Howesyke, showing how it should be done
This intensive hill farm in the Yorkshire Dales has been transformed into an award-winning shoot, commended for its re-establishment of black grouse
Janet Menzies relates how an intensive hill farm in the Yorkshire Dales was transformed into a Purdey Award-winning shoot
A couple of shots then the birds came on us quickly in small, shootable coveys that weren’t tightly packed
The Royal Marines Commandos believe that if you want to win a conflict on the ground, you must first seize control of the narrative. Country sports are in a war right now and we have comprehensively lost the battle of words. If we are ever to take back initiative in the debate, then we must have a narrative – and the story we should tell is of Howesyke and shoots like it.
Howesyke Shoot at Thoralby, near Leyburn in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, won a Purdey Gold Award in 2018. The award citation mentioned shoot owners Rob and Helen Brown’s work in woodland and heather restoration, as well as a successful black grouse re-establishment scheme. The judges commented: “Mr and Mrs Brown have transformed a hitherto intensively managed hill farm into a truly wonderful shoot offering a stunning variety of partridge, pheasant and grouse.” The numbers read: 100,000 broadleaf trees planted; 900 acres of peat restored; five new wetland habitats created; 1.3km of dry-stone walls repaired and rebuilt. But that doesn’t even tell half the story. It doesn’t mention a love affair with farming and with each other that started right back at university. And what about the gamekeeper and his entire family, including young daughters Polly and Isobel, out on the grouse? There’s no talk about the top game shot bringing out his young son to teach him the true ways of fieldcraft. Or the walkers who wander into a grouse butt and carry a brace off home to cook.
All these were part of the story one perfect August morning in Wensleydale. Meeting in the barn, newly converted to a shoot lunch room, Helen Brown filled in the backplot: “We have just done up this barn for a shoot room. I’ve loved decorating it with finds from local auctions, and as Rob’s family were jewellers and pawnbrokers, I’ve been able to rescue this big mahogany display case.
Rob and I met at Newcastle University and we both went on to work in farming. Then Rob and his brothers sold the family business and this farm came up for sale about 10 years ago. It was very intensively farmed at the time and it was over-grazed. Over the 10 years we have had it we have gradually set up the shoot. We started with just a couple of days walked-up in 2010, with a couple of friends. Then we started to experiment with some driven the year after.”
As befits a good storyline, the Browns encountered any number of difficulties in their quest. Initially, the local authority planning office recommended refusal of the plans to recreate the farm as a combined tourism venue, shoot and conservation farm. Apparently the many green and entrepreneurial initiatives proposed were against authority policy, which tended to favour a caravan for the Browns’ keeper combined with an increase in the number of sheep.
The Browns didn’t give up, so today a team of eight guns could set off up the hill looking forward to some beautifully presented
grouse. We reached our butts for the first drive, Thoralby Moss, just as the mist was burning off, assisted by a good breeze. Karl Walker and his wife, Debbie, had put together the team for the day. Walker settled into his butt with anticipation: “Most of us out today tend to go together to Spain for the partridge shooting where Alberto Rojo, who is shooting today, looks after us. It was our first time at Howesyke last year, we had such a great time. The grouse will be on us quick over this butt, I am beginning to see grouse coming now – there is one just sat on the top of the brow in front of me here.”
A couple of shots from the top end of the line signalled the arrival of the birds, which did come on us quickly but in small, shootable coveys that weren’t tightly packed. On our right, fellow gun Jono Garton picked off a right-and-left, earning a “Well shot, Jono” from Walker, who was then busy himself taking a bird behind. Walker congratulated his wife on a good shot on our left: “It’s down, a long way out. Excellent! My best season was 20 days but you don’t get so many opportunities now. In recent seasons it has been about a dozen days. We also have a small syndicate at home shooting a few days – but I would travel anywhere for grouse. People are pushing for extreme days on pheasants and yet there are only a handful of guys (and girls) who can really shoot these extremes. So I love my grouse and partridges.”
