Good prospects for wild gamebird broods

Spokesmen for both the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT)and the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation (NGO) are cautiously optimistic for the prospects of wild game in the coming season, though they stressed that an accurate picture won’t emerge until the grey partridge counts are returned in the autumn.

Reporting from Yorkshire, NGO chairman Lindsay Waddell said: “The GWCT used to check our data from local weather stations and said it could tell before doing counts how things would be from the amount of rain. Therefore, in the main, partridge, wild pheasant and blackgrouse broods should be good, unless they have suffered from predation, or been unlucky enough to be underneath one of the thunder showers we have had, which have been localised. I saw one hen pheasant recently with a dozen good poults — that is the best one I have ever seen.”

The rest of this article appears in 21st July issue of Shooting Times.

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