Scot­tish Gamebird Releases:

focus­ing on the Cairngorms Nation­al Park

August 2025

Game & Wild­life CON­SER­VA­TION TRUST

Con­tents

1. SUMMARY……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1
2. PRO­JECT BACKGROUND…………………………………………………………………………………………………….2
3. DATA FROM NATION­AL GAMEBAG CENSUS (NGC)………………………………………………………………..3 3.1. NGC Methods………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3 3.1.1. NGC Data collection……………………………………………………………………………………………….3 3.1.2. NGC Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………………..4 3.2. NGC Results……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5 3.2.1. Dens­ity of birds released and shot……………………………………………………………………………5 3.2.2. Trends in the index of releas­ing and gamebag from the NGC……………………………………..8
4. SUR­VEYS UNDER­TAKEN WITH­IN CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK…………………………………………….12 4.1. Sur­vey Methods……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..12 4.2. Sur­vey Results……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….14 4.2.1. Sum­mary of shoots interviewed………………………………………………………………………………14 4.2.2. Dens­ity of released gamebirds………………………………………………………………………………14 4.2.3. Return rates………………………………………………………………………………………………………….16 4.2.4. Num­ber of shoot days………………………………………………………………………………………….16 4.2.5. Man­age­ment asso­ci­ated with the shoots…………………………………………………………………17
5. DISCUSSION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………18 5.1. Releas­ing densities………………………………………………………………………………………………………..18 5.2. Return rates………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..19 5.3. Shoot man­age­ment and pos­sible effects of releas­ing on biodiversity…………………………………19
6. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………20
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………………………………………20
8. REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………21
9. APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..23

Sug­ges­ted cita­tion: Fletch­er K, Ewald J, Newey S, Sage RB, Hes­ford N (2025) Scot­tish Gamebird Releases: focus­ing on the Cairngorm Nation­al Park. Game & Wild­life Con­ser­va­tion Trust, Hopetoun Estate Office, South Queensferry

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1. SUM­MARY

The release of pheas­ants Phasi­anus col­chi­cus and red-legged part­ridges Alec­t­or­is rufa for game shoot­ing is prac­tised in many areas of the UK. The impacts, pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive, of releas­ing gamebirds are expec­ted to be depend­ent on the dens­ity at which gamebirds are released. This pro­ject aims to col­late data col­lec­ted from two vol­un­tary sur­veys at nation­al and loc­al scales to provide releas­ing dens­ity estim­ates for these two species.

Data from the Game & Wild­life Con­ser­va­tion Trust’s Nation­al Gamebag Census was used to com­pare the repor­ted num­ber of birds released for the UK, and Scot­land and Eng­land sep­ar­ately. The annu­al mean dens­it­ies of released pheas­ants in Scot­land ranged from 181 – 369 birds km⁻² (of estate area) between 2000 and 2023. This was about half the dens­it­ies repor­ted for Eng­land (455 — 673 birds km⁻²) over the same peri­od. The dens­ity of pheas­ants being released has increased in the last 24 years by 88% in Scot­land and 24% in Eng­land, how­ever, there was no sig­ni­fic­ant trend between 2013 – 2023. For red-legged part­ridges the release dens­ity in Scot­land was con­sid­er­ably lower than in Eng­land until 2019, but release dens­it­ies have since increased and are now sim­il­ar to Eng­land (annu­al aver­age released in Scot­land was 333 part­ridges km⁻² between 2020 and 2023). This equates to an increase in Scot­land of 107% from 2013 to 2023, com­pared to no change in Eng­land. Sim­il­ar trends were found in the dens­ity of shot gamebirds.

