Friday February 1st. I went outside to clear the snow from my path, only to be met by a blast of gunfire. With 4-5 inches of snow, drifts along all the hedges and a bitterly cold wind, there on the hillside are some guns standing with their dogs, waiting for the beaters to flush out the pheasants and partridge for them to shoot.
Not that the birds will be willing to fly. They’ll be hunkered down, hidden, trying to keep out of the cold. But, hey, it’s the last day of the shooting season, the last chance to legally kill a ‘game’ bird until next August.
What is it about men and guns?
Every year the RSPB flags up the issue of grouse moors and the disappearance of birds of prey, and the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) publishes the horrendous numbers of birds bred to be shot – for ‘sport’.
In a letter to the i newspaper about grouse shooting the writer added this pertinent suggestion:
“I’d go even further and suggest that it is high time we had a balanced discussion on why (predominantly) men find it necessary to go out and shoot sentient creatures such as grouse and pheasants for pleasure…”
A balanced discussion? Blood sport supporters often say we humans have a ‘duty’ to manage wildlife. It has to be ‘controlled’, even though nature/ecology/the earth has managed very well for aeons without man’s help. One wonders what a ‘balanced countryside’ would look like. Blood sports have always been about killing for pleasure, not management of the countryside. Fox, deer and hare hunting are all unnecessary.
Foxes and deer
Foxes are not only illegally hunted using hounds. They are also shot, snared and poisoned to protect the game that men with guns want to shoot. Living surrounded by shooting, it is some years since I heard a vixen calling for a mate.
Being without natural predators, deer can be a problem, but the occasional culling of deer populations does not require stag hunts, hounds, or followers on horses and in cars. And stags are shot when they can run no further. It is the ‘chase’ that matters.
Hares
Brown hares used to be a common sight but, due to shooting, hare coursing and habitat destruction, they are under threat. Coursing is now illegal, but farmers still complain about coursers trespassing on their land. So the farmers shoot the hares instead. It is estimated that between 28% and 69% of local hare populations may be removed annually by shooting.
But those hit really hard are the mountain hares, dying in their thousands, – on average 26,000 each year. Mountain hare hunting is a commercial business, but the majority are culled to clear the way for grouse shooting. Grouse moor estates blame hares for spreading Louping Ill, a virus that affects red grouse and is transmitted by ticks carried by hares and other wildlife. Scotland’s wildlife charity OneKind has been campaigning hard on their behalf. New research reveals that mountain hare populations on north eastern Scottish moorlands now stand at less than 1% of what they were in 1954. Grouse moor managers have a lot to answer for.
But what about the game birds, the majority of which will never grace a dinner table? It is estimated that 100,000 birds are shot every day during the shooting season.
Grouse
In an announcement that grouse shooting in Northern England was suspended for the 2018 season, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) claimed “It’s commendable that the Guns have suspended shooting this year, grouse are a wild bird and we only ever shoot a sustainable surplus.” Patting themselves on the back for looking after a ‘wild bird’ ignores the other wildlife killed to achieve that surplus.
An estimated 250,000 grouse are shot every year on Scottish grouse moors.
In 2018 OneKind, Common Weal, Friends of the Earth Scotland, LACS and Raptor Persecution UK formed a coalition – Revive – to tackle Scotland’s grouse moors, which occupy nearly 20% of its total land mass. That so much land should be devoted solely to providing living targets for (predominantly) men to kill cries out for much-needed land reform.
The Revive report is impressive if grim reading.
The way the moors are managed turns them into vast fenced, outdoor breeding pens for the red grouse, as bleak and stimulation-empty as small pheasant pens.
There is mass outdoor medication which contaminates the environment and, via grouse, gets into the human food-chain. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate is responsible for monitoring this, but test hardly any grouse. Last year they aimed to test just 10 birds out of 250,000.
Apart from the mountain hare, other wildlife seen as a threat to grouse is trapped or snared. Out of 20 prominent grouse moor estates, Revive’s report lists 17 where wildlife crimes have been recorded. This often involves the raptors (Revive’s map shows how extensive this is). There are no figures for dead crows, foxes, weasels and stoats.
Many grouse moors receive EU agricultural subsidies. As well as killing hares to stop the grouse from tick infestation, sheep are also used to ‘mop up’ the ticks. Most people wouldn’t call that farming, but using sheep as ‘tick mops’ is still an agricultural operation that produces large subsidies.
This vast acreage has lost tenant farmers but produces just 2,640 jobs at an average wage of £11,000. So much land devoted solely to providing grouse is a problem very positively addressed in Back to Life by MSP Andy Wightman and Dr Ruth Tingay. Using the land for other activities , providing more jobs and a better economy, is quite possible.
Land damage
The BASC claims that shooting helps ‘the maintenance and enhancement of natural resources’. Tell that to the wildlife that gets ‘managed’ out of existence to ‘protect’ game birds. Savills Shoot Benchmarking Survey 2017-18 reports that 71% of shoots are ‘on land which is part of a paid agri-environment scheme’ land which also still benefits from EU farming subsidies.
