1.

Since the Second World War, lowland game shooting involving the pursuit of pheasants and partridges has undergone profound changes. The most visible reason for this is the transformation of the countryside brought about by the intensification of farming, coupled with changes in habitat management.Footnote ¹ In particular, the removal of hedges to make larger fields, the increased application of pesticides and herbicides, allied to unprecedented changes in cropping patterns has ensured that vast tracts of the lowlands have become less suited to the preservation of game birds. The post war revolution in agricultural production was accompanied by an unprecedented decline in the grey partridge population which, as Colin McKelvie suggests, is ‘one of the saddest tales in the history of all game species’.Footnote ² What was, in the nineteenth century, Britain's premier shooting quarry in the lowlands, became an increasingly rare species. Nevertheless the size of the national game bag, or the number of birds shot, continued to rise due to the growing popularity of pheasants and, to a lesser extent, to an upturn in the French partridge population.

This expansion was primarily a result of the huge growth in artificial rearing following the Rearing of Pheasants (Revocation of Prohibition) Order in 1949.Footnote ³ Figures compiled by the Game Conservancy Trust indicate that thirty to thirty five million game birds are raised each year, which is approximately the same number as the size of the United Kingdom egg production flock. The Game Farmers Association calculate that twenty to thirty million game birds are released each year, of which eighty per cent are pheasants and sixteen to seventeen per cent French partridges, the rest being English partridges and ducks.Footnote ⁴ This increase was accompanied by a contraction in the number of gamekeepers and a reconfiguration of traditional methods of predator control. Prompting this supply side revolution was a rapid rise in the popularity of driven shooting, where the birds were driven by beaters towards stationary guns. No longer was it regarded as the exclusive prerogative of the upper classes, but increasingly allowed within its ranks the more affluent sections of the middle classes. Walked up shooting, the main type of shooting for the less wealthy, where the birds were flushed out by the guns as they walked along, was also transformed.

Surprisingly, game shooting has received scant attention not only from historians, but also from individuals interested specifically in the countryside. This neglect reflects the common perception that it remains an elitist activity pursued only by members of the plutocracy.Footnote ⁵ An evaluative assessment of the importance of field sports covering the period 1850–1950 was undertaken in 2007 in Richard Hoyle's edited volume Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports In England After 1950. This pioneering study shows how field sports such as game shooting are inexorably intertwined with the history of the countryside and agricultural development. As the editor astutely reminds us, ‘historians need to recognise that there were more than farmers and labourers in the countryside; then as now it was the playground of the rich.’Footnote ⁶ There is, however, an extensive body of contemporary literature on shooting mostly written by sportsmen for other participants.Footnote ⁷ These range from technical treatises on different aspects of the sport to, more usually, reminiscences of shooters.

Many accounts of the sport have been written by enthusiasts of the history of the activity, or the ecological aspects of game conservation. A notable example of the former is Brian P. Martin's The Great Shoots: Britain's Premier Sporting Estates, which provides an informative review of the history of the most prestigious shoots. Colin McKelvie's A Future for Game? discusses strategies for the survival of the main game species in an increasingly ‘humanised’ landscape. In a similar vein, Stephen Tapper's Game Heritage: An Ecological Review from Shooting and Gamekeeping Records provides a compendium of research papers and detailed statistical analysis of the main trends in the population ecology of birds and animals of interest to game shooters. In addition there are an extensive number of scientific papers and articles compiled by organisations such as the Game Conservancy, later renamed the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, the British Trust for Ornithology and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which deal with specific aspects of the population changes of a multitude of different species.

This article will undertake a detailed interdisciplinary critique, combining economic and ecological aspects, of the transformation of game shooting and conservation since the Second World War. In particular it will focus on the impact of the changing rural habitat on the main game species. Attention will be directed to new methods of artificial rearing and conservation. A wide variety of national and local sources have been used, including official accounts, scientific papers, newspapers, the shooting press, contemporary personal accounts and correspondence.

2.

The state directed food production campaign of the Second World War marked a watershed for state involvement with the agricultural sector. As an incentive to stimulate production, guaranteed prices for the main agricultural commodities were introduced. In addition there was a nationwide ploughing up campaign as a prerequisite for increasing the production of arable crops, particularly wheat and potatoes. Under the jurisdiction of county based War Agricultural Executive Committees, production targets were allocated to District Committees who, in turn, issued directives to individual farmers in their locality. Within the space of a mere five years, Britain's arable acreage had risen from twelve million acres to eighteen million acres as a result of the conversion of pasture land to tillage.Footnote ⁸ Changes in the rural habitat were accompanied by the development of a ‘new morality’ in terms of committing farmers to production targets linked primarily to economic criteria.Footnote ⁹ Under the threat of impending food shortages, according to the conventional wisdom, state directives had given agriculture a new lease of life. Lord Murray noted in his seminal work Agriculture that ‘this history should be without question a success story, successful far beyond the calculations and estimates of pre-war planners’.Footnote ¹⁰ Following the wartime state directed food production campaign, raising agricultural output and productivity became the overwhelming policy objective, taking precedence over less tangible effects such as maintaining a diverse rural habitat sympathetic to wildlife, or providing support for the notion of custodianship of the countryside.Footnote ¹¹