With­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park (CNP) we inter­viewed man­agers from ten rear-and-release gamebird shoots, mainly loc­ated with­in the River Spey catch­ment. These ten shoots rep­res­en­ted 45% of the 22 shoots iden­ti­fied with­in the CNP bound­ary. The com­bined area of the estates on which these shoots were loc­ated was 795 km² of which 96 km² (12%) was reportedly man­aged and used for released gamebird shoots. In the most recent three shoot sea­sons (since spring 2022) all ten shoots released pheas­ants, and five also released red-legged part­ridges. All par­ti­cip­at­ing shoots sourced birds from with­in the UK. Across all shoots the total num­ber of birds released in sea­sons ²⁰²²⁄₃, ²⁰²³⁄₄ and ²⁰²⁴⁄₅ were 50,900, 61,200 and 49,800 pheas­ants and 8,000, 36,000 and 29,240 red-legged part­ridges. These equate to the mean releas­ing dens­it­ies of pheas­ants; 70 km⁻² and part­ridges; 73 km ² , which are lower than those repor­ted from Scot­land as a whole. Release dens­it­ies var­ied across the shoots inter­viewed with 70% of shoots releas­ing < 100 pheas­ants km⁻² and 20% of shoots releas­ing > 200 pheas­ants km⁻².

The estim­ated per­cent­age of released birds shot was 32% on aver­age for pheas­ants and 33% for red-legged part­ridges over an aver­age of 24.2 shoot days per annum. These are sim­il­ar to the 39.9% and 30.3% cal­cu­lated from Scot­land-wide NGC data for pheas­ant and red-legged part­ridge, respect­ively. This study was not able to assess wheth­er the remainder of the birds died (or dis­persed) before the shoot­ing sea­son, or what dens­ity of birds may remain the fol­low­ing spring. Gen­er­ally, par­ti­cipants asso­ci­ated with the lar­ger num­bers of birds released repor­ted more intens­ive pred­at­or man­age­ment, wood­land man­age­ment, and game crop plant­ing than those estates releas­ing lower numbers.

This study provides the first detailed assess­ment of gamebird releas­ing dens­it­ies in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, set in the con­text of nation­al trends. The find­ings show that release dens­it­ies in the CNP are gen­er­ally lower than the Scot­tish aver­age. How­ever, fur­ther research is needed to bet­ter under­stand the pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive impacts of release and har­vest­ing num­bers. This would inform evid­ence-based man­age­ment that reflects the Scot­tish land­scape, hab­it­ats, wild­life, cul­ture and reg­u­lat­ory frame­work to sup­port both biod­iversity and sus­tain­able game management.

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2. PRO­JECT BACKGROUND

The release of pheas­ants Phasi­anus col­chi­cus and red-legged part­ridges Alec­t­or­is rufa to provide driv­en game shoot­ing is prac­tised in many areas of the UK, but espe­cially in low­land areas of south­ern Eng­land (Tap­per 1992, Mad­den and Sage 2020). Game bird releas­ing has been prac­ticed since the 1800s but became more pre­val­ent in the 1960s when wild gamebirds (mainly grey part­ridge Per­dix per­dix) pop­u­la­tions declined due to agri­cul­tur­al intens­i­fic­a­tion (Potts 1986) and could no longer sup­port shoot­ing demand. It is estim­ated that 47 mil­lion pheas­ants (95% CI 39 – 57 mil­lion) and 10 mil­lion red-legged part­ridges (95% CI 8.1 – 13 mil­lion) were released in the UK in 2016 (Aebis­cher 2019). How­ever, a recent study using a wide range of data sources from 2016 — 2020, estim­ated that a lower annu­al mean of 43.2 mil­lion (95% CI 29.0 – 57.3 mil­lion) gamebirds (includ­ing mal­lard Anas platy­rhynchos) were being released (Mad­den 2021).

The con­sulta­tion on licens­ing gamebird release under­taken by the Welsh Gov­ern­ment, high­lighted the paucity of avail­able evid­ence on the num­bers of gamebirds released. The review com­mis­sioned by Nat­ur­al Resources Wales stated “… there is cur­rently little reli­able evid­ence about the scale, extent, his­tory or meth­ods of gamebird release and man­age­ment in Wales. The estim­ates that I can cal­cu­late are sub­ject to large errors, of around 2.5‑fold and the extra­pol­a­tions that I make are often based on restric­ted and per­haps skewed data” (Mad­den 2023). Reli­able and accur­ate data on gamebird releases are needed to allow devolved gov­ern­ments to make informed decisions on future reg­u­la­tions. The object­ive of this pro­ject is to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of gamebird release num­bers and dens­it­ies in Scot­land and spe­cific­ally with­in Cairngorm Nation­al Park with the aim to ensure that any future dis­cus­sions are informed by evidence.

