In this series of pages you can find

• The role of a modern-day Gamekeeper
• How to Become a Gamekeeper
• Colleges Offering Gamekeeping Courses
• A Keeper's guide to hosting school visits

A gamekeeper's job involves all aspects of game management. This may involve working with pheasant, partridge, duck, grouse or deer.
Jobs include: -

• feeding the game
• protecting it from vermin and poachers
• keeping drives clean of undergrowth
• organising beaters for the shoot rearing of some species
  

You might also be involved in general woodland management. Here is one young gamekeeper's diary.

Going wild at Holkham

	Name:	Chris Sharp
	Age:	25
	Job Title:	Beatkeeper at Holkham Estate on the north Norfolk coast

Job history: "I grew up in rural Cumbria and always wanted to be a gamekeeper, as I liked wildlife and being in the woods. I also used to go beating at few local shoots including Broughton Tower and Holker Hall. My Dad taught me to shoot with an air rifle when I was 16 and soon after I headed off to Newton Rigg College in Penrith to study for a BTEC National Diploma in the management of game and sporting woodland. It was a two-year full-time course and I enjoyed being at college - it was a good crack. We also had to do two blocks of work experience, which I spent helping out Richard Clarke at Six Mile Bottom near Newmarket.
"My first job was with Alan Sephton at Lowfield Pheasantries near Penrith in Cumbria. Alan was looking for staff when he first started a game farm, so I helped on the game farm in the summer and with the shoot in the winter, where we had about 10 days.
"After a year, I went to Underley Hall in Cumbria, to a private pheasant and partridge shoot, where they did approximately 30 days. I was taken on along with another keeper to build up the partridge shooting for a group of Belgian Guns, who had recently taken the shoot on.
"Unfortunately, after a year I was made redundant (when they decided not to continue partridge shooting). I saw an advert in Shooting Times for a underkeeper's job at Caerhays in Cornwall and rang up the headkeeper, Phil Tidball, who invited me to an interview two days' later, when I was offered the job.
"It was nice to have a big feed ride full of pheasants and a privilege to be able to show first class pheasants over those incredible westcountry valleys and the rugged Cornish coastline. However, it is a large commercial shoot and after five years, I felt like a new challenge - I wanted to have a go at gamekeeping using more traditional methods. So, when I saw the job at Holkham advertised in Shooting Times, I decided to go for it as an opportunity to work on a wild-bird shoot, especially one as famous as Holkham, does not come up that often.

"I had always been interested in wild game management and being able to look after wild partridges, pheasants, wildfowl and deer all in one place was quite a prospect."

What was it like moving from a reared-bird to a wild-bird shoot?

"It was strange at first and I wondered where all the game was going to come from - I spent a lot of time looking at all the standing crops and hoping that there are lots of birds in there. I guess that's the main difference between the two jobs. With reared birds you know that you're going to have birds in your drives, but success with wild birds is down to lots of different factors, ranging from the weather at hatching time to the effectiveness of your predator control. Plus, wild bird keepers can't really tell what sort of stock they've got until the crops are harvested and they can see game out on the stubbles in the evenings.

Do you work different hours on wild bird shoot?

"We still put the time in on a wild bird shoot, but it's completely different from a reared-bird shoot. Here at Holkham, we're actually out in the countryside doing the job, instead of being stuck inside a rearing shed for most of the summer.
"The job here is pretty much what I expected - it was a bit of a shock to the system, getting in to it, but I'm glad I made the move as I'm really enjoying the trapping and vermin control and having the time to do my job properly."

Reared vs wild

A day in the life of a reared-bird keeper in September

A day in the life of a wild-bird keeper in September

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