It’s that time of year when your birds start wandering and your stress levels rise. Gaynor Roberts asks four keepers for their tips on stopping birds from straying.

Don Ford

You can’t beat regular drawing in with dogs along any hedges running towards boundaries and away from release areas, but a few other tips help keep birds close to home.

A game cover strip close by a release area and kept quiet helps no end to hold birds.

• Straw spread along feed rides keeps birds active and healthy, barley straw fluffs up after rain whereas wheat straw lays flat.
• Surplus cabbages or part rotten apples from dealers or garden nurseries spread along feed rides give birds something to peck at and stops boredom.
• A little whole maize with caraway, aniseed and rhodium wood oils mixed with cod liver oil added to wheat is a real stay at home feed. But start it at poult stage for best effects.
• For a small number of birds, wheat soaked for 24 hours then laid on matting or sacking will chit – pheasants love it.
• A man-size scarecrow made of wire netting, dressed in old clothing and hung on a tree or bush at the end of hedges running towards a boundary will deter birds especially if there’s a white flag flying from his hands. The scarecrow should be hung by nylon cord with its feet well clear of the ground.
• Hand feeding at regular times is much better than hopper feeding to hold birds.

At the end of the day pheasants do need space to explore but as long as you dog in you should have a successful season.

Kevin Rolls

The main reason for game birds straying is due to lack of water in the hot dry summer months - last season was particularly bad.

• Habitat is very important - if you haven't got the right habitat your birds won't be happy in that environment.
• Stocking levels are crucial so make sure there is no overcrowding in pheasant pens as they will leave in mass heading off towards hedgerows and ditches.
• Situate the cover and holding crops in the vicinity of the straying areas, I have found this helps when the birds discover the havens of different seeds and insects.
• Spread water drinkers along the edges of the crop rides then they seem to be happy.
• Game birds also tend to stray when food is changed from pellet to wheat - in the autumn they will wander off to find beech nuts and acorns - so add some ground mixture into the wheat to keep them interested when you feed the rides.
• There will always be the odd pocket of birds that tend to wander off with last years cock birds so you still have to do an element of dogging in. I always carry a pair of binoculars to keep an eye on the regular corridors in which they travel. 

Put watering points on all rides and tracks - pheasants will move a long way in search of water.

Steve Stringer

There’s a fine balance between making the birds work for their food and making sure they have enough to keep them contained.

• When hand feeding your birds, give them enough but don’t overfeed.
• If hopper feeding set out plenty of hoppers to begin with so they won’t have to look for them – you can always reduce the numbers later on.
• I believe in plenty of fresh water and have watering points on all rides and tracks. Pheasants will move a long way in search of water as we experience drier and hotter summers and autumns.
• Look out for leakage points towards your boundaries such as hedges, lanes and water courses.
• Pheasants naturally need to spread, but if they start getting towards boundaries, keep them pushed back and go in regularly if necessary.

If hopper feeding set out plenty of hoppers to begin with so pheasants won’t have to look for them.

Robert Crofts

Like most things in this game, straying birds is a result of more than one factor.

• Take a look at your habitat – dark woods, badly sited pens, little cover crop and too much disturbance are all recipes for straying birds.
• Rearing all my own birds has enabled me over the years to keep a strain that suits the ground. I start dogging in around the last week in September, some years a bit earlier depending on how the birds have matured.
• Over the years you get to know where the leak points are. Birds tend to have certain times of the day when they move and weather conditions play a big part in this, particularly if it has rained during the night all they want to do is get out of the woods.
• Spinner feeding from the quad has helped no end, the birds tend to spend more time looking for feed and not just filling up and going. I have tried some of these magic potions which are mixed in with the feed but have not seen any benefit.