To address this know­ledge short­fall, we con­sidered the avail­able inform­a­tion on the num­ber of gamebirds released and shot in Scot­land, sub­mit­ted to the GWCT’s Nation­al Gamebag Census (Tap­per 1992), com­par­ing this to the inform­a­tion avail­able for Eng­land. This allowed us to put the trends in both the releas­ing and shoot­ing bag in con­text with what hap­pens in Eng­land. The Cairngorm Nation­al Park Author­ity (CNPA) sup­por­ted this pro­ject, as their Part­ner­ship Plan 2022 – 27 (NPPP) includes a tar­get to ​“Estab­lish a baseline for the num­ber of gamebirds released in the Nation­al Park and assess their impact on nat­ive biod­iversity” (www​.part​ner​shipplan​.cairngorms​.co​.uk). To sup­port the NPPP object­ive, semi-struc­tured inter­views with sport­ing estates, with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park (CNP), were used to explore gamebird release dens­it­ies and man­age­ment at the estate level.

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3. DATA FROM NATION­AL GAMEBAG CENSUS (NGC)

3.1. NGC Methods

3.1.1. NGC Data collection

The Nation­al Gamebag Census (NGC) is a vol­un­tary scheme that col­lects bag stat­ist­ics from up to 900 estates annu­ally across the UK (Tap­per 1992, Aebis­cher and Baines 2008). Con­trib­ut­ing estates are well dis­trib­uted across the whole of the UK and range from small fam­ily-run shoots to large com­mer­cial enter­prises. Estates with­in the NGC include mainly driv­en, walked-up, and mixed shoot­s¹, but also deer-stalk­ing estates and some wild­fowl­ing clubs. Accord­ingly, most NGC sites are inland rather than coastal, and their size var­ies widely, from under 1 to over 300 km², with an aver­age area of 16 km²; over­all they rep­res­ent 19% of the area of land shot over in the UK (giv­en as 160,000 km² in PACEC (2014), based on Pid­ding­ton (1980)). Although some NGC estates rely on wild game, the pro­por­tion of estates releas­ing gamebirds and the num­bers of gamebirds released for shoot­ing have increased over time (Tap­per 1992, Robertson et al. 2017).

NGC par­ti­cipants sub­mit their records via an annu­al sur­vey form, sent out at the end of the shoot­ing sea­son. The form requests num­bers of each game spe­cies shot dur­ing the pre­vi­ous year, as well as addi­tion­al inform­a­tion on the num­bers of cap­tive-reared birds released for shoot­ing, and on num­bers of leg­ally con­trol­lable pred­at­ors killed annu­ally. It delib­er­ately does not request fur­ther inform­a­tion on estate man­age­ment or eco­nom­ics to keep the form brief and max­im­ise return rate. Remind­ers are issued for non­re­turned forms, and the annu­al return rate exceeds 85%.

For this study we use data col­lec­ted since 1961 to report on trends at UK level but focus on data col­lec­ted since 2000 for the com­par­is­on between Scot­land and Eng­land. Before 2000 the releas­ing of red-legged part­ridges was uncom­mon in Scot­land. The num­ber of estates con­trib­ut­ing data annu­ally for both Eng­land and Scot­land are detailed in Table 1. The num­ber of estates report­ing inform­a­tion to the NGC annu­ally from with­in the CNP bound­ary was too low to allow ana­lyses at this scale.

Table 1: The num­ber of estates con­trib­ut­ing data annu­ally to the NGC, and the total num­ber of records avail­able from estates from 2000 – 2023 (mean with 95% con­fid­ence inter­vals in brackets).

	Eng­land	Scot­land
	Mean	Total records	Mean	Total records
	(95%CI)		(95%CI)
Released:
Pheas­ant	329	7,902	97	2,315
	(300−359)		(88−105)
Red-legged part­ridge	182	4,371	37	887
	(162−202)		(33−41)
Shot:
Pheas­ant	400	9,598	126	3,032
	(367−433)		(117−136)
Red-legged part­ridge	289	6,932	65	1,507
	(262−316)		(60−71)

¹ Gamebird shoot­ing can be cat­egor­ised into either driv­en shoot­ing, where gamebirds are flushed by beat­ers toward a sta­tion­ary line of hunters, or walked-up or rough shoot­ing, where hunters walk, often in line, using dogs to flush gamebird (e.g., Sother­ton et al. 2009). Mixed shoots are estates doing both types.