One of worst examples of environmental damage is the practice of heather burning on grouse moors in Scotland and northern England to provide yet more grouse to shoot.
Much of the moorland lies on peat known as blanket bog. Peat stores water and, importantly, carbon emissions. Damage from heather burning causes water run-off and flooding, as has happened in Hebden Bridge. Yet millions of pounds of public money is paid out in “environmental stewardship” subsidies to grouse moor owners who are burning protected blanket bog.
Pheasants
Around 30 million pheasants are released annually. All are bred in captivity and up to 50 % are bred abroad, although that might change this year. When released from their pens, pheasants are completely ignorant about how their ‘world’ works.
Many fall prey from predators , which then themselves get trapped, snared or poisoned by gamekeepers ‘managing’ the shoots. Gamekeepers try, by calls and whistles, to encourage the birds to come to the pheasant feeders. They can be seen ‘herding’ pheasants towards feeders. But the birds can starve if they fly off the shoot’s land into an area without feeders.
As more small shoots are set up on farms (as happens in my county), local roads become a killing ground for these innocent birds. Having learnt that the man filling their feeders arrives in a vehicle, they can, and do, walk towards the speeding car that is about to run them over. As George Monbiot once pointed out, the farmer/estate owner is not liable for any accident or damage caused by wandering pheasants.
This may be a far quicker death than if they were shot. Under 40% of the released birds are actually shot, and far too many are wounded, to have their necks wrung or head clubbed by the game keeper. And some die a long death, unseen by those paid to pick up the dead.
Partridges
5 million partridges are released for shooting. Partridge is an attractive ‘game’ bird, but our native breed, the grey partridge, suffered serious decline and the numbers are only now recovering. So a non-native variety, the red legged (French) partridge, is either bred here or imported. One reason they are popular is that their shooting season begins a month earlier than the pheasant-shooting season – one more month of fun for the guns.
Partridges were considered a difficult shot because they flew high and fast. But some years ago the Telegraph reported that ‘experts say shooting estates are under threat because prized red-legged partridges are not flying as fast or as high as they used to, making them less challenging to shoot.’ Guns like to prove their marksmanship. There’s little boasting to be had in shooting a captive-bred bird too heavy to fly well.
Like pheasants, partridges are at a loss when released. Driving with friends along country lanes late one night, we found three separate lots of partridge asleep in the middle of the road. Bred in captivity, they didn’t understand grass verges and hedgerows, places where they could be safe and hidden. One was so out of its depth that it had to be picked up and carried to safety; the others were shepherded off the road.
The waste of life
The more birds shot, the more money made by the shoots. But what to do with all those carcasses, because few of the proud marksmen take home their share of the kill? Savills highlights the problem: supply is outstripping demand. Not that many people want to eat game, particularly when it’s full of lead shot.
‘Savills Game Meat survey of 566 shoots in conjunction with the Countryside Alliance found that game dealers take, on average, 48% of a shootsʼ shot game. Our Shoot Benchmarking data shows prices received have fallen by 50-60% over the last six year), and fell 35-38% between the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons. The market situation also meant not all shoots were able to sell their shot game, last season 46% were supplying their game dealer free of charge and 12% were paying the game dealer to collect them. There was some variation but typically payments were 20-30p per bird.’
Revive’s latest research shows that only 3% of Scots say they have eaten grouse once or twice in the last year while 80% say they never eat grouse. With millions of carcasses to dispose of, it is not surprising that shoots make use of ‘stink pits’. But that does not make it acceptable.
Good news
Natural Resources Wales has been granting leases for pheasant shooting in publicly-owned woodland, despite the Welsh Assembly being against the practice (74% of the Welsh public are against game bird shooting). NRW has confirmed it will not be granting any more leases. Although this is affects a tiny proportion of shoots, the men with guns are up in arms, the BASC touting ‘a review of shooting on the Welsh Government’s woodland estate which considered 250 pieces of evidence at a cost of £48,000. This concluded the sport should continue as shooting contributes to the country’s sustainable management and well-being goals.’ Whose well being?
Also, around 50% of the 35 million pheasants released into the British countryside each year start their life on factory farms abroad. But cross-channel ferry companies are now refusing to ship pheasant chicks because of welfare concerns, their decision being backed up by a ruling in a French court. Will this now mean fewer birds being shot?
The British public are very much against this lust for killing, and hopefully their views will prevail. Organisations like Revive are beginning to influence government policy. A LACS-commissioned Survation poll showed that, while 5 % of rural residents were involved in game bird shooting, 82 % of rural residents said observing/enjoying wildlife was one of their favourite activities. The countryside and its population are changing and it is becoming more than obvious to the disapproving public that shooting is and always has been about ‘predominantly’ men, enjoying the act of killing.
Lesley Docksey