This transformation was underpinned by the 1947 Agriculture Act, which established a system of guaranteed prices for the main agricultural commodities to ensure stability and efficiency for the agricultural sector.Footnote ¹² However, the framing of the legislation, as well as its subsequent implementation, was determined by the annual price review negotiations between the government and the National Farmers’ Union, with scant attention being paid to the views of environmental groups or shooting interests. To a large extent this was a pragmatic response to Britain's precarious position following the termination of Lend-Lease in 1945 and its acute balance of payments crisis. More importantly, even if Britain had been able to fund imports of food on the pre-war scale, agricultural commodities were in short supply. In 1947–8, for example, world food production was still seven per cent below the levels which had prevailed prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.Footnote ¹³

As well as the carrot of financial incentives to encourage the adoption of more productive methods, the newly reformed County Agricultural Executive Committees, like their predecessors the War Agricultural Executive Committees, ensured compliance by imposing sanctions on recalcitrant farmers or those deemed to be incompetent.Footnote ¹⁴ A huge array of capital grants was made available to promote farm improvements and renovations. The introduction of production subsidies in 1957 led to grants becoming available for the removal of hedgerows and underdrainage. Given the financial incentives for expansion, farmers increasingly found themselves on a treadmill. With the emergence of food surpluses in the 1950s, the annual prices review system placed the onus on farmers to achieve efficiency gains in order to cover the deficit between the rising cost of production and the increase in the level of guaranteed prices. In order to remain competitive they had to concentrate on a limited range of enterprises which provided opportunities to exploit economies of scale, and the latest, more efficient production methods. During a period of food shortages, game conservation was low on the political agenda, although, rather optimistically, based on their experiences of a Hampshire estate, Blank and Ash argued that the partridge population could easily be restored with sympathetic management.Footnote ¹⁵

The drive for agricultural expansion and enhanced productivity led to unprecedented changes in the way the countryside was managed. Visually the most obvious manifestation of this drive was the removal of hedgerows, which were valuable to wildlife for food, shelter and nesting sites. According to the Countryside Commission, this trend reached a peak in the mid 1960s, when about 10,000 miles of hedgerow each year were being grubbed out. Losses were particularly acute in the traditional game shooting areas of eastern England, with some counties losing more than fifty per cent of their hedges in the twenty-five years prior to 1972.Footnote ¹⁶ In Norfolk, for example, 8,000 miles of hedgerows amounting to forty-five per cent of the total were removed between 1946 and 1970.Footnote ¹⁷

This was a significant factor in accounting for the decline in game species, and partridges in particular. Research by game biologists indicated that the optimum area of hedge nesting habitat for partridges on lighter soils was nineteen miles per thousand acres, which was the equivalent of an average field size of twenty-five acres.Footnote ¹⁸ By the early 1970s, however, the average field size on farms in the southern counties, the traditional area for partridges, was over sixty acres. More importantly, many hedges which had survived showed signs of significant deterioration; either they had been allowed to become sparse and gappy or, more frequently, left to deteriorate as a result of the excessive use of the flail hedge cutter.Footnote ¹⁹ The reclamation of scrub, coppices and woodlands caused a significant decline in habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna including game birds. But the effects varied significantly between one farm and another. A detailed investigation by Potts suggested that the rate of hedge removal on those farms owned by members of the Game Conservancy was exactly half the national average, and their surviving hedgerows were managed in a way that was more appropriate for nesting birds.Footnote ²⁰ Less obvious, but equally significant in accounting for changes in the population of game birds, was the shift to autumn planting of cereals from spring sown crops. This led to the ploughing of stubble in early autumn, and the inevitable reduction in the winter food supply and habitat for game birds. Furthermore, the introduction of more productive varieties of cereals, coupled with higher fertiliser use, contributed to denser crops with more leaf cover and made it difficult for young chicks to survive during wet spells.

Game birds were adversely affected by the decline in the area of roots crops such as swedes, turnips and mangels, which provided cover for partridges in particular. Although this contraction was accompanied by an increase in the area of sugar beet, research findings suggest that the birds liked this crop less than other more traditional root crops.Footnote ²¹ Partridges were also affected by changes in grassland management and forage conservation. On the Imperial Chemical Industries’ Game Research Station at Fordingbridge, Hampshire, the most common cause of partridge nest losses in the early 1950s was grass cutting.Footnote ²² The shift to silage making from haymaking meant that crops were cut earlier in the season when nests were even more vulnerable.Footnote ²³ From a habitat point of view, the most important factor adversely affecting game birds was probably the increasing and widespread use of insecticides and pesticides, which reduced the number of insects available.Footnote ²⁴ The use of herbicides led to a decline in the weeds growing on arable land and, consequently, in the variety of host plants on which many insects depended. Microscopic analysis by the Game Conservancy of the faeces of young partridges showed their extreme dependence on insects during their first two weeks of life. A diet of sawflies, caterpillars, ground and leaf beetles, weevils and plant bugs provided considerably more protein and was easier to digest than the fibrous plant matter preferred by their parents.Footnote ²⁵

