Chairman of the Code of Good Shooting Practice Steering Committee, Bill Tyrwhitt-Drake, on why it so important that gamekeepers adhere to these voluntary guidelines:

THE Code of Good Shooting Practice contains important advice and provides essential guidance for everybody involved in shooting.We all share a personal responsibility to promote the safety, integrity and reputation of our sport. Our activities are under public scrutiny as never before. The public and the media are major catalysts for change. The public will judge shooting and shoot management practices by the way we all behave.Drawn up by a huge list of organisations including the NGO, BASC, Countryside Alliance, CLA, Game Farmers' Association, Campaign for Shooting, Scottish Gamekeepers' Association, National Game Dealers' Association, Scottish Landowners' Federation and The Game Conservancy Trust, the Code covers three areas: managing game and game habitat, shoot day management and behaviour in the field.

Conflict of interests

I am very aware that gamekeepers can find themselves in conflict with their employers over the Code.The main concerns of the Code are excess bags and over-intensive release of birds and these two probably go together on a shoot.  The employer may well require the letting of a few days to defray costs.  He may need to let more days than the shoot can comfortably manage added to his own days.  He may well be running a completely commercial shoot where he is paying a high rent with the added expense of large acres of game crops and he will have a large requirement of shot game to recoup his costs and show a profit.Compliance with the Code may make all these requirements difficult to achieve
and the temptations to release too many birds in a limited area, possibly topping up partridges and shooting excessive bags may be difficult to resist.

How we can help

The Steering Committee of the Code represents all the shooting bodies listed above.We have no powers of restraint and have to rely on persuasion, peer pressure, landlord influence as well as enlightened purchasers of shooting days. All these are difficult to achieve, but we believe that the vast majority of shoots comply with the Code, the small numbers who do not are the ones, which will bring game shooting into disrepute.I can only urge keepers who are under pressure to, "produce the goods", against their better judgement, to confide in a senior member of NGO so that we can do our best to remedy the situation.  I assure you we are trying very hard, but vested interests are the enemy and we must all strive together to bring game shooting back to reasonable proportions.