To not understand the 'Glorious Twelfth?

[Dolcelatte]

I have a lot of grouse in my garden and they are beautiful. I just don't understand how people can get pleasure from shooting them. I am not vegetarian or anything and I do eat game, so perhaps I am being hypocritical; but I can't see anything glorious about killing for sport.

Well I would like to think that what is killed us also eaten.

I believe that this is all part if seasonal, local food.
Of course, if you are prepared to pay a premium for strawberries in December that have more airmiles than Prince Andrew, that is up to you.

There is one hell of a lot f money involved in shooting game. A hell of a lot. I live very close to the moors where this takes place

thecageisfull
Grouse moors benefit most wildlife, and studies (including rspb ones by the way) show that hen harriers do incredibly well in grouse moors - better in fact than in many of their own reserves.

ohwhatfuckeryisthis
Yes it is happy coincidence but we have a stark choice here and I'll tell you why:
On this tiny overcrowded island that is the uk, all land has a monetary value. If a farmer or landowner owns x number of acres then he needs to see a return from it to stay afloat. Most farms / estates comprise a mixture of arable and grazing lands which make money, sporting interests such as shooting also generate cash and then there are govt backed set aside schemes and the like which compensate us for taking land out of production to benefit wildlife and the environment (btw, this almost never offsets the losses completely, but we swallow this loss because most farmers / estate owners love nature and want it to thrive).

Now here is the important bit to his debate. Grouse moors are located in comparatively barren upland areas which, if they were not maintained as moors by gamekeepers, would very quickly return to scrubby pastureland which is pretty much only good for grazing sheep so you can take your pick. Would you rather use the land to rear a few grouse to be shot and sent to the local butchers as food and in turn create a habitat to support a myriad of rare and precious wildlife, or would you rather have a patch of windswept grassland of far lower ecological value with much less biodiversity just to satisfy some sort of vendetta against so called toffs?
Oh by the way, the profit margins in running a shoot are very very small indeed , most landowners do it because they enjoy it, there isn't really much money to go back into their pockets.
As for subsidies, as I already said they don't cover the lost production. On my farm, if I got rid of all my hedgerows, woodlands and set aside lands (thus loosing my subsidies) and essentially turned the place into a giant American style factory farm I reckon I'd be about £100,000 a year better off - yes a hundred grand a year!
I don't do this because I love nature and am a keen conservationist. The sport of shooting goes hand in hand with conservation.

manina you make a fair point. Although is it not also true to say that much of this upland grass would previously have been ancient woodland?

There are efforts by the John Muir Trust to restore some such land in the Borders. Of course it does also mean excluding that other non-native animal, the sheep!

Trying to re-esstablish true ancient woodland is a very very difficult process, which at best would take centuries. It is not just about having the right trees, but also having the right fungi colonising the soil.
We are fortunate that these uplands have soil still - look at some of the hill tops in France where wood was removed for Napoleon.

However woodland is not always the most species rich habitat. That is why a lot of effort goes into preserving ares of Downland in the South East, including managed grazing. Similarly why lowland Heath and Bogs are managed in a way to preserve them.

The UK landscape is one that has been altered by man for thousands of years. Species have been adapting and evolving since the last ice age (about 12,000 years ago), and I doubt there has in that time ever been a really "stable" landscape in the UK since then.

Bird Brain buy Guy Kennway. Very funny novel written from the point of view of a pheasant.

Real townie woman I am so can't bear the though of shooting or killing anything but can absolutely understand and found maninawimansworld post really interesting and sensible.

Hen harriers do like to nest on grouse moors in this country, but doing so gets them shot. Read about what happened to Bowland Betty, one of the handful of hen harrier chicks to fledge in Britain in 2011. (It is a pity that our hen harriers seem so set on breeding in moorland. My sister lives in southern France and there are hen harriers nesting in an arable field a stone's throw from her home.)

I'm all for looking after the full biodiversity of every habitat that we have in the UK, whether natural or not so much, very species-rich or not so much. Upland grassy moor is also valuable habitat (if not overgrazed). Unfortunately, as other posters have said, commercial grouse moors are managed to look after only red grouse, at artificially inflated numbers, and any other species that might impact on grouse numbers are not tolerated. Here's a quote from the head of species and land management at RSPB Scotland (and remember that the RSPB are not anti-shooting).