As birds of woodlands and coverts rather than fields, pheasants were less affected than partridges by the post-war agricultural revolution. However, research by the Game Conservancy since 1961, which monitored changes in the number of birds released and shot per square kilometre on more than six thousand shooting estates, shows that the total number of birds shot has steadily increased, but an increasing proportion was comprised of artificially reared birds.Footnote ²⁶ There was extensive removal of coppices in this period, but as Barber has noted, this would have been even more dramatic if it had not been for pheasant shooting.Footnote ²⁷ Marion Shoard, an ardent critic of modern farming, in her iconic text, The Theft of the Countryside, is at pains to eulogise the benefits of game shooting:

Although the instruments of policy evolved following Britain's entry into the European Economic Community in 1973, the adoption of the Common Agricultural Policy ensured further official support for the ‘productivist’ ethos. The collapse of equity markets and the associated financial and currency instability led to city institutions purchasing land and other fixed assets which were appreciating in value.Footnote ²⁹ The capitalisation of land values put even more pressure on farmers to adopt efficient and productive methods in an effort to remain competitive. As Richard Body observed in his influential polemic, Agriculture: The Triumph and the Shame, this high cost system of agricultural support has in the long run been detrimental to the rural sector, merely encouraging a capitalisation of land values which in turn has made it even more difficult for smaller farms to survive without continued intensification.Footnote ³⁰

Farmers responded in diverse ways to the new financial incentives. As research by Howard Newby and his colleagues pointed out, ‘attitudes to conservation vary systemically between farmers. Traditional family farmers and “gentlemen” farmers are the most sympathetic, paid managers and agribusinesses the least.’Footnote ³¹ When land changed hands, the post-war subsidy system tended to squeeze out farmers sympathetic to non agricultural activities such as game conservation as they could not afford the inflated land prices or rent levels to expand their activities in order to remain viable. Subsidy levels often attracted a new breed of farmer or manager who was committed to the financial incentives which had been shaped by official policy makers. Shooting and game conservation were more prevalent on family estates unencumbered by large mortgages, where they attracted paying guests, as well as providing personal enjoyment for the shoot organisers. The technical challenges of enhancing game bird populations ensured that game shooting remained confined to a relatively small numbers of farms, in part reflecting what were perceived as the inherent difficulties in developing a viable game rearing enterprise.Footnote ³²

The Common Agricultural Policy continued unabated until the emergence of overwhelming food surpluses of the 1980s, when the European nation states made a belated attempt to decouple price support from productivity and implement a more ecologically friendly approach to maintaining the countryside.Footnote ³³ The emphasis was shifted from the productive capacity of the countryside to its landscape and recreational potential, policies which were viewed initially with scepticism among those sections of the farming community which had embraced the prevailing philosophy of ‘productivism’.Footnote ³⁴ The new system of incentives was favourable not only to non-agricultural activities such as diversification and pluriactivity but also to biodiversity. Faced with a squeeze on incomes, many famers, particularly on the larger estates in the southern counties, turned to activities such as game shooting in order to supplement their income. Diversification into game shooting was aided by the Eley Game Advisory Service which provided technical guidance on effective game management, but also on the economics of the activity.Footnote ³⁵

Since the 1980s a range of grants has been introduced to encourage the establishment and management of woodlands. Incentives for planting new woods on farmland existed through the Farm Woodland Scheme, while the Farm Woodland Premium Scheme encouraged the planting of small woods, mostly less than six hectares in size. This policy aimed to increase the planting of broadleaved trees with or without conifers on land that had been taken out of food production. Habitat management of this kind provided a range of benefits, not only in terms of the aesthetic appeal of the landscape, but also for wildlife and game management. According to a report from Cobham Consultants, sixty-seven per cent of respondents indicated that game interests were a reason for retaining existing woodland and fifty-six per cent noted that it was a reason for planting new woodland.Footnote ³⁶ Thus pheasant shooting encouraged the planting of small farm woodlands, in addition to providing many aesthetically attractive features such as large rides, scrubby woodland edges, and glades and clearings in existing woodland.Footnote ³⁷ Initiatives favouring biodiversity were also encouraged by the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, a registered charity which had been established in 1969 and had become increasingly active.

Game birds were encouraged by set aside schemes introduced in the 1990s, which paid farmers for not growing designated crops or for leaving a proportion of the land uncultivated. Under the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ cross compliance rules, the edges of fields had to be left as strips of rough grass. On shooting estates, these strips were wider than required and studies have indicated that the variety of birdlife here was greater than on non-shooting estates. Uncultivated margins acted as beetle banks and established a habitat for birds to forage for seeds and insects. Game farmers often planted winter game bird crops such as maize, millet, kale, mustard, quinoa and more exotic seed rich plants to provide cover and food. Some of these mixes were eligible for ‘wildbird setaside’ options or ‘Wildlife Seed Mixture’ options under a scheme which was piloted in two areas of the United Kingdom.Footnote ³⁸ The development of a landscape more amenable to game conservation, particularly since the 1980s, also reflects the work of the Game Conservancy in popularising a more scientific approach to game conservation. Attempts were made to assist the grey partridge by the establishment of a long term research experiment, supported by a group of environmentally conscious cereal farmers, to investigate the impact of agrochemical sprays and spraying techniques on farmland wildlife.Footnote ³⁹ Funded by farmers, this scheme investigated more sympathetic methods of cereal production.

