A NEW national survey conducted by the Game to Eat campaign has shown that, as the price paid by game dealers for shot game has fallen, more shoots are turning to direct sales to maximize income.

Last season, prices paid by dealers for shot pheasants were down nearly 40pc on 2002, with a pheasant fetching just 56p on average, but game sold locally direct from the shoot achieved twice this figure and there is some evidence that more shoots are going down this route.

The findings come from a joint survey of shoots conducted earlier this year by the Countryside Alliance, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and the National Gamekeepers' Organisation. The three bodies undertook the research in support of the Game to Eat campaign and it was paid for with funds raised by the 2004 Inter-Estate Challenge clay shoot.

Three-quarters of the game shot in Britain is sold via game dealers, while 14pc is given away, mostly to guns, beaters and other shoot helpers. A further 12pc is sold by the shoots directly to the public or to local retail outlets, and this figure is 2pc up on a similar survey conducted for the National Gamekeepers' Organisation in 2002.

There is good news on meat hygiene: 38pc of shoots with a full-time keeper now have chillers installed, and 34pc of shoots said game dealers collected birds from them on the day of the shoot. The equivalent figure in 2002 was 6pc.

Shoots also report more punctual payment for game sold.

A quarter of full-time gamekeepers have already had some training in food hygiene and two-thirds of the rest said they would like some. This bodes well for a smooth uptake of the basic food hygiene training required under new EU rules for all shoots wishing to sell to game dealers after 2006.

The survey also sought information on bag sizes and the number of days shooting. Shoots with a full-time keeper enjoy an average of 22 days' shooting a year, with part-time keepered shoots likely to have about half that number. Average seasonal bags for shoots with a full-time keeper are just over 3,000 pheasants and/or nearly 1,800 partridges; 38pc of shoots also shoot some wildfowl.

Contrary to allegations by opponents of the sport, there are very few shoots overall (3pc) that have more than 50 days a season, while only 6pc of those responding have annual bags of more than 5,000 pheasants.

The full findings of the survey are available on the Game to Eat campaign web site: www.gametoeat.co.uk, and on the web sites of participating organisations.