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3.1.2. NGC Analysis

For each year we cal­cu­lated the simple mean of the num­ber of birds released km⁻² (of estate area) and num­ber of birds shot km⁻² (with 95% con­fid­ence inter­vals), for both pheas­ant and red-legged part­ridge in Eng­land and Scot­land. An estim­ate of return rates (per­cent­age of birds shot com­pared to num­ber released), on those shoots that repor­ted both the num­ber released and the num­ber shot was also cal­cu­lated from the indi­vidu­al estate inform­a­tion for each spe­cies in Scot­land and Eng­land. These annu­al data have been presen­ted graph­ic­ally for 2000 to 2023 (Fig­ures 1 – 6). The mean area of estates releas­ing pheas­ants con­trib­ut­ing to NGC in 2023 was 33.8 (95%CI ±5.1) km² in Scot­land and 12.5 (95%CI ±1.5) km² in England.

To look at the long-term trend in num­bers released and num­ber shot (the bag) we fol­low Aebis­cher (2019) and cal­cu­late indices of change from 2000 for Scot­land and Eng­land sep­ar­ately. To put these in con­text we also report on the UK-wide trends from 1961, using the same meth­ods. The ana­lys­is of NGC data is com­plic­ated because not all estates return data in all years; some bag series have gaps, some estates dis­ap­pear, new ones appear, and estate sizes vary spa­tially and tem­por­ally. In addi­tion, game bags can vary from year to year, due to changes in the abund­ance of game spe­cies, both wild and released, and because of oth­er factors that influ­ence shoot­ing effort and bag size such as changes in fire­arms, cart­ridges, num­bers and exper­i­ence of hunters, weath­er, and legis­la­tion (Tap­per 1992, McDon­ald and Har­ris 1999). Des­pite vari­ation in hunt­ing effort, bag records have been found to be a reli­able indic­at­or of red grouse Lagopus scot­ica dens­ity (Cat­ta­dori et al. 2003), so num­bers of pheas­ant and red-legged part­ridge shot have been con­sidered here, as well as the num­bers released.

A min­im­um of 2 years’ data from the same site is needed to meas­ure with­in-site change in num­bers, so estates con­trib­ut­ing only 1 year’s data were omit­ted from ana­lys­is. For each spe­cies, release and bag ana­lyses were based on annu­al returns where the num­ber released, or shot, respect­ively, was great­er than zero and cov­er­ing the years 2000 to 2023. Data were ana­lysed using a Gen­er­al­ised Lin­ear Mod­el (GLM) with a Pois­son error dis­tri­bu­tion and log­ar­ithmic link func­tion, with site and year as factors and the log­ar­ithm of site area as an off­set vari­able, which stand­ard­ised the num­bers released or shot to unit area. The estim­ated coef­fi­cients were used to pre­dict val­ues for each com­bin­a­tion of year and site; these val­ues were then aver­aged across all sites to give annu­al indices of release or bag size on a log scale. The index series was expo­nen­ti­ated to give annu­al release or bag indices on the arith­met­ic scale. A Gen­er­al­ized Addit­ive Mod­el (GAM, Hast­ie and Tib­shir­ani 1990) was then fit­ted to these, with one degree of free­dom per dec­ade or part-dec­ade to smooth out annu­al vari­ation. The smoothed indices of release or bag size were used to eval­u­ate the per­cent­age change in num­bers released or shot; i) over 24 years (2000 – 2023) and ii) over 11 years (2013 – 2023). We obtained 95% con­fid­ence lim­its around the index val­ues and meas­ures of pro­por­tion­al change by boot­strap­ping at the shoot level (Efron and Tib­shir­ani 1986). For each of 1,000 boot­strap runs, shoots were selec­ted at ran­dom with replace­ment, a new set of indices obtained as described above, a new GAM fit­ted, and new meas­ures of change cal­cu­lated. For each year and meas­ure of change, the 95% con­fid­ence lim­its were taken as the lower and upper 95^th per­cent­iles of the dis­tri­bu­tion gen­er­ated through boot­strap­ping. A change in release or bag was deemed to dif­fer sig­ni­fic­antly from zero when the 95% con­fid­ence inter­val of the change estim­ate did not over­lap zero. Stat­ist­ic­al ana­lys­is was car­ried out using the stat­ist­ic­al com­puter pack­age Gen­stat (23^rd edi­tion, Lawes Agri­cul­tur­al Trust, Rothamsted).

