Gamekeepers across the UK are reporting strong broods and quality eggs, despite a period of bad weather, with the breeding season under way. Persistent rain has been an issue, but warm weather followed soon after, preventing too much damage to stocks. Stuart Maughan, headkeeper on the Whitfield estate in Northumberland,…
Gamekeeping
Scotland ends tail docking ban
The Scottish Government this week voted in favour of allowing vets to shorten the tails of spaniels and hunt, point, retrievers (HPR) if they will be used as working dogs. Legislation was laid in May, with environment secretary Roseanna Cunningham pledging to introduce a bill to drop the existing ban…
Gamekeepers rewarded for community effort
Gamekeepers who helped villages in Royal Deeside to recover from devastating flooding have been recognised for their community effort with a major award. Around 70 estate workers and gamekeepers from the Grampian Moorland Group teamed up with South Grampian Wildfire Group to remove debris from the river Dee at Ballater…
Vinnie Jones: “The best times of my life have been working as a gamekeeper …”
Film star and devoted countryman Vinnie Jones was a guest speaker at the final Gamekeepers’ Welfare Trust (GWT) Gamekeeping for Life conference earlier this month. The Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels star, and former professional footballer, spoke of his passion for gamekeeping and rural life and how he devotes most of…
Meet Jude Ward – our new keeper columnist
A Cornish girl born and bred, I have always had a passion for the outdoor life and animals. My early years were spent helping on the family farm, charging around on my Dartmoor pony, Sherbie. I am one of that rare breed, a female keeper, and have been keepering for…
An interview with Liam Bell, chairman of the NGO
What did you do before becoming a keeper? I went to school! I never really wanted to do anything else. I remember my father, who was a chemical engineer, saying I’d make a good gamekeeper when I was 10 or 11 years old. I found out what one did and was hooked. It sounded like a…
Keeping everyone happy on keeper’s day
As the season draws to a close, talk among the beaters and pickers-up is of the end-of-season keeper’s days. For many gamekeepers, it is the only day of the year they get to shoot pheasants. Indeed, for some of them it might be the only day of the year they get to go shooting at all. There…
League Against Cruel Sports claims shooting industry to blame for bird flu outbreak
Eduardo Goncalves, LACS chief executive, said the outbreaks were “inevitable” because “the number of birds used by the shooting industry each year is a disaster waiting to happen. More pheasants and partridges are bred to be shot each year than the combined number of turkeys and duck killed for the table, but…
What makes a game bird fly well on shoot days?
What makes our game birds fly well one day only to perform poorly the next? No one wants low birds that present little challenge and result in an inedible carcass along with a feeling of ‘really, what is the point?’ At the opposite end of the scale, the cruelty of excessive-range shooting is not only unacceptable but leaves a similar…
Latest bird flu warnings from National Gamekeepers’ Organisation
A spokesman for the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation (NGO) advises: “This advice is hugely important and is essential reading for everyone in the gamebird world… H5N8 bird flu is now widespread in the UK and threatens gamebird management as well as other bird-related industries. We urge all members and others to…
Queen’s weekly visits to walk gamekeeper’s dogs
We have always known that the Queen is a true countrywoman. One of her retired gamekeepers, Mr Fenwick, died a week ago at the age of 95 and it is said that the Queen is considering giving his dogs a home with her. She began walking his corgi and Bichon…
Second-hand guns for gamekeepers and clayshooters
Winchester Model 23 Side-by-side classes in major sporting contests don’t seem to be as popular as they were, which is a pity because they formed a friendly link between clay and gameshooting. Nevertheless, using a side-by-side for club Sporting targets can be great fun, as well as sharpening up the reflexes ready for the autumn. Of course,…
A visit to Hartpury College – where aspiring gamekeepers learn their craft
“Crack your flags on the right, boys…push on 20 yards… stand still… flags up on the left.” Familiar words to the ears of beaters on shoots throughout the land, but it is not often they are uttered by a gamekeeper who is only 18 years old. Hartpury College in Gloucestershire runs courses in gamekeeping and associated subject matter,…
The gamekeeper’s constant fight against game bird disease
Travel back far enough and the major components you’d find in a keeper’s arsenal were gin traps, snares and a bottle of strychnine. Over time the gins were replaced by fen traps, strychnine removed altogether, and snares modified so they are no longer self-locking. It is true that Larsen traps have been a godsend and of course a shotgun and…
New law on using rodenticide
Farmers, gamekeepers and pest controllers are reminded that from Saturday, 1 October, they will not be able to buy professional rodenticide packs for use outdoors without first showing an approved certificate of competence or proof of membership of an approved farm assurance scheme. Dr Alan Buckle, chairman of the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use, said that the way…
Outstanding gamekeeping student wins NGO trophy
Will Hetherington of Shooting Gazette interviews Cormac The award goes to the best gamekeeping student of the academic year. Cormac completed his game and countryside management course at Harpury College, Gloucester, this summer and now runs the college’s commercial gameshoot. He said: “I am delighted to have won the Frank Jenkins. It is…
Hero gamekeepers dig through six feet of moorland to rescue lost spaniel
The dog’s owner, Karen da Rosa, was working her spaniel Jazz at a grouse shoot on Invermark Estate when Jazz disappeared without trace. After two prolonged searches of the vast area, head gamekeeper Garry MacLennan heard breathing at an opening and discovered Jazz had entered a pipe hole on the moor.…
How to hand rear injured or orphaned wildlife properly
What would you do if you saw an injured squirrel or orphaned deer in trouble on land near you? David Whitby examines the ethics behind hand rearing wildlife back to health and even keeping them as pets – have you ever had to hand rear corvids, foxes or deer in…
Top feeding tips for your shoot
With the pheasant release process well under way on most shoots, careful feeding of our growing poults is a main task for the majority of low-ground keepers as July turns into August. As the birds begin to spread, so the feeding programme needs to move with them, and how we manage that can have big conservation consequences — both positive…