The Market for Dead Game 

There have been ominous rumblings for several years about the state of the dead game market in the UK. As a result of this, the British Game Alliance was originally formed and out of that developed Eat Wild. The latter is a low cost trade body, working very hard to develop new and expanding markets for game shot on UK Shoots.

However, approximately 85% of all the Pheasants and Partridges shot in England, Scotland and Wales are exported to Europe (and in the main) to France. We have been extremely dependent on that market holding up. Recently, there has been a significant reduction in demand by Europe for our dead game and instead they have bought from elsewhere. The end result is that we now have too little demand for our dead feathered game, although venison is doing extremely well, aided by recent marketing efforts by Eat Wild. The simple truth is that we are shooting too many Pheasants and Partridges (too few Grouse!) for the demand for the end product, that comes from within the UK, now that the European demand for our game has significantly diminished. 

So, what do we need to do?

Firstly, we need to be incredibly conscious of this and that includes not only those people running Shoots, but also those Guns shooting on them. It is absolutely essential that all of our dead game goes into the food chain, unless it is so badly damaged that it cannot. This is absolutely critical, for without it, game shooting has no food supply justification, which it absolutely must have.

Secondly, Shoots must make much more effort to supply their local market with dead feathered game (and venison too). Processing their dead game as is required by their end users is going to be key. Many Shoots are already doing this fantastically well, but many more Shoots have just been reliant on their Game Dealer turning up to take their game away at the end of the day. This is not now an option for very many Shoots up and down the country (and we had a real meltdown due to a very sudden and massive drop off in demand in early November), and this is likely to stay the same for next season in many areas. Therefore, Shoots need to get their act into gear and quickly to sort out how they are going to process their own dead game so that it can go into their local market. People love good game products, and we have got to satiate that demand. This cannot be done Nationally but can be done locally and must now be started if you have not already done so. Eat Wild are a valuable source for ideas and it is OUR responsibility to get on and do this and make sure that the Shoots we shoot on are also doing this.

Thirdly, we need to significantly increase our support for Eat Wild, so that they can scale up the demand on National terms. We can never do that locally, but they can get contracts for large quantities of game from big end consumers. This is made much more challenging by concerns over lead shot, but we are where we are with that now.

So EVERYONE, please take a keen interest in this and really do your bit. If you do not, we are going to have major problems going forward and it is probably not being over dramatic, to say that the future of shooting is very much at stake.