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3.2. NGC Results

3.2.1. Dens­ity of birds released and shot

In the NGC, the mean annu­al dens­ity of pheas­ant release on Scot­tish estates ranged from 184 birds km⁻² in 2000, up to 369 birds km⁻² in 2018, with an aver­age of 343 birds km⁻² released in 2023. Pheas­ant releases on Eng­lish NGC estates ranged from 455 km⁻² in 2000 up to 673 km⁻² in 2015, with an aver­age of 629 birds km⁻² released in 2023 (Fig­ure 1).

Fig­ure 1: Mean (±95%CI) annu­al num­bers of pheas­ants released km⁻² from NGC data sub­mit­ted from shoots in Eng­land and Scotland.

The aver­age annu­al dens­ity of red-legged part­ridges on Scot­tish estates ranged from 31 birds km⁻² in 2000 up to 384 birds km⁻² in 2021, with an aver­age of 306 birds km⁻² in 2023. Red-legged part­ridge releases on Eng­lish NGC estates ranged from 216 km⁻² in 2000 up to 588 km⁻² in 2022, with an aver­age of 434 birds km⁻² released in 2023 (Fig­ure 2).

Fig­ure 2: Mean (±95%CI) annu­al num­bers of red-legged part­ridge released km⁻² from NGC data sub­mit­ted from shoots in Eng­land and Scotland.

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The aver­age annu­al dens­ity of pheas­ant shot on Scot­tish estates ranged from 53 birds km⁻² in 2020, up to 97 birds km⁻² in 2018, with an aver­age of 79 birds km⁻² shot in 2023. The aver­age dens­ity of pheas­ants shot on Eng­lish NGC estates ranged from 106 km⁻² in 2020 up to 237 km⁻² in 2014, with an aver­age of 173 birds km⁻² shot in 2023 (Fig­ure 3).

Fig­ure 3: Mean (±95%CI) annu­al num­bers of pheas­ants shot km⁻² from NGC data sub­mit­ted from shoots in Eng­land and Scotland.

The aver­age annu­al dens­ity of red-legged part­ridges shot on Scot­tish estates ranged from 7 birds km⁻² in 2000, up to 103 birds km⁻² in 2021, with an aver­age of 58 birds km⁻² shot in 2023. The aver­age annu­al dens­ity of red-legged part­ridges shot on Eng­lish NGC estates ranged from 65 km⁻² in 2000 up to 121 km⁻² in 2016, with an aver­age of 103 birds km⁻² shot in 2023 (Fig­ure 4).

Fig­ure 4: Mean (±95%CI) annu­al num­bers of red-legged part­ridges shot km⁻² from NGC data sub­mit­ted from shoots in Eng­land and Scotland.

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The return rates for pheas­ants in NGC Scot­tish estates ranged from 31% (in 2020) up to 48% (in 2000). In Eng­land return rates for pheas­ants ranged from 26% (in 2020) up to 51% (in 2003; Fig­ure 5). The return rates for red-legged part­ridges in NGC Scot­tish estates ranged from 25% (in 2012) up to 39% (in 2022). In Eng­land return rates for red-legged part­ridges ranged from 32% (in 2008, 2015 and 2020) up to 45% (in 2013; Fig­ure 5).

Fig­ure 5: Mean (±95%CI) annu­al return rates of pheas­ants from NGC data sub­mit­ted from shoots in Eng­land and Scotland.

Fig­ure 6: Mean (±95%CI) annu­al return rates of red-legged part­ridges from NGC data sub­mit­ted from shoots in Eng­land and Scotland.

