Nicole – Game and Wildlife Management

NICOLE

Game and Wildlife Management

I chose Sparsholt because of the great facilities here, such as the rifle range and clay site. 

My name is Nicole Garner and I’m on the Game and Wildlife course at Sparsholt. 

There’s a lot of opportunities that they give you at Sparsholt, and they have great facilities here. We have a clay site and a rifle range that we use often as it gives us a lot of experience using shotguns and firearms that we can use in the future with our jobs. We’ve also got the Game and Wildlife centre which has a butcher room in there so we can store all of our large game meat that we shoot out in the local wood that we have permission on which is good. 

We have wonderful tutors here at Sparsholt! They’re lovely and friendly and you can go to them about anything – any troubles you have they will help you out straight away.  

The course has a lot of industry links – we’ve had speakers come in from the NGO and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust which has given us a lot of information about the industry and what further things we can go into. 

On our first year we had to do an Industry Placement which is where you go into the work industry and do normal working life. This practical work that we do helps with our theory lessons that we do in class. 

There have been many highlights at Sparsholt. If I had to choose three the first one would definitely be being able to run a shoot day. During COIVD we haven’t had so many shoot days, but the college managed to pull one through and it was such a good experience. My second highlight would probably have to be the deer gralloching practicals. I learnt so much that day and it will help me out in the future. The last one would definitely have to be the working dogs because I just love dogs and it was so interesting learning about them and if they got hurt how to take care of them. It was just really interesting. 

I have a job lined up which is very exciting, and I’ve got that from the college! They gave me links which was very useful – the college send out loads of job opportunities all the time. 

Yes I’d recommend Sparsholt – Sparsholt has given me a job basically which is lovely and they’ve been so helpful and kind and friendly and my experience will help me go further into the future.