A new tool to help you plan the season

Dr Joah Madden explains how a data-led approach to shoot management has helped develop ShootPlanner – a new tool to help you plan for next season.

How do you decide daily bag sizes?

Shoot managers, how do you decide daily bag sizes? Should they be consistent, start small and peak mid-season, or focus on a small number of bigger days to cut costs? Perhaps shoot hard early, then relax after Christmas, or vary bags based on Gun preferences? For small walk-around shoots, it’s often taking whatever’s available. But for larger shoots, how bags are distributed can influence both economic performance and ecological pressure by leftover birds.

To find some answers, BASC asked Dr Tim Fawcett and Dr Joah Madden at the University of Exeter to identify optimal strategies for harvesting released gamebirds, considering bird and Gun behaviour alongside business economics. This work has led to the creation of the BASC ShootPlanner.

How was the ShootPlanner created?

We built a computer simulation of virtual shoots that vary in bird release numbers, shoot dates, bag sizes, difficulty, costs, and charges. Using BASC and GunsOnPegs survey data, we set realistic ranges for releasing, harvest rates, and economics, and added natural mortality based on long-term pheasant tracking.

Simulations allowed us to test scenarios repeatedly, introducing random events like high fox predation or poor shooting days to capture the variability between seasons and therefore estimate average outcomes.

We then modelled six different harvest strategies for a medium-to-large shoot, releasing approximately 10,000 birds and aiming to shoot 4,000 of them over 10–15 days (one day per week during the season):

1. Even: 15 days, bag of 267 birds each day.

2. Mixed: 15 days, bags of 150–350 birds per day.

3. Humped: bags start small, peak mid-season, then decline.

4. Tapered: starts big, then declines.

5. Front-loaded: 10 large 400-bird days before Christmas.

6. Irregular: 10 large days spaced across the season.

Balancing the books and the birds

We assessed these six shooting strategies from both economic and ecological perspectives. Using survey data, we applied typical shoot costs to allow us to compare relative profit/loss in each strategy. From an ecological perspective, we looked at residual birds at the end of the season. While gamekeepers provide significant benefits through habitat work, predator control and feeding, very high residual bird numbers can place additional pressure on some habitats, especially into the breeding season.

Fewer birds remaining at the end of the season reduces any additional pressure on local habitats and species, allowing for a greater net ecological benefit associated with gamebird release and management.

To find the optimal release and shooting set-up using these models involves keeping release numbers low enough to save on costs, while ensuring contracted bags return the greatest profit. For each of these strategies, the simulated models began with 10,000 released birds, this was then adjusted in 100-bird increments until there was less than a 15 per cent chance of missing the final day’s bag. This minimised costs while maximising profits.

The results are in

For shoots of average difficulty, with a cartridge-to-kill ratio (CKR) of three (i.e. for one bird to be shot, three must fly over the Guns), where 9,600 birds were released, the strongest strategy was the ‘front-loaded’, i.e. fewer days but with larger bags early in the season. This yielded a £1,987 profit, mainly because it only required ten shoot days, saving £15,000 in fixed costs, although around 960 released birds remained at the season’s end.

The next best strategy was the ‘tapered’ approach (large bags early season, then smaller bags late season), with a £7,940 loss but a lower number of 518 birds left at the season’s end.

The least efficient strategy under these conditions was ‘mixed’ (varied bags), losing £31,298 and leaving 864 birds at the end of the season, producing less favourable economic and ecological outcomes.

On more testing shoots (CKR = five), the ‘front-loaded’ strategy was no longer the strongest performer, causing £27,219 losses and 14 per cent of birds remaining. Remember that everything else (bag sizes, number of days and costs) was the same to make a fair comparison.

Instead, the ‘tapered’ strategy became optimal, losing £13,064 and leaving 864 birds, similar to the ‘humped’ strategy. ‘Mixed’ remained the least efficient strategy.

Why use the ShootPlanner?

So what does this mean in practice? Your shoot has been doing just fine, as it always has in recent years. Why would you need ShootPlanner? Perhaps the small percentages of released birds surviving seem irrelevant. Perhaps the differences in profits and losses of a few thousand pounds seem trivial. But let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

Across a full season, small percentage differences can add up, both financially and environmentally. Even modest improvements in efficiency can translate into fewer residual birds at the end of the season and a better return on high upfront costs. By choosing an optimal strategy, you could halve the potential ecological damage arising from the surviving birds and markedly improve your finances.

We are the first to admit that models have their limits. There is an old cliché that ‘all models are wrong, but some are useful’. A model is a simplification which tries to capture broad patterns.

To allow you to fine-tune the model to your own shoot’s circumstances, we’ve made a free, user-friendly version of the ShootPlanner available for you to experiment with. Using this, you can try increasing the price you sell a bird for, consider different date schedules, explore what happens if your CKR goes up, or evaluate the benefit of releasing more or fewer birds.

We are here to help

If you’d like a more in-depth, personalised analysis of your shoot that requires adjustments to specific parameters, please contact us to discuss a consultation.

Perhaps the ‘tapered’ pattern isn’t optimal for your particular shoot? We suspect there is no one-size-fits-all pattern. However, we hope this modelling approach helps you think carefully about how you arrange your shoot days and harvests. We encourage you to explore different options.

Getting it right can benefit both your pocket and the pocket of the countryside you manage.

DR JOAH MADDEN is an associate professor in the Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour at Exeter University. His work involves understanding the sustainable use of wildlife.