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3.2.2. Trends in the index of releas­ing and gamebag from the NGC

The UK-wide pheas­ant release index has been increas­ing since 1961 but appears to have sta­bil­ized in the most recent time peri­od (2013 – 2023, Table 2). For red-legged part­ridges the index of releas­ing was still increas­ing between 2013 and 2023, but at a lower rate than the change repor­ted between 2000 and 2023 (Table 2). The gamebag indices for both pheas­ant and red-legged part­ridges across the whole of the UK have been increas­ing since 1961 but shows a sig­ni­fic­ant decrease from 2013 to 2023 for pheas­ants and no sig­ni­fic­ant change for red-legged part­ridge (Table 2).

Table 2: Per­cent­age change in the index of pheas­ants and red-legged part­ridges released and shot in the UK over peri­ods of 1961 – 2023, 2000 – 2023, and 2013 – 2023 based in GWCT’s Nation­al Gamebag Census returns: with 95% con­fid­ence inter­vals in brack­ets and * indic­ates where the trend is stat­ist­ic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant at 5%.

	1961 – 2023	Time span 2000 – 2023	2013 – 2023
Released:
Pheas­ant	+829 | +37	+1
	(+675 to +998)	(+23 to +56)	(-8 to +12)
Red-legged part­ridge	not avail­able	+128 | +28
		(+85 to +188)	(+10 to +51)
Shot:
Pheas­ant	+134 | ‑10 | ‑22
	(+91 to +182)	(-20 to +3)	(-29 to ‑14)
Red-legged part­ridge	+1545 | +87	+7
	(+866 to +2691)	(+36 to +153)	(-14 to +29)

The index of pheas­ant release has not changed sig­ni­fic­antly from 2013 – 2023 in either Scot­land or Eng­land (the 95% con­fid­ence inter­vals in Table 3 over­lap with zero). How­ever, over the longer peri­od from 2000 to 2023, there had been an estim­ated 88% (95%CI 30 – 167%) increase in the index of pheas­ants released in Scot­land com­pared to a 24% (95%CI 10 – 39%) increase in the Eng­lish release index (Table 3; Fig­ure 7). The index of red-legged part­ridge release has sig­ni­fic­antly increased over both time peri­ods in Scot­land, but in Eng­land the change from 2013 to 2023 was not sig­ni­fic­ant (Table 3; Fig­ure 8). The increases in the release indices were gen­er­ally great­er for red-legged part­ridges than for pheasants.

The index of the Scot­tish pheas­ant gamebags showed no change from 2013 to 2023, com­pared to sig­ni­fic­ant declines in Eng­land (-30%). For both coun­tries there was no sig­ni­fic­ant change in the pheas­ant gamebag index from 2000 to 2023 (Table 3, Fig­ure 7). Although the Scot­tish and the Eng­lish red-legged part­ridge gamebag indices increased from 2000 to 2023, there is no sig­ni­fic­ant change from 2013 to 2023 (Table 3, Fig­ure 8).

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Table 3: Per­cent­age change in the gamebird release and gamebag indices from Eng­land and Scot­land from 2000 to 2023, and 2013 to 2023, based on the GWCT’s Nation­al Gamebag Census returns with 95% con­fid­ence inter­vals in brack­ets. * indic­ates where the trend is stat­ist­ic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant at 5%.

	Time span 2000 to 2023	2013 to 2023
	Eng­land	Scot­land	Eng­land	Scot­land
Released:
Pheas­ant	+24 | +88	-7	+22
	(+10 to +39)	(+30 to +167)	(-14 to +1)	(-8 to +65)
Red-legged part­ridge	+90 | +676	+14	+107*
	(+56 to +132)	(+229 to +1812)	(0 to +27)	(+8 to +192)
Shot:
Pheas­ant	-17	+34	-30*	0
	(-27 to +6)	(-12 to +101)	(-36 to ‑23)	(-24 to +28)
Red-legged part­ridge	+49 | +875	-8	+89
	(+9 to +3727)	(+107 to +5104)	(-23 to +5)	(-16 to +206)

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Fig­ure 7: Pheas­ant: bag index (dots, left-hand scale) and releas­ing index (bars, right hand scale) for A) Eng­land and B) Scotland.

