Pheasants.

[Retired Member southey]

Perhaps they have had problems in the past Mary.

 

[Hugo]

To those who might think knocking a pheasant down whilst driving in there car is fair game I think not, as the said bird can suffer a lot of pain, all for the cost of buying one (on the feather) for about £2, when in late season you can get four birds for a tenner dressed ready for the oven and that is down south.
That's my twopence worth.

 

[Retired Member southey]

I'd you dint know any one on the shoot, try asking the pubs local to the shoot you can get a day out, social time, drinking mates d cheaper birds.

 

[Bushwhacker]

I would honestly say that if you can get to go beating do it, its great fun!

Deffo.
On some days I actually prefer beating to shooting - Crashing through the scrub making loads of noise is quite liberating haha!

 

[fishfish]

NOBS yep that about covers their organisation,pay through the nose for membership then find you need to do an expensive course for a cirtificate with the promise of beating work only to find there is none. ide love to go beating,i know where all the birds are around here!

 

[British Red]

£5 a year to join NOBS - you don't have to do courses either? No need to be a member though - as the guys say, just ask at the local shoot or have a chat with a keeper - shoots I know are always happy to have more beaters

 

[Toddy]

Positively buccolic BR.

No, it's not beer money, they can make a decentish wage in season, (why not ? would you work for below minimum wage ? for a day's hard work ?) and you're right, if the game dealer offers a pittance, after the clients have their brace, then the beaters are often allowed the remaining birds at a pittance. Often the game dealers literally offer pennies.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[British Red]

Positively buccolic BR.

No, it's not beer money, they can make a decentish wage in season, (why not ? would you work for below minimum wage ? for a day's hard work ?) and you're right, if the game dealer offers a pittance, after the clients have their brace, then the beaters are often allowed the remaining birds at a pittance. Often the game dealers literally offer pennies.

cheers,
Toddy

Its generally far below minimum wage Toddy - in England at least. About £20 on the shoots I know (plus lunch and a beer or two after the guns go away). Seriously, people do it for fun, social times etc.

In fact just checked on the NOBS website

Beaters are often paid for the work they do, anywhere in the region of £10-30,
but many do it for fun. Beating gives you the chance to get out into the
outdoors and see lots of wildlife and make new friends in the process. Get out
and give it a go!

http://www.nobs.org.uk/html/beating.asp

Would love to know of shoots that pay above minimal hourly wage - do you have any shoot contacts?

Red

 

[Spaniel man]

I don't know how they do it in Scotland, but around the shoots I have lived on and near its all locals that work there. The keeper I knew lived on the shoot (housing provided) with his lass (a local farmers daughter). The feed was local grown and sold through the feed merchant down the road. The beaters came from the local pub that Bushwacker Bob and I used to drink in, a local catering firm did the food and the college kids served it. I really can't imagine why anyone would travel to beat - it pays only beer money really - but the beaters got a brace of pheasant each, they also got to shoot a beaters day (when the normal "guns" drove for the beaters), got a good meal and extra money for trained retrievers. Heck beaters even have their own organisation

http://www.nobs.org.uk/

I have to say all the venom certainly sounds like inverse snobbery to me. I mean - no-one here would wear odd clothing to do traditional activities in the woods now would they?

Live and let live I say - if it preserves the woods, its okay with me

Red

Well said that man, that's how it is done around here too. I'm involved with several shoots around and on my place, and most of the beaters do it for a few ciders, a brace of pheasant, and a chance to work their dogs. It does create jobs and revenue for the people where I live.

 

[Toddy]

What's a good catty to go a huntin' wabbits with then (and pheasant for that matter) ?

Speak to Fishfish

BR, I think it would be safe to say that in the main Scotland doesn't have a village green mentality. The social life of an area does not revolve around the local pub.
Not saying there aren't pubs, there most certainly are, but they're town things. Pubs (hotels really) in the hinterlands close at the end of the tourist season for months until Springtime.

Beaters drinking is very much frowned on, and good beaters, especially those who come with calm, well trained dogs, are well thought of.

Many of the shoots are small syndicates, I know of a lot of 'working class' ........is it just me, or is that somehow a worse indictment of the 'class' system ?......who are part of such syndicates.
The larger shoots it's usually the Gamekeeper who attends to the pheasant rearing and contacting someone who will bring in a team of beaters.

It's not unknown for suitably connected 'upper class' to manage to finagle the army into beating for them though that's rare nowadays I'm told.
My bother was one of the squaddies so employed at one time.

I can send you contact details of both a couple of the small syndicates (if they give me permission to do so) as well as a guaranteed brilliant time on a hillside in the far North West if you like ?

That said, the former are nice folks, but they generally stick to members they know well.
The latter however, again nice folks but it's a commercial enterprise and deer is more the focus.

I drive through some areas where the roads are covered in pheasant mush at this time of year daft birds, they seem to think on sunwarmed roads as like wee open meadows.

cheers,
M

 

[Harvestman]

I know a farmer who raises pheasants for shooting. he's a pro-wildlife chap, but his reasons are simple - money. Shooters will pay silly money to come and take pot-shots at pheasants, even if they usually miss what they are aiming at. For the farmer it is the difference between profit and loss. Without the shoots, he'd go under economically.

 

[Andy BB]

It's not class hatred; it's simple annoyance at folks who don't belong to the area getting in the way.
To quote my bother, "It fair gets on your wick when you're out for a quiet walk and all that you can hear are the mating calls of bellowing plums!"