In 1994, the Conservative government launched its Biodiversity Action Plan. Included in the list of species was the grey partridge, whose number had declined by ninety-one per cent since 1962. The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, which was the lead partner, embarked upon an ambitious plan to raise awareness of this issue among the farming and shooting communities, and to develop methods of re-establishing grey partridges in areas of extinction. Considerable progress has been achieved in a number of localised areas in enhancing partridge numbers, and in developing a blue print for future expansion.Footnote ⁴⁰ Coordinating the needs of intensive agricultural practices with the effective habitat conservation necessary for running a commercial game shoot remained a precarious activity in financial terms. Nevertheless it could not be considered a negligible activity as, according to the Cambridge based Public and Corporate Economic Consultants, two million hectares of land was actively managed for shooting.Footnote ⁴¹

3.

The post-war period bore witness to unprecedented changes in game conservation, particularly in terms of the numbers of gamekeepers, which fell from 11,000 to 1931 to 4,391 in 1951. More than two in every three worked on their own, while the rest were either beat keepers, working under the jurisdiction of a head keeper and looking after part of the estate, or apprentices in training. Determining subsequent numbers is problematic, but a breakdown of the 1981 census suggests a figure of 1,790 for England and Wales and 720 for Scotland.Footnote ⁴² After 1981 the number of full-time gamekeepers is even more difficult to ascertain as they were not longer recorded as a single occupational group in the census returns. By the mid 1980s less than eight per cent of farmland was covered by gamekeepers,Footnote ⁴³ a significant decline from the estimated fifty per cent level which had prevailed during the Edwardian period, 1901 to 1910.Footnote ⁴⁴

According to the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation, by 2006 the number of full-time game keepers had risen to about 3000.Footnote ⁴⁵ By this stage, full-time keepers were increasingly employed in teams on the larger, commercially oriented shooting estates, where the release of large numbers of poults had become an integral part of their activities. However there were a similar number of part-time keepers, mainly members of shooting syndicates, as well as shoot owners who carried out the duties of the gamekeeper. The control of predators, particularly during the crucial spring nesting season, was an integral if controversial aspect of the gamekeeper's work. As Tapper noted, ‘too often he is treated as a quaint country anachronism or at worst a cruel ignoramus who will kill anything that so much looks at a pheasant.’Footnote ⁴⁶ Pest control was traditionally undertaken in an indiscriminate way involving trapping, snaring and shooting, but also occasionally poisoning.

Vermin was broadly defined and ranged from mammals such as rats and badgers, to birds including jays and birds of prey. This all encompassing definition was not simply due to the multitude of species that were persecuted in the nineteenth century, but had its origins in the Tudor period. As early as 1632, the first of a series of Vermin Acts had entered the statute book, requiring each parish to raise a levy out of which payments could be provided for the heads of several species of designated vermin. In 1566 an ‘Acte for the Preservation of Grayne’ was accompanied by a list of species which, only in the vaguest of senses, could be regarded as agricultural pests.Footnote ⁴⁷ The increasing employment of gamekeepers in the nineteenth century ensured that the distribution of larger birds of prey and carnivores was restricted to the western fringes of the country, especially central Wales, where the game keeping tradition was less evident. The relative scarcity of these raptors in the rest of the country has been regarded as unequivocal testimony to the way game keeping impacted on wildlife.Footnote ⁴⁸

After the Second World War, however, there were significant changes in predator control. First and foremost, a number of the larger birds of prey such as the red kite were granted legal protection under Schedule One of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Detailed research noted the growing indiscriminate use of farm insecticides, in particular the use of organophosphorus compounds, to destroy a wide range of predators, including raptors.Footnote ⁴⁹ As research by Picozzi and Weir has shown, the effect of these activities on birds such as the buzzard was quite marked in a number of regions.Footnote ⁵⁰ Although instances of the illegal killing of raptors continued after 1981, often as a result of poisons used to kill foxes and crows, the number and range of these birds continued to increase.Footnote ⁵¹ Indeed, according to the Welsh Red Kite Trust, the United Kingdom is the only country in which the red kite population has continued to grow since 2000.Footnote ⁵² The buzzard has been an even more remarkable example of success, in terms of increasing numbers and expansion of range from its traditional stronghold in Wales. The bird's improved nesting success reflected a combination of factors, including not only reduced levels of persecution, but also the recovery of the rabbit population from myxomatosis and the decline in the use of organochlorine pesticides in agriculture.Footnote ⁵³

Since the Second World War, predator control has become more selective, focusing on a limited range of species including the stoat, fox, carrion crow and magpie. Stoats were traditionally caught in gin traps, and later tunnel traps, as well as being ‘squeaked up’ by mimicking the sound of an injured rabbit.Footnote ⁵⁴ Population levels of this species were closely linked to those of the rabbit. As Tapper's study of the number of stoats killed on a Suffolk estate show, there was more than a tenfold decline following the outbreak of myxomatosis in 1953–4 and, since then, numbers have been closely linked to the changing fortunes of the rabbit.Footnote ⁵⁵ Stoats, like their cousins the weasels, have been subject to more intense trapping on game estates than elsewhere.Footnote ⁵⁶

