langholm was producing about 2000 brace during the peak years before the JRG study/Langholm 1.
And mibbee shoot 3 or 4 possibly even 5 years with a bit of luck with weather out of 7yrs.
It was on a fairly regular 7 yr cycle between peak and troughs.
And was rated as a top scottish moor in those days, 1980s or so.

Theyre is a saying among grouse keepers if u can produce grouse in scotland u can produce them anywhere.

 

[Heym SR20]

I think you have to go to some of the very few parts of the world that are pretty much un touched by man to really understand how much biodiversity and numbers of animals and birds the land can actually support and sustain. It is much much larger numbers than we could ever imagine. Look at bits of America and the large numbers of sea eagles, bears, otters etc than congregate on the rivers with salmon runs etc, or the herds of large ungulates that populated the plains and woods. Think of the huge numbers of beavers that were trapped to sustain the whole European fashion of beaver felt hats.

In the mid Victorian era the breech loading gun suddenly man the ability to shoot large numbers of wildlife (and men) very quickly. Up till then it was bows or muzzleloaders.

 

[Freeforester]

Per 5 acre of ground, it is possible to have a brood of a dozen grouse where all is right, and predation is prevented; this is achievable with Intense predator control. Nowhere in nature is such a scenario replicated, because predators will always regulate prey species until relative scarcity begins to impact the breeding success of those predator species, aside from predator on predator predation.

A single pair of crows can gather 150 eggs off a moor and suck them in the forest plantation; it doesn’t take long to destroy what can be built up in terms of viable population let alone the removal of the otherwise shootable surplus. When most of the grouse are gone, the other upland ground nesting bits begin to be more severely impacted; thus the biodiversity suffers.

Effective predator control benefits all the vulnerable and now endangered ground nesting species and game quarry alike, and yet those most persistent and serious predators of ground nesting birds are generally common species.

 

[snoozlecracker]

The estates game diaries have recently been discovered during some renovations which are 1800- mid 1900.
Fascinating reading this is one example of the vermin record.

 

[weblyish]

Why bother killing the hedgehogs?
Bycatch in traps? Or were they also targeted

 

[snoozlecracker]

Why bother killing the hedgehogs?
Bycatch in traps? Or were they also targeted

No idea mate, and all long gone to ask.

Changing attitudes over the years? Species in and out of favour? Changing practices and game species?
Interestingly there is not one fox on the vermin records. Due to it then highly prized status for the hunt.
At its peak there were 4 full time keepers on this estate and they had to operate around the foxes. Now whether that was done as asked or dealt with and not recorded I do not know and can only speculate.


T.

 

[lochty]

Why bother killing the hedgehogs?
Bycatch in traps? Or were they also targeted

Because they can prey on eggs, particularly partridge. If you were looking after effectively a wild bird shoot, anything that predated game had to go. Not acceptable these days though.

 

[Rhodesianjess]

Why bother killing the hedgehogs?
Bycatch in traps? Or were they also targeted

Hedgehog are sods for eggs, they'll take youngsters as well if they can catch them. If they could get in to the old style broody boxes with the runs on the front, they would have the whole clutch. The hen had no defence against Mr Prickles, only noise which would bring the keeper.
Changed days now, especially if you have a lot of badgers, they'll have solved the problem for the keeper.
I was told at a job interview in the 1980's by prospective employer that as a MFH if the hounds drew the estate and don't find a fox, you're gone the next day! Hence foxes not on the vermin book,sneaky job if one had to go.
I knew a keeper,dead 25 years now, that never seen a fox in Norfolk, only when he moved to Northamptonshire in his 20's.