The pheasant shooting season is about to open, but for gamekeepers the busiest time of year has already been spent rearing a new crop of birds. MATT CLARK learns how they do it.

IT’S ONE of Yorkshire’s most famous shoots, and justifiably so because the Duncombe Park estate is not just pretty as a picture, it also boasts some of the best pheasant drives in Britain. John Masterman’s job is to keep it that way.

It’s some responsibility. During the shooting season, John marshals his team of beaters so they present the pheasants correctly over the guns and the success or failure of the entire shoot rests solely on his shoulders. But he says he takes all that with a pinch of salt, even if that pinch gets larger every year.

“We usually have two lines in a pincer movement,” says John. “If things go wrong I take the blame, but I’m getting used to it now, although I do try to spread the glory about when it goes well.”

It’s engrossing work and John only gets a week’s holiday in February, because in season there is the shoot to run and out of season, new pheasant chicks to raise.

First thing in the morning and last thing at night, John checks on his birds. “It’s not a job; it’s for the love of it. Anyway, they couldn’t afford me if I was paid by the hour.”

When he gets back from holiday, John and his team of keepers prepare for breeding by collecting the adult pheasants, putting them in pens and worming them ready for laying.

“We pick the eggs twice a day, wash them, tray them up and put them in an incubator,” he says.

“And 21 days after that we candle them to see if there is a chick inside; the ones that have go into a hatcher.”

Pheasants hatch from early May and are kept in rearing sheds for six weeks. The hut floors are an amazing sight, like a scurrying feather carpet pecking away at your bootlaces. In the corner a couple of birds take their first tentative flight, all are warm, well fed and watered.

Once grown and able to fend for themselves, the birds are released into the woods and while rearing is a time-consuming, labour-intensive job John says there’s no other option.

“Pheasants make terrible mothers; they don’t go broody and sit on their eggs, so they keep laying. The more eggs you take off them the more they lay, 40-50 each maybe.”

John’s wife, Sue, also has her own birds to rear and helps out on shoot days.

“If I didn’t work with John I would never see him,” she says.

“Every night our teatime conversation is how did that drive go? I have to relive it all for him.”

The pheasant season starts on October 1 and each day’s shoot will begin with bacon butties at 9am at Duncombe Park’s new tea rooms. Then it’s off to the first shoot at around ten, lunch at midday and a second shoot finishing in time for tea.

“We’re pegged for eight guns and after deciding which drives we’re going to use I fax the office so they can get the game card out,” says John.

He takes a number of factors into account when choosing, firstly where the birds are likely to be. Then there is the wind to take into account and finally making sure the guns haven’t shot there before.

A drive is a bank of wood and there are around 30 at Duncombe Park, all designed by John. One of the best, not just here but in the whole country, is Sheep Pen’s Drive, above Rievaulx Abbey, It’s so good because it’s a steeply sided valley and that makes for high birds, the finest possible shooting.

Not surprisingly at such a high class estate most guns will be experienced, but Sue says if you are a novice, instructors can be made available.

“We get a real mixture of people and can cater for whomever,” she says. “We don’t have many corporate days, so most shoots are made up of people who just love the sport and the challenge. As long as they go home happy that’s all that matters.”

John has been a keeper here for 44 years, coming straight from school and with no real background in country pursuits, apart perhaps from being brought up in a village near Pickering.

So what formal training did he receive?

“None, it’s all been hands on and I just love it. When you’re sick of one job another turns up and things are changing all the time.

“The only bugbear with it is we’re inside in summer and outside in winter.”

John says a good bag depends on how good a shot you are and the weather, of course, but he aims for 300 birds from a day with five drives of eight guns.

“Pheasants are daft but they make for good sport,” says John. “The terrain is more important than how the birds are beaten and we’ve got that terrain here.

“With us all they have to do is get up.”