In 2016 Billy Wyatt, a full-time bricklayer and part-time gamekeeper from Wiltshire, was trying to think of a way to find a home for the game shot on the syndicate he was running. “The shoot had been going for about fifteen years,” he told me as we sat in his garden on a sunny but blustery day in June. “It started really small but as it’s got on a bit we started shooting more birds, and of course, the guns can only take so much home.”
Where many might have breasted the birds out and chucked the fillets in the freezer, Billy took a different approach: he posted on Facebook, offering the birds up for free, and was pleasantly surprised when ‘it seemed like people wanted it.’ Encouraged, he thought he would try setting up something a bit more formal.
Fast forward eight years, and I’m sitting in The Nave - a stunning events space in Paddington - digesting an excellent game-based supper, at the Eat Game Awards. As I sip my wine, Billy is up on stage receiving his award for ‘Best Game Influencer’, the category which GunsOnPegs sponsored at this year’s event. A few minutes later, Billy is back on stage accepting the ‘Champion of Champions’ award, chosen from the winners of each category in the awards.
That ‘something’ that Billy set up had was a Facebook group: Giving Up The Game. To use his own expression, the group, which was initially intended mostly for people local to him, ‘snowballed’. At the time of writing Giving Up The Game has more than 25,000 members and is an oasis of good natured generosity on what can, on occasion, be a fairly toxic social media environment.
In the simplest of terms, Giving Up The Game is a place where you or I can go to offer up any game that we have that is surplus to requirements. For example, if, after a day on my family’s shoot we’ve somehow ended up with more pheasants and partridge than the guests, beaters and pickers up can take home, and if I already have a full freezer, I could post on the group with details of the quantity and location. I could offer it up for free, or ask for a little money. Other users of the group can then express their interest, and typically the meat is distributed on a first-come-first-served basis.
Being a member of the group myself, I can heartily recommend it for anyone feeling a bit jaded about the discourse around shooting online - it’s a kind, generous and supportive environment and a brilliant advert for our community.
As Billy observed to me as one of his chickens scratched at the soil by our feet: “There’s a lot of people struggling financially and it’s such a cheap, available - even free - meat and it's a shame that it doesn't get used more than it is. I never understood it,” adding, “I’ve seen some people on the group with genuine problems, short on money or things that have happened to them, and the group has instantly rallied round, offered donations, whether it be for this or that.”
Giving game to people in need
A case in point is that of Richard, a father of seven, who posted on the group in November 2021. His youngest son had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, forcing Richard and his wife to quit their jobs and move to Bristol for the best part of a year while he underwent treatment. To add to their woes, a storm took out their electricity and two large freezers-full of food was ruined. With their savings all gone, Richard turned to the group, offering to pay for and collect any spare game that was going.
“I was overwhelmed by the generosity and pure kindness of countryfolk,” he told me when I reached out to him via Messenger. “We ended up with a muntjac, lots of pheasant, some geese and ducks, also some rabbits and a roe deer. It was a very scary time and we got very anxious about a lot. But thanks to Giving Up The Game and the kindness of all who came forward, our kids ate like kings when we came home. I can't thank them all enough; such amazing people.”
You’ll be pleased to know that Richard’s lad is now back home with his family, having undergone several surgeries and procedures, and is in remission. “He is absolutely smashing life now and is recovering so very well,” Richard told me.
Free game... or nearly free!
Much of what is offered up is offered free of charge, however even where there is a charge, the fee is usually a pretty good deal. At the time of writing there are pigeons available for as little as 20p a bird and whole roe deer for £25 and boxes of burgers and sausages for hardly any money. Among the free offerings are pigeons, squirrel and rabbits.
The membership is not exclusively shooting. In fact, the group has been responsible for introducing lots of people to game for the first time. “There’s people on there who’ve never tried it in their lives. There’s even people who joined to get meat to feed their dogs, but ended up going the other way and have actually tried the game themselves and they’ve converted over,” says Billy.
What the group is doing, thinks Billy, is breaking down some of the myths around game - that it is expensive, has a ‘gamey’ flavour - and opening up new avenues of access and distribution for a resource that he thinks is underused and under appreciated. “When I was a youngster, my grandad was a gamekeeper and I was always taught, no matter what, whatever was shot or whatever was taken on the day it was used it never got wasted. I mean I used to sit and pluck pheasants for fifty pence a piece for hours of a weekend but everything got used, and ever since really I've done that all the way through, whether that be venison or or game or anything. The more it is made available to people, the stronger the demand will be in the future, that’s the way I look at it.”
He also thinks that eating game can be a route into fieldsports itself, saying “I think that people see, by eating game, that it’s not just people out in the field having a jolly, pulling pheasants out of the sky, it’s actually happening for a purpose and there’s a product at the end of it - I don’t see how you can argue with it then.”
When it comes to introducing people to game, you could forgive Billy for sitting back and feeling like he’s done his bit, but despite the success of Giving Up The Game, he’s still hands on. Just a few days before I visited him he had been giving on group member and his son a lesson in deer butchery. “He asked me back in the winter if I could show him,” Billy explained. “He wasn’t really from a shooting background, but he’d wanted to learn for a long time. I didn’t do anything myself, I just guided him on how I do it, skinning right through to jointing it, and he went home with a fully butchered roe buck. When he finished he said “It’s not really that difficult is it? I was just a bit daunted by it.”
He also still regularly uses the group to distribute the game that he shoots himself. He manages the deer on the shoot and another piece of ground locally, but never uses a game dealer. “I just take what I need for myself, and give the rest away. I’ve given away kilos of burgers and sausages, which are another way of getting people to try it. I don’t need to, but I’ve got enough for myself so if people want it…” he trails off: there’s no need to finish the sentence.
Best Influencer runner-up Scott Rea recieves his award certificate from Chris Horne - MD of GunsOnPegs - and Adam Henson
Meeting Billy, it is clear that there’s no trace of self-aggrandisement or ego. If anything, he seems a little bemused about all the fuss, embarrassed even. He’s down-to-earth and modest. His final words before we part ways? “I have got to mention the other group admins, especially Lee Mulcock, who do a lot of the management of the group itself. And please also give Scott Rea of The Scott Rea Project [who was runner up in the Best Game Influencer categroy] a shout out in the article, he’s an absolute legend.”
You can join the Giving Up The Game group whether you are looking for a supply of game or have some you would like to find a good home for.
GunsOnPegs is proud to have sponsored the Eat Game Awards - and can't think of a more deserving winner than Billy.
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