Will shooting cost more next season?

Last weekend, our sister website ShootHub published an article by game farmer Rob Elton looking at how much shoots are likely to be paying for their game bird poults this year. The article caused a bit of a stir, and the story was picked up by the YouTube channel Fieldsports Channel. The long and the short of it is that shoots are looking at a significant increase in what they are going to have to pay for their birds.

Why are game bird poult prices going up?

Anyone who has taken a look at their energy bills of late, or who has been paying attention to the news - Partygate notwithstanding - will know that energy prices are going up, by a not insignificant amount. Wholesale gas prices in particular have skyrocketed, owing to a surge in demand and a reduction in supply over the last 12 months or so.

Domestic consumers of gas - you and I - are protected from these increases to a certain extent by the Government’s energy price cap, which sets a maximum price that energy companies can charge their customers. 

But it is not just you and I who need to keep warm. Game farmers have to keep their chicks nice and toasty warm, and the vast majority use gas heaters in their rearing sheds for this purpose. Unlike domestic users, business consumers of gas are not protected from a price cap, so where your home energy bill may go up by as much as 50%, game farms are likely to be looking at significantly greater hikes in the price they pay to keep their birds warm. In his article, Rob suggested that increases of 70% are likely, and on the phone to me he even mentioned 75%.

The other major cost for game farmers is feeding their feathered charges. Again, owing to global supply and demand drivers, not to mention the impact of energy costs, feed merchants are also putting up their prices. Rob cites a figure of 16.5% compared to last year. 

The final key factor is the cost of labour. Game bird chicks need a fair amount of care,  and minimum wages in England are now £9.50, an 8.9% increase. 

The practical upshot of all of these increases, according to Rob, is that shoots are looking at a minimum price for a six week old game bird poult of £4.20-£4.50, an increase of around 10%. 

How will this impact the cost of shooting?

Game bird poults are, it goes without saying, one of a shoot’s major input costs, and a 10% increase in the price of any business’s inputs is a lot to wear. In the past many shoots will have done their best to pass as little of this on to their guns, but this year may well be different.

Part of the reason for this is that the birds still need feeding - right through to January and beyond, so the shoots are also exposed to the increase in feed prices as well. By the time pheasants are 14 weeks old, they’ll be consuming somewhere in the region of half a ton of feed per thousand birds per week. Assuming a similar rise of around 15%, we’re looking at another significant cost increase for shoots.

What are the shoots saying?

Digby Taylor, GunsOnPegs Shoot Account Manager, who speaks to shoots up and down the land day-in-day out, says that most of the shoots he speaks to are planning to increase their price-per-bird, but that nothing is quite set in stone yet. 

“It is tricky,” he told me. “One shoot I spoke to told me that he probably won’t get a price for his game feed until July, so setting a cost-per-bird at this stage is going to be challenging, if unavoidable. Many of the game farmers also haven’t had a price for their gas yet, so the actual final price people pay for their poults is still a bit of an unknown.”

Nevertheless, many shoots are now resigned to the fact that they will be putting prices up for the 2022/23 season, though the exact amount will vary from shoot to shoot. Our research ahead of the 2021/22 season indicated that two thirds of shoots increased their prices by an average of £2.50/bird for the season that is just ending.

“Having spoken to a number of shoots about their plans for next season, what I’m hearing is that shoots could be putting prices up by as much as 10% in order to defray at least some of the increased costs. Those that put prices up last season may not increase by quite so much as that, but guns should be prepared for a significant rise one way or the other.

So how much will shooting cost in 2022/23?

Assuming that the 10% figure is correct and a fair average across the board, then we can take a pretty good stab at what guns should expect to pay. For the 2021/22, according to the Shoot Owner Census, the average cost of a pheasant on the game cart was £38, while partridge were £37 and duck were £28. For 2022/23, these averages could rise as high as £41.80, £40.70 and £30.80 respectively. For a shoot that was charging £50/bird in 2021, the price could be £55.

This means that for the average day with a bag of 120 birds (source, Game Shooting Census 2021), the price could jump from £4,560 to £5,016, an increase of £456.

In the face of these price increases, there may well be those who want to accuse shoots of taking the mickey. However, it is important to remember that even among those that sell let days, only a quarter of shoots are run with the aim of making a profit - the vast majority only look to break even, or subsidise the cost of a syndicate’s shooting. 

What’s more, while these figures seem somewhat alarming at first glance, they look a little less scary when split across a team of 8 - the figures outlined above for a 120 bird day represents an increase per gun of just £57. For a 200 bird day the increase is £95/gun, which doesn’t seem quite so bad in the grand scheme of things. 

We will have to watch this space to see whether the input costs really do go up as much as is being suggested, but one way or the other we are going to be paying more for our shooting in 2022/23. Whether that rise is a temporary one or not remains to be seen.

What does this mean for your shooting?

There is some concern over the impact these price rises will have on the smaller shoots, and those syndicates where costs are shared equally. We all know the vast majority of shooting across the UK is enjoyed in this manner but just because you may not pay for shooting by price per bird, doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to avoid any increases. If you’re a member of a DIY syndicate and want regular tips and tricks for saving money and increasing efficiencies on your shoot, why not sign up to our fortnightly ShootHub News eNewsletter?

Unfortuately, there are very few amongst us who have a bottomless shooting budget, so it looks like we are going to have to make some adjustments. One option, obviously, is to shoot fewer days, but that doesn't sound all that fun. A better option might be to shoot smaller bags, so as to keep the same number of days in the calendar - maybe even look at mini-driven and walked up shooting. Those really on the ball will join GunsOnPegs Premium to take advantage of discounted shoot days!