Dave Whitby examines how the real cost of running a driven shoot has changed over the decades — things are actually cheaper nowadays
I was recently reminded of that old saying: “Up goes a guinea, bang goes sixpence and down comes half a crown.” This refers to historical costs associated with shooting a pheasant in Victorian and Edwardian times. If you converted those amounts, based on how much they were worth in 1900, into ‘today’s money’, the saying would go: “Up goes £79.80, bang goes £1.95 and down comes £9.77.”
Is shooting today cheaper?
But a gamedealer these days wouldn’t give you anything like that, and cartridges are expensive but they aren’t £1.95 a go. So is shooting today actually cheaper? It is important to realise the difference between the cost of putting a bird over the Guns and the actual cost of each bird shot, the former being the total cost divided by the number of birds released and the latter your total costs divided by the number of birds shot. (You might also like to read: Running a shoot, how to make the numbers add up.)
With a heavy reliance upon wild stock, our…