Afaik, and I know a fair number of beaters, they are often brought into an area in teams. Not so much a gang master as a gamekeeper with a list of solid and reliable folks. One neighbour regularly beats for shoots in Perthshire, the Borders and the Lothians, and slightly more infrequently in Argyll and Aberdeenshire.........and he lives in Lanarkshire. Few locals really benefit.

cheers,
M

Actually, it is exactly class hatred, Toddy. to quote " prats pretending to be country landed gentry. It's not to keep farms afloat its to impress their betweeded green wellie Labrador owning marble in the mouth old school tie chums." Besides, what's wrong with green wellies, labradors or tweed?

Was actually more interested in your comment "at folks who don't belong to the area getting in the way" Who exactly decides who can and can't live or work (or play) in your area? And is it based on whether they drive a Range Rover, have green wellies or just speak with a posh accent (or a Scots, Geordie, Scouser, Cockney, Brummie or foreign one, for that matter)? Only a short step from there to deciding skin colour is a factor, n'est-ce pas?

 

[British Red]

Its clearly different up there Mary - but yes, if you know shoots paying over £6 an hour for beaters on a regular basis, I may well know some guys who would be interested. Never come across a "dry shoot" yet - must be a national thing - clearly no-one drinks till the guns are put away, but most I know like a tot of something warm after a few hours in the cold and wet!

 

[Toddy]

Skin colour ? up here ? the few square inches on show at this time of year on the hills could be any colour under Sun who cares :shrug:

Where folks are reasonable on both sides of the coin, life ticks along peacefully, but walking quiet spaces without feeling the need to be heard to be seen (and yes, I do mean it that way) suits most of us a lot better
Go and have a read of the SNH on line site about the Responsible Right of Access.....all of it, not just the bit about respecting shooting signs. Some of these voices need hitting with it like a wet kipper, to make them face reality.

I'll have a word with some friends BR. For them iit's mostly part of the seasonal round, a bit of cash in hand, some good hard work and a chance to fill the freezer and feed the barter network

From how you and others describe it down your neck of the woods, it sounds like folks turn up for under £10 a day; serf labour that is but I suppose it gets folks out on land that otherwise they aren't allowed to 'trespass' upon.

Funny old world, isn't it ?

atb,
M

 

[British Red]

I'll have a word with some friends BR. For them iit's mostly part of the seasonal round, a bit of cash in hand, some good hard work and a chance to fill the freezer and feed the barter network

From how you and others describe it down your neck of the woods, it sounds like folks turn up for under £10 a day; serf labour that is but I suppose it gets folks out on land that otherwise they aren't allowed to 'trespass' upon.

Funny old world, isn't it ?

atb,
M

Actually Mary, its a good day out. Most beaters don't have a chip (or a sack of king Edwards) on their shoulder about it - they enjoy being part of the tradition and country ways. Its nothing to do with trespass (no inverted commas required - its the law of the land enacted and maintained by democracy). Many of them also help out with rearing poults, pest control, woods maintenance etc.

I guess people who do it for TCV must be slaves by your reckoning since they don't get paid at all?

Not everything is about money, or class hatred either. Lots of people enjoy the day, the food, the walk, the tradition, the chance to actually work their dogs rather than have a fat pointless pet. Again I suggest reading the NOBS website - these people are not stupid or "serfs" - its actually very insulting to them to suggest that they are - they are just country people doing a traditional country activity whilst not being motivated by greed or politics..

I do agree with Andy BB on this one - so far we have had criticism of the way people speak, their clothes, their footwear, their animals etc- all done as out and out rudeness. I don't know why someones accent is pertinent to the subject of game shooting - it is though very pertinent to prejudices.

 

[Toddy]

Ah, see there it goes again
It's not the clothes, the accent, or the activity; it's the attitude, the posturing, the sheer *Loud*ness of it, and the appeasement of exploitation..

Different values on the individual and their relevant society I suppose.

Working for £10 a day, just to be able to walk/work on someone else's land, is serf wages, in anybody's money.
Apparantly the value one places on 'traditional' behaviour is a regional thing. One has to wonder just how far that goes

Sorry, slightly snarky, I'm choked with the cold and cough from hell. Different folks, different strokes.

Back to the OP.

Did we ever reach a definitive yes or no that Filterhoose can take the birds in his garden for his dinner. I'm pretty sure he'd be in bother if he tried to sell them on.

cheers,
M

 

[Retired Member southey]

Imo the only way he can know for sure is to ask either the local wldlife protection officer, the land owne he finds the bird on be it local council for the road or the private land owner or ask te shoot manager. If he is happy for the escapees to be munched, any one else's opinion is just that an opinion. I would want o deal in facts before I started poaching.

 

[British Red]

They are out of season at the moment - so he will definitely be in bother if he does it at the moment

 

[Joonsy]

Even if they were on your land, someone has paid to rear those pheasants and regardless of your views of that someone, is it morally right to take their property?

if someone else's pheasants stray on to your land they will need permission from you to enter your land for the purpose of recovering their stray pheasants, if they attempt to do so without your permission they will be committing trespass regardless of who 'owns' them. Sometimes large numbers of pheasants can do considerable crop damage and can lead to disputes between neighbours, i remember one case where a particular estates gamekeepers guarded their pheasants ruthlessly but the farming neighbour suffered considerable crop damage from the birds, the gamekeepers were not sympathetic to the farmers loss so as a last resort the farmer refused to allow the gamekeepers access to his land on shoot days for the purpose of recovering birds that had been shot and fallen on his land, this was probably an extreme case as i expect most neighbours do get on ok.

 

[British Red]

it's the attitude, the posturing, the sheer *Loud*ness of it,

As opposed to the subtle whispered understatement of tartan, bagpipes and the Highland games?