Add to this the decline in wild grouse numbers over the last two years, and it may appear shooting prospects are particularly fragile. So what is the outlook for 2006?

Since it was first detected in South East Asia in 2004, avian influenza (or ‘bird flu’ as it has become commonly known) has affected nearly 60 countries. Scotland experienced its first case earlier this year, when a dead whooper swan in Cellardyke, Fife, was found to have the H5N1 strain of the virus. As a result, there was panic across all sectors – not just from consumers and those in the poultry industry, but also from country sports enthusiasts.

According to David Ilsley, Head of Marketing for the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC), ‘a number of people were asking for shoot cancellation insurance, particularly when it (AI) was hitting the news on the television and in the shooting magazines.’ Those from within the industry also feared gamekeepers might take a cautionary approach and order fewer birds.

Thankfully, however, the quality and number of game birds being reared for this season seems to have excelled. ‘Indeed, the fact I have seen far many more adverts for poults (as young birds are initially referred to) than in prior years, tells me any original worries that rearing businesses were going to suffer have been unfounded,’ says John Anderson, chairman of the Tayside and Fife regional committee of the Game Conservancy Trust (GCT).

The reason for this probably lies in the fact that organisations such as DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), as well as the BASC and GCT, have encouraged gamekeepers to source more locally. ‘Quite a chunk of game birds will usually be imported,’ explains David Ilsley, ‘so the biggest threat was if an outbreak wiped through the Far East and the southern area of France. Our recommendation in those early days was very much to get your birds from UK suppliers.’

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