28th Feb saw the last day of our 2010/2011 hunting season.

It only seems like yesterday that we were getting the Harris’s out in hopeful expectation of the season to come.

Our season was poor i f i am honest, with a distinct lack of game on our own ground, and the adjacent 800 acres that we rent to hunt got busier than pica dilly circus on some days with random gun shooters, ferreter’s and all manner of character visiting the ground and making our job even harder.

We were floored early in the season when our best hunting Hawk (Maggie) broke her wing! then our second best bird (Caine) broke his leg on a pheasant! i haven’t ever had a season like it??

Luckily we had some young blood (Cobolt) to pick up the slack and even our old Display Harris Codene put in some notable kill’s to his credit.

The overall season tally was way below previous years and realization has finally dawned that we are going to have to put much more effort into the game management on our ground other than just putting pheasant feeders out.

I took the last hunt of the season out, and i am happy to report that several excellent chases were had and we brought something home for tea!

And so our working week changes totally, from hunting with guests around the farm every afternoon to entertaining a plethora of guest’s at base on one of our popular non-hunting sessions. Part of me see’s it as relief, and part yearns for another bright Autumn day with dog on point and bird on fist.

The Hunting birds will be starting their moult shortly, and taking their place on the weathering are several freshly moulted summer birds ready to wow the customers.

Now we move into the next big part of our year as spring brings our annual breeding season.

I am chatting up our imprinted falcon’s hourly just now, whether it’s to try to convince them to stand for insemination, win over nervous characters or simply to allow my self to become an object of pornographic desire for our male birds :) (well, you cant blame them ladies!)

So a brand new door open and it’s all to play for……….