Historically, foxes have been controlled by a range of methods in addition to pursuit by packs of hounds, including gassing earths, snaring and shooting with a rifle, which is generally regarded as the most efficient, selective and humane method.Footnote ⁵⁷ Changes in their population levels prior to 1961 are not clear. It is likely that they were less affected than other species such as stoats by the outbreak of myxomatosis in 1953–4 as they switched to alternative foods.Footnote ⁵⁸ Since the 1960s fox numbers have tended to increase as their range spread to suburban and urban areas, with fox hunting being but one of a number of causal factors determining their distribution.Footnote ⁵⁹ In spite of the banning of formally organised foxhunting on horseback with hounds in 2005, the pursuit of foxes has been undertaken by night shooting or fox drives, an activity which has become increasingly regarded as a sport in its own right.Footnote ⁶⁰ According to Public and Corporate Economic Consultants, 120,000 foxes are killed each year in this way. However many more are killed as part of the job, usually involving game preservation activities.Footnote ⁶¹

The egg eating habits of corvids such as crows and magpies made them the most important and conspicuous avian predator of game birds.Footnote ⁶² A pioneering study of Worcestershire revealed an inverse correlation between the density of magpies and the number of gamekeepers.Footnote ⁶³ This trend was also noted in several other counties including Surrey, Leicestershire and Derbyshire.Footnote ⁶⁴ Traditionally corvids were systematically culled by shooting, or occasionally through the use of alpha chloralose, which was also used for controlling rats and mice in farm buildings. Despite the dangers associated with poisons, they were simple and effective to use.Footnote ⁶⁵ A significant innovation was the development of the Larsen trap. A live corvid was retained as a decoy in a compartment of the trap to encourage fellow species to enter via a spring loaded trap door.Footnote ⁶⁶ One of the advantages of the trap was that birds were caught live and non target species could be released.Footnote ⁶⁷ However the use of captive wild birds as a decoy was contrary to the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act and Larsen traps had to be operated under a general license. According to the Game Conservancy 1991 Annual Review, Larsen traps were one of the main reasons for the three fold increase in the number of magpies killed after 1981.Footnote ⁶⁸

In 1996, following concerns about how the traps were being used, further restrictions were imposed. Despite these game conservation measures, magpies still managed to increase, partly due to their ability to colonise urban and suburban localities, particularly from the 1960s. The marked decline in nest failure during the crucial egg and chick period indicates a decline in the intensity of predator control.Footnote ⁶⁹ Similarly the British Trust for Ornithology Common Birds’ Census showed a two fold increase in the population of carrion crows between 1969 and 1999.Footnote ⁷⁰ This increase reflected a reduction in control by gamekeepers as well as the increase in roadside carrionFootnote ⁷¹ and showed the bird's adaptability to changing habitats and its willingness to adjust to ephemeral food resources in intensive agriculture.

Case studies of predator control undertaken by gamekeepers show significant changes during the decades after the Second World War. More importantly, they illustrate significant differences in the effects of control methods on the different species of predators and that a number of other causal factors, besides game keeping, need to be taken into account when trying to explain the population dynamics of specific predators. Whilst it would be naive to argue that the population levels of these species were not still adversely affected in some localities by game preservation, a prima facie case exists for suggesting that the post-war decades witnessed the development of a more sympathetic approach to predator control.

4.

One of the most important changes in game management after the Second World War was the dramatic increase in the artificial rearing of game birds to supplement indigenous stocks. Traditionally gamekeepers had caught pheasants during the late winter to provide breeding stock. Eggs were also purchased from other estates to complement their numbers and to provide genetic diversity. These were hatched under broody hens, while young chicks were fed a variety of ingredients including cereals and biscuit meal. In order to enhance the protein content of the feed, rabbits were killed in large numbers, skinned and boiled, before being minced to form a food supplement. Birds were also reared on specialist game farms which sold either day old chicks or young poults to shooting estates. Quantifying the amount of birds reared in this way is problematic as, unlike other farming activities, the number of captive game birds was not included in the annual 4th June agricultural returns. Nevertheless, an insight into the extent of the activity can be gleaned from the fact that the thirty-two game farms which belonged to the Game Farmers Association had produced in the region of one hundred thousand pheasants annually in the 1930s.Footnote ⁷²

According to Lillywhite, another three to four hundred thousand birds, mainly pheasants, were reared by estate owners.Footnote ⁷³ A detailed study by Tapper of eleven lowland estates rearing game birds showed that, in the late 1930s, an average of twenty birds were released for every hundred acres, which would suggest a considerably higher figure.Footnote ⁷⁴ However, as Tapper acknowledges, intensive game rearing of this volume was very exceptional and undertaken only by wealthier estate owners.

