Do Released Game Birds Really Harm Insects?

Can insects help you hold more birds? This week we’re talking feed again, but with a twist. Tom Berry, founder of Wild Wyn, joins us to make the case for black soldier fly larvae as a tool for game bird management. Tom’s route into insect farming started with the United Nations in Sierra Leone, before he spent 15 years building insect farms across Southeast Asia. Now he’s bringing that experience to UK shoots, and two seasons in, keepers are reporting some encouraging results. Find out more about Wild Wyn here: https://www.wildwyn.co.uk/

Why do some drives always disappoint? Mike Swan explains in his GWCT advisory visit why pheasants fly low and how a few cuts with a chainsaw can lift them. He also covers bringing duck to a small pond, and explains what the costs of an advisory visit are.  Book your advisory visit: https://www.gwct.org.uk/advisory/face-to-face-advice/book-a-visit/

We booked a GWCT advisory visit and walked both our shoots with Senior Advisor Mike Swan. Here's what he found, from ancient woodland nobody knew was there to why your release pen might be holding birds back.   Book your advisory visit: https://www.gwct.org.uk/advisory/face-to-face-advice/book-a-visit/  MAGIC map: https://magic.defra.gov.uk/ This is the government map Mike explains for checking designations such as SSSIs and ancient woodland.  

Jamie Horner is back, fresh off one of his best starts to a season at Iford in eleven years, and this time he's joined by Clare, ForFarmers' new leisure coordinator. They dig into how this year's drought shaped rearing and cover crops, why feed diversity (not just protein on a bag) is what actually holds birds, and the small changes making a big difference to plumage and flight. The conversation widens out into game feed pricing, deer management, and a frank chat about how shooting needs to be more open, better organised and louder about the conservation work it already funds.

In this episode, Digby talks through what this year's Game Shooting Census reveals: a season finally settling into stability after years of post-Covid and bird flu turbulence, and bird prices moving roughly in line with inflation. How big is the average bag size, and why does it come as a surprise to almost everyone? Are guns or shoots moving faster on the switch to non-toxic shot? And why are guns booking their days later than ever? We also cover the conservation work shoots fund entirely themselves with zero public money, the reality that only a handful of shoots ever turn a profit, and what shoots can actually do to encourage guns to book earlier and keep their days financially viable.

Professional gamekeeper Rob Barnard runs two estates and shares the reality behind the job on his YouTube channel, A Gamekeeper's Diary. In part two of this two part series, Rob talks about swapping his Shooting Times column for YouTube, the nerves of putting himself on camera, and how he deals with online trolls and hate comments. We also cover predator control as ecosystem management rather than eradication, the biggest misconception about gamekeeping, juggling the job with a young family, and why he'd never swap the title "gamekeeper" for anything else.

Professional gamekeeper Rob Barnard runs two estates and shares the reality behind the job on his YouTube channel, A Gamekeeper's Diary. In part one of this two part series, Rob talks about growing up on a small family shoot, the tough break into keepering, a year in Belgium, and turning down a headkeeper job in Romania. We also cover the isolation of rural work, leaning on the Gamekeepers Welfare Trust, his take on stopping birds from wandering off, and whether rearing your own poults is worth it.

Dr Rufus Sage, head of lowland game bird research at the GWCT, joins the ShootHub Podcast to respond to claims made in the BBC's Secret Garden series, which suggested released game birds are damaging Britain's native ecosystems.

In part two, Leon Challis-Davies returns to talk to Avian and Gemma about the commercial side of the industry: what buyers actually want, how shoots can add real value to what they produce, and where the UK game meat sector is heading next. Whether you're supplying a local dealer or thinking bigger, this one's worth a listen.

What happens after the shot matters just as much as the shot itself. In part one of this two-part conversation, Gemma and Avian sit down with Leon Challis-Davies of Eat Wild to find out what it really takes to produce game that's fit for the food chain.