What work are you doing on your shoot this year?

mallards

It always interests me to learn what everyone else is doing on their ground in preparation for the new season. So I thought I'd start this thread to rob a few ideas of yas that I could use myself. I always do a little bit extra every year to make life easier and to get a better return on my ground or even to make the place a little better for other wildlife. So this year so far I've literally had a pain in my arse crossing barbed wire fences so decided to make a few stiles to make life easier in the shooting season.



Next step, I was fed up skulking in a hedge waiting for the ducks to come into the flight pond so I built a couple of hides to make it easier to see them coming in without them seeing me!



Slowly but surely it's coming together with one of my best ideas in continuing the feeding right through from the end of the season. I would usually keep filling feeders until near the end of February and they would run out around March. This time I kept my core feeders filled right through and I've noticed an increase in the number of cock Pheasant territories and it's paying off as a few of the farmers are telling me they are seeing hens with chicks. The game cover is in its second year and I reckon the have been four or fives hens rearing clutches in it. The feeders I left in it definitely done their job.

I have a permanent ladder trap to build and I have the pens nearly ready for another year but what have all you been doing?
Cheers
Mallards

meathstevie

My club has completely refurbished our pheasant pen, kept back a few hens and two cocks and is getting eggs hatched under members' hens. On top of that feeders have been put out and a semi permanent ladder trap is in the making. I'm planning to start feeding a section of river to get a regular duck flight going.

mallards

Have you guys filled your feeders Stevie or just put them out? A good friend of mine who has a lot of experience of flight ponds recommends starting to feed them at this time of year so I filled the auto feeders at the start of the week. Not too many around compared to the previous month but I reckon that's due to the moult and they are staying on the couple of large loughs near to me rather than my smaller flight pond.

MysticMah

cool spot!!

meathstevie

Pheasant feeders going on mixed grain since the end of last season and putting a duck one out on the river in the next few weeks. Thinking down the lines of an apex roofed raft with a pallet as base with some elevation from the water to keep rats and mink of it. Seeing quite a few ducks about so it would be nice to keep them around for a change. We're in an awkward spot for the ducks since the Westmeath lakes and the Cavan lakes are only a few miles away as the crow or duck in this case flies so some incentive for them to hang about is needed.

mallards

Yip I'm in the same boat, lough Neagh is thirty kilometers in one direction and there's loads of smaller loughs behind my pond in the other direction. I try and keep mine as quiet and well fed as possible in the hope that they stick around. It's been working so far. The raft feeder seems a good idea. Would you have to top it up regularly or would it last a while?

meathstevie

I suppose that since it'll involve anchoring and pulling in from the river every time to fill up that it'll be a bag at a time job.

ESB Spaniel

Very nice lad fair play.

mallards

Just wanted you add an update to this year's work. We ploughed our game crop field in May. Sowed it with triticale, mustard and gold of pleasure. Duck pond has been fed since July, pheasants and partridges are moving out from their release pens so I'll be filling feeders from next week. Over the years I've tried different methods of discouraging the crows from stealing the wheat so I was wondering what everyone else does? I'm using a standard blue plastic barrels, holds about 40kg of wheat, and I have this type of feeder on them. I find the pheasants and partridges use them no problem. The crows use them too but they can't empty them the way a spring feeder works. So usually I can limit how much grain is wasted.