After all the restrictions over the last sixteen months our visit to the Game Fair at Ragley Hall, Warwickshire was a welcome relief. A 62 Gun Salute officially opened the fair and marked the busiest opening day in the Game Fair’s 62 year history. Over the three days tens of thousands of unmasked people strolled around in the glorious sunshine thoroughly enjoying the many events on offer.
This was my first visit to the Game Fair and it was a well organised event with excellent traffic management systems in place, resulting in very little queuing for parking. This was a must visit event for anyone interested or working in the outdoors from farmers, gamekeepers and estate managers/workers to families looking for a fun day out.
Every outdoor recreation imaginable was catered for with the opportunity to test them out including shooting (clays and air guns), fishing, archery and off road driving. There was amazing displays of gun dogs, terriers, dog agility, falconry, horse and hounds, Shetland pony Grand National, traditional crafts, traditional fairground rides for kids and cookery demonstrations from chefs including James Martin. Just about every fifteen minutes there was an announcement over the tannoy system of events taking place in one of the many sections or arenas found throughout the Fair. One stall holder I spoke to who was directly next to a tannoy wasn’t too impressed with the frequent announcements and was off in search of someone selling axes so he could “cut the bloody cable to get some peace and quiet.” 
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That’s a remarkable amount of work hours for a single machine, the Norcar 600 owned by Erkki Rinne is taken well care of, it even has the original Diesel engine.
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Kieran Anders is a forestry contractor working in the lake district. His work involves hand cutting and extracting timber using a skidder and tractor-trailer forwarder.
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It is not possible to eliminate chain shot, but there are simple steps that can be taken to reduce the risk.
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Arwel takes great pride in the fact that the mill has no waste whatsoever, “the peelings are used for children’s playgrounds, gardens and for farm animals in barns in the winter and the sawdust has multiple uses in gardens and farms as well.
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Timber hauliers need to encourage young blood in, and also look after the hauliers we have, we need make the sector a safe and positive place to work.
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Game Fair – Land Area Management
After parking (and making a note of where we were parked to avoid hours of wandering about looking for my car) we made our way to the entrance and once through arrived at the Land Management area.
There was a good representation of equipment used in all aspects of land management. Nick Dinsdale of NCD Equipment had a great display of TMK Tree Shears, Rabaud mulchers, stump grinders and a compact rubber tracked Mecalac excavator which he has recently become the dealer for.
Justin Kingwell of Kingwell Holdings is the leading UK’s service provider in forestry and vegetation management, mulching and biomass solutions. He had a range of equipment that he uses on a daily basis on display.
Fuelwood had a large area and an impressive selection of chipping, fencing, forestry and firewood manufacturing equipment. Their latest product, the Uniforest three point linkage skidder winches, took centre stage on their stall. Representatives from Fuelwood Warwick and Fuelwood Scotland were available to answer any customer queries.
This area also included more great equipment from Avant, John Deere, Kubota, T H White, and Iseki and I could have spent a lot of my day wandering around these great displays.
Further down I spotted the banners for SB and Home Forestry and thought that we would be arriving at the forestry pavilion area that had been advertised a on social media.
An Eco Log 590F Harvester with a Logmax 7000 harvesting head and a 574D Forwarder graced the SB Forestry stand. Both machines caused quite a stir with many of the visitors. SB Forestry is of course the UK distributor for Eco Log forestry equipment.
Home Forestry was next with the Alstor 840 low impact Combi Pro Forwarder/Harvester taking centre stage with the new Jobo ST50 harvesting head attached. Nathan had a good selection of Rabaud firewood, splitting and mulcher attachments and his Workbox- a secure site storage solution for tools and equipment.
After Home Foresty was the Ufkes display, they manufacture a good range of forestry chippers, and that was the extent of the forestry pavilion. I was led to believe there was to be a large forestry representation but to be honest it didn’t detract at all from my experience as the other sections way surpassed all my expectations.
Further down there was aisle upon aisle of some of the UK’s finest retailers and manufacturers. A complete aisle was dedicated to gun and ammunition manufacturers and suppliers. I had to smile when I looked around and saw people totally at ease with a gun on their back and drinking a beer. As someone who used to enjoy shooting but had to give it up due to Scotland’s Draconian gun laws, I can only imagine what Mrs Sturgeons reaction would be if this was in Scotland.
I was in such a good mood walking around that Wendy was caught completely off guard, it’s not very often my wallet sees daylight and ends up with a few purchases!
All in all this was a fantastic event with something interesting to see around every corner and for the time I spent there it was like stepping back into pre Covid times.
Forest Machine Magazine is written and edited by a forest professional with over 40 years hands on experience. We are dedicated to keeping you informed with all the latest news, views and reviews from our industry.
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