Following the Rearing of Pheasants (Revocation of Prohibition) legislation in 1949, which once more permitted the artificial rearing of game, the number of specialist farms slowly began to rise. This figure increased relatively slowly in the 1950s and 1960s, falling during the downturn in economic activity in the mid 1970s, before increasing to over five million poults by the economic boom of the mid 1980s.Footnote ⁷⁵ The most remarkable change, however, was the enlargement of these enterprises. A downturn in activity during the economic recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s was followed by a rapid increase in numbers with four hundred or so farms rearing in total around twenty to twenty-two million birds.Footnote ⁷⁶ By 2004, according to Public and Corporate Economic Consultants, the number of released pheasant poults had increased to thirty-five million and it was estimated that eighty-three per cent of shooting estates purchased chicks or poults.Footnote ⁷⁷ The remaining seventeen per cent was made up of estates which depended exclusively on wild bird populations, as well as amateur gamekeepers who hatched a few hundred eggs as a hobby, or the occasional full-time keeper who continued to hatch his own chicks. By 2004 only ninety-one per cent of respondents in the Public and Corporate Economic Consultants’ study relied on a mixture of wild and released birds; the vast majority depended primarily if not exclusively on artificially reared birds to form the mainstay of the shooting bag.Footnote ⁷⁸

In the early 1950s hatching with incubators was at an experimental stage; difficulties had been experienced in achieving optimum levels of humidity and air movement.Footnote ⁷⁹ But increases in artificial rearing were rapidly made possible through the introduction of large, industrial incubators which were powered by electricity.Footnote ⁸⁰ Small scale game rearers still preferred the broody chicken, although these were becoming scarcer as the selective breeding of new, improved strains of hybrid chickens for egg production had largely eliminated the broodiness trait.Footnote ⁸¹ The development of specialised game feeds, particularly high protein rearing crumbs, also had an advantageous effect on the number of game birds that could be reared. A better understanding of the causes of common diseases such as gapes, favus and coccidiosis helped to reduce mortality rates in the rearing field.Footnote ⁸² Anti-coccidiostats were added to feeds to help young birds develop natural immunity against coccidiosis, a gut disease caused by aprotozoa, which could result in high levels of mortality in young birds. In addition, antibiotics such as standard dimetridazole (DMZ) sold commercially as Emtryl were used to control diseases such as trichomoniasis and hexamitiasis, common infestations that were exacerbated by stress caused by high density rearing environments and frequent handling of the juvenile birds.Footnote ⁸³ Used in the feed prophylactically and as an additive to the drinking water, Emtryl provided a cost effective way of increasing production by reducing mortality levels and keeping poult costs down.

The transformation of the sector was even more remarkable on a few, very large game farms, which dominated the supply of pheasant and partridge poults. By 2006 Hy-Fly game hatcheries in Fylde, Lancashire, was producing in the region of two million poults per annum, or nearly ten per cent of the pheasants released in the wild each year. Revolutionary changes in rearing methods took place. On a small number of game farms breeding birds were confined to relatively small raised cages.Footnote ⁸⁴ The high demand for poults hatched in the first few weeks of the season led to eggs being imported in large numbers from France, where the climate was more conducive to early egg production. The switch to purchasing chicks and poults from specialised game farms was encouraged by a variety of factors. Large game farms were able to exploit economies of scale, supplying chicks and poults at very competitive prices in batch sizes appropriate to the shoot's precise requirements. Moreover purchasing poults helped to reduce the spring labour peak involved in the hatching and rearing process, when other duties required attention.

Prior to the Second World War the artificial rearing of partridges was difficult and frowned upon by large sections of the shooting fraternity. In order to reduce the illicit rearing of birds, The Field magazine, one of the country's leading field sports publications, had developed an inspection and certification procedure which printed lists of bona fide game businesses. These game farmers had agreed not to deal in grouse or English partridges or their eggs and, further, not to deal knowingly with anyone else who did.Footnote ⁸⁵ Consequently the artificial rearing of these birds was confined to a small number of game farms who were not members of the Game Farmers’ Association. Following the war, the artificial rearing of partridges as opposed to pheasants was much slower to develop. The eggs were more difficult to hatch and even when reared under broody hens, the shortage of insects for young chicks meant that mortality rates were considerably higher than for pheasants. Rearers, therefore, tended to prefer French partridges which were more prolific egg layers and easier to raise on proprietory pheasant crumbs.Footnote ⁸⁶ They had the additional advantage that they were less likely to become gun shy or as wary as their English counterparts after regular or intensive shooting.