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Fig­ure 8: Red-legged part­ridge bag index (dots, left-hand scale) and releas­ing index (bars, right hand scale) for A) Eng­land and B) Scotland.

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4. SUR­VEYS UNDER­TAKEN WITH­IN CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK

4.1. Sur­vey Methods

We used exist­ing con­tacts and know­ledge of estates in com­bin­a­tion with ​“snow­ball” sampling (where par­ti­cipants sug­gest oth­er poten­tial par­ti­cipants), to identi­fy poten­tial par­ti­cipants with­in the CNP. The size of gamebird releases can vary greatly; small fam­ily-farm shoots or ten­ant syn­dic­ates may release a few thou­sand birds each year, and at the oth­er end of the scale, some shoots release over 10,000 birds and may focus on pay­ing guests attend­ing shoot days to off­set the costs. As there are dif­fer­ences in land own­er­ship and busi­ness mod­els we have referred to all as ​“shoots”. We iden­ti­fied 22 shoots with­in CNP, cov­er­ing the range of sizes men­tioned above.

All shoots were con­tac­ted by phone or email. Poten­tial sur­vey par­ti­cipants were emailed an inform­a­tion sheet with full details of the pro­ject. Ten shoots agreed and con­sen­ted to par­ti­cip­ate in the study. We under­took face-to-face inter­views with a rep­res­ent­at­ive of each of these shoots over March and April 2025. There were an addi­tion­al three shoots in the pro­cess of chan­ging man­age­ment teams; they were not able to answer ques­tions at this time. There were also two shoots that were will­ing to be inter­viewed but were too busy with­in the time peri­od of this study. The remain­ing shoots that we approached (7) did not wish to par­ti­cip­ate in the survey.

To main­tain the con­fid­en­ti­al­ity of par­ti­cipants, data from indi­vidu­al shoots has been aggreg­ated at river catch­ment (or sub catch­ment, here­after all referred to as catch­ment) level where we have inter­viewed at least two par­ti­cipants. In the case of catch­ments with only one par­ti­cipant, catch­ments have been com­bined so there are at least two par­ti­cipants per com­bined catch­ment. For this study we adop­ted the same geo­graph­ic areas as those used for the Cairngorms Nature Index and con­sidered the catch­ments with­in the CNP as; Upper Spey, Lower Spey, Don, Dee, North & South Esk, and Tay (Table 4). The maps shown in this report are those used by the Cairngorms Nature Index, with the CNP split into 4 km-sided hexagons. We excluded those hexagons where land­cov­er was con­sidered unsuit­able for released gamebirds (i.e. mont­ane areas with < 20% tree cov­er; Fig­ure 9). All map­ping was done using Arc­GIS Pro 3.4.0 © 2024 Esri Inc.

Table 4: Break­down of shoots inter­viewed by catch­ment (also see Fig­ure 9).

CNPA Catch­ments:	Num­ber of shoots iden­ti­fied	Num­ber shoots inter­viewed	% Inter­viewed
Upper Spey	7	4	57%
Lower Spey	8	5	63%
Don­side	3	0	0%
Deeside	2	1	50%
North & South Esk and Tay	2	0	0%
All catch­ments	22	10	45%

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Fig­ure 9: The Cairngorm Nation­al Park over­laid with 4 km-sided hexagons and then split into six ​“catch­ment” areas fol­low­ing the Cairngorms Nature Index map­ping approach. The cross hatched area are hexagons likely to be unsuit­able for released gamebirds (mont­ane areas with <20% tree cov­er), source of map base lay­ers: Esri 2024, Esri et al. 2024.

Par­ti­cipants were asked about the num­bers of pheas­ants and red-legged part­ridge released in the last three years, i.e. shoot­ing sea­sons ²⁰²²⁄₃, ²⁰²³⁄₄, and ²⁰²⁴⁄₅. One shoot did not release pheas­ants in one of these sea­sons, the remainder released pheas­ants in all sea­sons. Five shoots (50%) did not release red-legged part­ridges in the three shoot sea­sons asked about here. One shoot released red-legged part­ridges in three sea­sons (10%), three shoots in two sea­sons (30%) and one shoot in one sea­son (10%). In ²⁰²²⁄₃ Highly Patho­gen­ic Avi­an Influ­enza (HPAI) restric­tions res­ul­ted in one shoot not releas­ing pheas­ants and two shoots not releas­ing red-legged part­ridge, due to the lack of avail­ab­il­ity or travel restric­tions for the poults. There­fore, the mean num­ber of birds released was cal­cu­lated using the num­ber released in an ​“act­ive” sea­son for each gamebird species.