As the drive winds up, he observes: “I think the average on that drive was good, which we like. I thought it might be a disappointing drive but it wasn’t bad at all. Three brace for nine shots – we’ll settle for that.” This set the tone for the day, with the team of guns working together and with the pickersup and beaters in an enjoyable and fuss-free atmosphere. Garton and his young son, Daniel, wandered up to have a tease: “I shot one out in the gully – I could see Karl was lining up on it.” At which point Daniel suddenly disappeared up to his chest in a peat bog, which apparently captures schoolboys as easily as it does carbon. Garton was swift to act: “Wait there, nobody pull him out. Let me get a photo first.” With Garton junior successfully photographed and extracted, we moved butts for the return drive. Garton reassured his son: “Some of the moors you shoot on, the peat bog is really deep, you can go in over your head. We had a guy at ours, they had to get a tractor to lift him out.”
Our project is really a big jigsaw – it is fitting shooting and conservation together and getting the community involved
Obviously this was a comforting thought for young Garton and he listened attentively as his father instructed him in the ways of grouse. With his 28-bores at the ready, Garton explained: “We are facing the opposite way now, so the birds will be that much lower flying into the wind. And when the drive was coming with the wind you could hear them a long way off and get ready – this way you can’t. There is a big covey sat in front of us now – grouse tactics strike again. Here comes a young grouse, look Daniel. If there are young grouse you know they are breeding successfully.”
The grouse had bred successfully and the guns were equally successful, so there was no need to hurry to the third drive, Brown Haw. Brown settled back into the heather to watch the drive unfold. “The farm had been really intensively grazed when we arrived but we are making progress. We have managed the stock levels and put up a lot of rabbit fencing, so the bilberry and other vegetation is coming back. The farm had thousands of rabbits – and eight rabbits are equal to one sheep in impact. We want to go on disintensifying. But there is no one right answer. One policy doesn’t fit all and every bit of ground is different. You have to be adaptive and open minded. Working with Natural England you have to be patient and persistent.
“We should respect the historic landowners and the keepers – they know a lot because they are there all the time. Our project is really a big jigsaw – it is fitting shooting and conservation together and getting the community involved. The moor is there for everyone to enjoy but we have to
It is nice to see all the young people out today, doing many different tasks
respect each other. We only do two or three days a year up here. This year it is three days and then open access for the rest of the year. Quite often walkers sit with us in the butts and they are really interested in what we are doing. One time we gave some walkers a brace of grouse for them to cook.”
Shooting at Howesyke for the first time, Monty Williams loved the inclusive atmosphere. “It is very nice to see all the young people, girls and boys, out today and doing so many different tasks. We are not having young people coming through at home, and I worry that we are losing this. It’s frightening that people are so disconnected and don’t realise that without places like this wildlife would suffer. But this makes you feel a bit more hopeful going forward. We need to be together and be strong.”
HEATHER BEETLE
Unfortunately, sat among the heather as the August day heated up, one fly – or rather beetle – in the ointment was obvious. Where we should have been surrounded by a purple fuzz of honey-scented heather bloom, each fold of hillside was an autumnal shade of rust. “We have never known the heather beetle so bad as this,” says Brown. “Regenerating the heather is so difficult. The heather is the nutrition for the birds so we are expecting to be quiet for a few years.” His keeper, Stuart Dent, agrees: “One of the biggest problems to start with was getting the heather back, which has taken nine years to get it how we want it – and then we have the heather beetle, which has cooked us. In the beginning the shoot was a blank canvas. It had not been keepered properly since the 1950s, when it was part of a much bigger estate. But it meant you could get your teeth into it. There was no vermin control, so getting going on that helped the whole system. The pheasant and partridge shoot we started from scratch, and this year we will be aiming to do seven or eight days.
Habitat management and farming have to slot together, that’s important. And now the heather is really suffering. It will come back round though.”
Dent’s long-term view is a refreshing contrast to the alarmist panics of conservation bandwagons. One group insists habitat must be regenerated. Another demands the intensive farming traditions of the area must be put first. The heather itself is a battleground for environmentalists and campaigners of every type. And the shoot patiently juggles all these demands and succeeds in providing a glorious environment to the public for 362 days a year. But if you are lucky enough to settle into the grouse butt and gaze out over that sun-speckled moor, you will know deeply that every single minute of those three days’ shooting makes it worth doing. Purdey Gold Award-winning Howesyke Shoot is at Thoralby, Leyburn, North Yorkshire DL8 3TF. It provides a mixed shoot concentrating on partridges and pheasants with occasional grouse. Contact keeper Stuart Dent on 01969 662663.