In the 1960s game farmers began developing hybrid crosses between the red legged partridge and the chukar (Alectoris chukar). Not only could these hybrids be flock mated but also they had the advantage that they laid twice as many eggs as pure red legs. Initially they received a mixed reception from the shooting community, nevertheless the proportion of shoots releasing hybrid partridges, as well as the average number of birds released, rose dramatically.Footnote ⁸⁷ But growing concerns about the effects of breeding and releasing hybrids were increasingly voiced. The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 prohibited any further release of these hybrids, although a five year phasing out period was granted in order to allow game farmers to adjust.Footnote ⁸⁸ While the number of released French partridges was about eight hundred thousand by the mid 1980s, numbers continued to increase to about two million each year in the mid 1990s, reaching about five million by 2005. The release of partridges was even more evident on specialist partridge shooting estates. Game bag data compiled by the Game Conservancy suggests that on these estates, between 1980 and 2005, there was an eight fold increase in numbers released and shot.Footnote ⁸⁹ The preference for releasing French partridges rather than their indigenous cousins inevitably caused the localised extinction of the grey partridge, as shooters were unable to differentiate between the two species when they were flying over the guns.Footnote ⁹⁰ More effective training of shooters to distinguish the two species and implementing a warning system such as a whistle to alert guns when non target birds were approaching was regarded as more effective for grey partridge conservation than raptor predation.Footnote ⁹¹

Intensive game production led to welfare issues not only about the way breeding birds were retained but also about how chicks were reared, and the procedures for the release of the poults. Both breeding stock and poults showed incidences of cannibalism and feather pecking. Traditionally beak trimming, involving the removal of the tip of the bird's beak, was the most popular method of control, but pressure from animal welfare groups forced a change.Footnote ⁹² This resulted in the development of a range of devices such as the use of plastic bits in the bird's mouth. This allowed it to eat normally but it was unable to fully close its mouth, thereby preventing feather pecking as well as aggressive behaviour including cannibalism.Footnote ⁹³ Speckles or plaster blinkers, were sometimes clipped into the nostrils in order to limit the bird's field of vision, and helped to reduce fighting and, in the case of breeding stock, the tendency for egg eating.

Health concerns about the food additive DMZ, a suspected carcinogen, entering the food chain following the ingestion of poultry were addressed in 2002 by the withdrawal of antibiotics throughout the European Union, except for Britain, where a licence was granted for its continued use in respect of game birds. In order to minimise the stress induced disease problems at the rearing stage, there was a shift to low intensity rearing environments and guidelines were adopted on acceptable methods of rearing.Footnote ⁹⁴ One controversial area remaining was the use of raised laying cages, which were used by a small number of game farmers breeding mainly partridges. A Code of Practice for the Welfare of Gamebirds Reared for Sporting Purposes was published for releasing birds, to ensure that birds were released at least four weeks before the first shoot, and that they were also kept in humane conditions. Self regulation was perceived by the game industry to be one way of avoiding the more draconian restrictions which had been imposed on other field sports such as foxhunting.

5.

Since the Second World War there has been a constant increase in the number of individuals interested in shooting, as witnessed by the rising circulation of traditional shooting magazines such as the Shooting Times and The Field,Footnote ⁹⁵ and the proliferation of new magazines such as the Shooting Gazette established in 1989. This was accompanied by an expansion in the number of books dealing with various aspects of shooting, and reminiscences of individuals who have participated in the sport. An insight into the popularity of the sport can be gleaned from the rise in membership of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, founded in 1908 as the Wildfowlers Association of Great Britain and Ireland, which by 2011 had 129,000 members, seventy per cent of whom shot game birds.Footnote ⁹⁶ Similarly the membership of the Game Conservancy Trust rose to 20,500 members by 2004.Footnote ⁹⁷ But differentiating between individuals who are interested in shooting and read about the sport and those who actively participate is problematic, and considerably more so than for coastal wildfowling, which has numerous regional associations or clubs. One useful yardstick, however, is the number of United Kingdom game licences, which have increased from over 100,000 in the 1930s to over 550,000 in 2005. According to the Public and Corporate Economic Consultants' study, 61,000 people provide shooting, while 480,000 individuals shoot live quarry, eighty per cent of which are lowland game birds.Footnote ⁹⁸

Such figures tell us little about the intensity or type of shooting which was taking place. It is evident, however, that the increasing popularity of shooting, coupled with the intensification of farming, tended to fragment the traditional relationship between landowners and village communities. Reciprocity was increasingly replaced by the cash nexus as landowners rented their estates to syndicates who took over the day to day management of the shoot.Footnote ⁹⁹ Of the shooting providers, twenty-six per cent were old established businesses which had operated for more than fifty years while at the other extreme, twelve per cent were recorded as fledging businesses which had been in operation for five years or less.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Collectively they provided 1.5 million gun days for driven shooting and 1.8 million gun days for walked up shooting.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Participants covered a broad spectrum ranging from the occasional rough shooter hoping to have a shot at any one of a multitude of species, to the committed game shooter who could afford to participate in battue shooting several days a week. According to the respondents in the Public and Corporate Economic Consultants' 2004 study, ten per cent of participants indicated that they spent less than ten days a year shooting, while thirty-nine per cent spent twenty or more days.Footnote ¹⁰²

Walked up shooting has remained the most popular form of quarry shooting. The bag was not necessarily restricted exclusively to game birds but could, according to the agreed protocol, include ground game such as rabbits and hares, in addition to duck, snipe and woodcock if the opportunity arose. In the period immediately after the Second World War, faced with the stringent controls on the availability of meat, shooting of this type provided an attractive and lucrative way of securing additional meat for the pot, as well as a temporary escape for the participants from the deprivations of post-war austerity which characterised home life. Renting out the shooting rights for walked up game shooting or rough shooting, where there were no restrictions on the species shot, provided a lucrative way for landowners to supplement their income with minimal additional effort. According to Stanley Nott, the Cultivation Officer for the Essex War Agricultural Executive Committees, the attractiveness of this option discouraged those farmers with a ‘peasant mentality’ from embarking on a more aggressive policy of agricultural modernisation.Footnote ¹⁰³