We also asked for estim­ates of the area covered by the estate, the shoot itself, wood­land, and release pens so release dens­it­ies could be cal­cu­lated across each of these areas. (Note that for the NGC fig­ures, dens­it­ies are cal­cu­lated using the total area of the estate.) Shoots were also asked to provide the num­ber of shoot days (for both gamebird spe­cies com­bined) and the return rates (per­cent­age of birds shot com­pared to num­ber released for each spe­cies). The last sec­tion of the sur­vey focused on what aspects of shoot man­age­ment were under­taken e.g., pred­at­or con­trol, plant­ing game crops, and sup­ple­ment­ary feeding.

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4.2. Sur­vey Results

4.2.1. Sum­mary of shoots interviewed

Par­ti­cip­at­ing shoots were loc­ated with­in estates that covered in total 795 km² (196,516 acres), with the mean area of indi­vidu­al estates being 79.5 (95%CI ±38.3) km². The estim­ated total wood­land area (includ­ing scrub) was 151 km² (37,370 acres). The area of each estate involved in gamebird release (i.e. the shoot area) aver­aged 12% of an estate’s area (range 3% to 41%) with the total shoot area on the shoots sur­veyed estim­ated to be 96 km² (23,607 acres). The shoot areas were on aver­age 63% of the wood­land area on the estates (range 13% to 276%, i.e. shoot areas included arable, pas­ture, and moor­land hab­it­ats in addi­tion to woodland).

4.2.2. Dens­ity of released gamebirds

Across all catch­ments the total num­ber released in sea­sons ²⁰²²⁄₃, ²⁰²³⁄₄ and ²⁰²⁴⁄₅ were 50,900, 61,200 and 49,800 pheas­ants and 8,000, 36,000 and 29,240 red-legged partridges.

For pheas­ants, the release dens­ity was 582 pheas­ants km⁻² based on the shoot area, or 70 pheas­ants km⁻² based on the estate area. Six of the ten shoots (60%) were releas­ing below 5,000 pheas­ants per annum, and sev­en shoots (70%) were below 100 pheas­ants km⁻² of estate area. Two of the ten shoots were releas­ing > 200 pheas­ants km⁻² of estate area (com­par­able with the aver­age Scot­land-wide NGC val­ues). Across all shoots the aver­age release dens­ity per area of wood­land pen (repor­ted in hec­tares) was 477 pheas­ants ha⁻¹. Sev­en of the ten shoots (70%) released at dens­it­ies below 1,000 pheas­ants ha⁻¹. Four of the shoots (40%) released at dens­it­ies below 700 pheas­ants ha⁻¹.

For red-legged part­ridges the dens­ity of release was 772 part­ridges km⁻² based on the shoot area, or 73 part­ridges km⁻² based on the estate area. Four out of the five shoots releas­ing red-legged part­ridges did so at a dens­ity below 200 part­ridges km⁻² of estate area. Pens used to release red-legged part­ridges were more numer­ous than for pheas­ants, more mobile, and used for no more than a few days. There­fore, the dens­ity of red-legged part­ridges released per area of pen was not calculated.

The break­down by catch­ment is shown in Table 5 and illus­trated in Fig­ure 10, show­ing that shoots with­in the Upper Spey were releas­ing pheas­ants and red-legged part­ridges at high­er dens­it­ies (based on shoot area) than the Lower Spey and Deeside catch­ments combined.

Of the nine shoots act­ive before the UK-wide Cov­id-19 restric­tions, six of the par­ti­cipants repor­ted that they were now releas­ing sim­il­ar num­bers to before Cov­id-19, one was releas­ing few­er gamebirds, and two were releas­ing more.

Five shoots (50%) indic­ated that they plan to release sim­il­ar num­bers in ²⁰²⁵⁄₆. Three shoots (30%) plan