there's rarely a shoot before November.

The keeper will have planted special game crops to give the birds both food and cover ­ usually kale, maize, millet or artichokes (all of which also provide food for a host of small birds and other wildlife) ­ and on the day of each shoot he has to take responsibility for managing the whole affair to the satisfaction of the landowner. There will be nine guns in an invited shoot and he stations these at regular intervals between the crops and the wood, positioned carefully to take account of the prevailing weather conditions and let the birds fly as high and fast as possible in order to challenge the skill of the guns. There will be 18 beaters whose job it is to drive the birds toward the guns ­ these are usually local people who are paid £15 a day. And there will be 4 pickers-up with about 10 dogs (labradors and spaniels) to gather in the birds. The keeper is also responsible for all the transport and has to arrange the beaters' wagon, the gun-trailer and the game cart.

Shoots take place usually on Saturdays and last from 9.15 am till 2 o'clock in the afternoon. There are about 20 a year in the season and so if the bag is 200 a shoot that's about 4000 birds a season. Many of the guns are very good shots, of course, but not always the ones you'd expect! Each gun is given two brace of partridge and a brace of pheasant and the rest are sold to game dealers. But that doesn't raise much money now with game being so cheap.

We have to manage the woods as well as the game, of course, and so we need to cull the deer, which are now much commoner than people generally realise. The roe deer are the most numerous, but muntjac have expanded their numbers enormously and we also get fallow and even red deer from time to time. We use the 'high seats' in the woodlands for deer control. We also have to keep down vermin of all kinds ­ stoat, weasel, mink, grey squirrels (which must have trebled in numbers since the acorn glut), all of which we catch in tunnel traps which have to be visited every day. Foxes are obviously a problem too, and there's bound to be some tension about this when there's an active hunt as there is in Thurlow. The hunting season runs from September to March, so we just have to manage to coexist as best we can. In fact there are fewer foxes than 5 years ago, though more than 20 years ago.