The competition for securing a shoot reflected the intense demand and high prices prevailing for game. As T. W. Turner, head keeper of the Elveden estate, noted in his memoirs, by this time the price of pheasants had reached the absurd figure of twenty four shillings each.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ This period was also characterised by poaching, the incidence of which had probably increased since the 1930s. Tim Shakesheff's pioneering study of poachers in post-war Herefordshire suggests that, at least for those he interviewed, there were lucrative opportunities to poach game for profit.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ There were, however, some significant changes beginning to take place in rough shooting. The lifting of restrictions on meat rationing in the early 1950s helped to shift the focus of shooting towards becoming a sport in its own right. This was accompanied by the shift to game birds as the main quarry species following the outbreak of myxomatosis in 1953–4. Within two years, the disease had killed in the region of ninety-five per cent of the country's rabbits and it was initially considered that it could lead to their extinction.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

The most remarkable change was the commercialisation of large scale, driven or battue shooting, which was increasingly funded by paying guests or members of a syndicate who organised the shoots. During the immediate post-war austerity period, battue shooting was generally frowned upon as an elitist and expensive sport, reminiscent of the pre-war order. From the late 1950s the relaxation of rationing restrictions and the revival in artificial rearing saw the sport become dominated by wealthier individuals, primarily middle aged men from the upper echelons of the business and professional classes.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Throughout the post war period, organised driven shooting has remained predominantly a male activity, with the majority of participants being over the age of forty.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ However, in contrast to the late nineteenth century, when most women simply accompanied their husbands to the estate, there has been an increase in female participation since the 1980s.

The demand for driven game shooting was particularly high during the financial liberalisation of the early 1980s, which enabled many ‘yuppies’ to afford the trappings and prestige associated with the sport. Weekend shooters were new entrants into the activity, while increasing numbers of companies offered corporate hospitality in the form of shooting to their clients and guests. Driven shooting was particularly attractive as it offered opportunities for socialising at the end of drives and during meal breaks. Overshooting and, in some instances, the neglect of shooting etiquette brought criticism from both within and outside the shooting fraternity. Unlike walked up shooting which required some field craft skills, the technical rudiments of battue shooting were relatively easy to learn. Drives were organised according to the shooting skills of the participants. Critics noted that shooting etiquette was not always of paramount importance and that the quality of the sport was often judged in terms of the size of the bag rather than the quality of the birds presented. Contemporary criticism of this type needs to be put into historical perspective as, for the most part, numbers shot in a day fell far short of the record bags achieved during the heyday of the Edwardian period.

One of the few advantages of the recession of the late 1980s was that it undermined the demand for excessive bags of poor quality, immature birds and fostered attempts by the sport's governing bodies to improve the presentation of birds on shoots, thus enhancing the image of the sport.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Since the early 1990s there has been a growing demand for sporting or high flying birds, which offer testing shots and more modest bags. In 2004, for example, a ten man team was quoted £19,750 on one Suffolk estate for the opportunity to shoot 500 pheasants.Footnote ¹¹⁰ While this was at the apex in terms of expenditure, one in every twenty respondents in the Public and Corporate Economic Consultants' study reported that they spent more than £10,000 per year on shooting.Footnote ¹¹¹

Quantifying the importance of shooting for the rural economy is problematic and controversial as responses are strongly influenced by whether investigators are pro or anti shooting. The 1997 Cobham Report indicated that shooting pumps six hundred million pounds into the economy and supports 40,000 jobs.Footnote ¹¹² The most detailed and industry-financed study into the economics of ‘sport shooting’ in the United Kingdom is the Public and Corporate Economic Consultants' 2006 study, The Economic and Environmental Impact of Sporting Shooting.Footnote ¹¹³ Critics, however, have condemned the report for being biased in that it has much in common with its predecessors which provide an environmental and economic case in favour of shooting. Based on the findings from two thousand completed questionnaires, the study concluded that shooting was worth 1.6 billion pounds to the economy in terms of goods and services, and supported 31,000 jobs directly and 39,000 indirectly. Of these, approximately seventy per cent could be attributed to game shooting, the rest to rough shooting including stalking and wildfowling.Footnote ¹¹⁴

Since the Second World War there has been a revolution in the way game shooting has been organised and run as a result of commercialisation and the increased role of game rearing. This supply side revolution has been most noticeable on larger estates where income from wealthy shooting guests and syndicates has been an important source of revenue. Post-war changes in farming practice and management contributed to a decline in partridge populations which meant that pheasant numbers could only be maintained by a commensurate increase in the number of released birds. Self regulation of the industry has proved successful in ensuring that more draconian restrictions like those imposed on foxhunting have so far failed to materialise. Whilst the numbers of gamekeepers have declined, game preservation and shooting has evolved to become an integral, if rather localised, aspect of the rural economy.