"We have seen major intensification of management practices on many grouse moors in the central and eastern Highlands and Southern Uplands of Scotland.

"This moorland management places emphasis on increasing the numbers of gamekeepers, to undertake high levels of predator control, more frequent and extensive heather burning, veterinary medication of red grouse, and the killing of mountain hares and deer, ostensibly to prevent tick-borne grouse diseases.

"It would be far more appropriate to describe this activity as 'grouse farming', with monocultures of heather habitat producing unnaturally high grouse shooting bags.

"Indeed, we do not believe that is possible, whilst continuing to operate within the bounds of the law."

And if course the main point is that hen harriers and other raptors are ILLEGALLY killed in the name of profit. By gamekeepers, to protect the grouse. IF they get caught, they get fined (wonder who pays the fine?) they aren't banned from game keeping and so it goes.
And kudos to you Man for being so ecologically minded, but most farmland in Britain is amongst the most un diverse and barren in the country. Set aside and other incentive schemes do little to combat this.

Oh, meant to say, gamekeepers don't do this off their own bat they are actively encouraged, if not told to do this by landowners.

Farmland in Britain is mainly intensively farmed so that we can all eat. I don't think there is a choice in that! As man says it is expensive to be ecologically minded. Is it a better idea to have only organic farms in this country and import grain from overseas to actually feed the population at a reasonable cost?

As for killing hawks. It is illegal and there are undoubtedly some gamekeepers who kill them but the majority don't because there goes there job and livelihood. There is probably just as much damage done by egg collectors.

DHs shoot is very small. They shoot on national trust moorland and their keeper most certainly doesn't do all this medicating, other bird clearing and raptor killing! The members look after the young birds (pheasant) and manage the area with conservation in mind.

In the grand scheme of things shooting as a sport is pretty harmless.

Pheasant shooting is v different to grouse shooting though, because red grouse are wild and pheasants are more or less domestic. Huge numbers of pheasants are captive-bred/reared, then released, joining the (much smaller) numbers of young pheasants that have been born in the wild. So the estates can guarantee that there will be plenty of them about for the shooters.

Red grouse are not kept in captivity, they only live and breed in the wild, so to guarantee a 'shootable surplus' the keepers have to do all the stuff mentioned above to cut down natural mortality as much as possible.

not sure how a meat eater can object to the killing of animals for meat really

Roonerspism
Yes you are right, at one time or another most of this country would have been wild and lovely, covered in ancient woodlands and all sorts of other habitats. I for one would kill to go back to those times and have mankind live in harmony with it. Unfortunately this would require killing 95% of the human population and waiting centuries upon centuries for nature to reassert itself so it's not going to happen any time soon.
This lovely habitat was cleared for farming long before the gun was even invented so you can't blame shooting for that one.

As for hen harriers, they are wonderful creatures and the killing of them by gamekeepers is very very rare. There have been one or two incidents over the past decade which have been seized upon by the anti shooting 'meat is murder' extremists and are constantly trotted out as examples to try and turn the public against shooting.

Wildlife crime such as this does carry heavy penalties and the keepers involved would almost certainly have lost their jobs as one of the punishments is usually revocation of the keeper's gun licences which are essential to allow him to do his job. Once lost, you NEVER get them back.

A pal of mine has a grouse moor and has a wonderful way of dealing with hen harriers. He feeds them!
They are predominately carrion birds and given a choice between having to expend energy chasing down a grouse or an easy meal left out by the keeper they will choose the latter.
Several of use farmers and the local pest man supply him with dead things such as rabbits, stillborn lambs / calves, poultry that doesn't survive etc and he leaves them out for the hen harriers. They are so stuffed by this bounty that the leave his grouse alone.

We all get the pleasure of our sport and also get to see these wonderful birds flying over the moors. Again it's win-win!

GerundTheBehemoth
I have just noticed your quote:
and remember that the RSPB are not anti-shooting

Sorry but you are totally wrong! Wrong in the strongest possible terms my friend!
The RSPB are COMPLETELY anti shooting and have been for a long time.
They are slightly more coy about admitting it openly as they have seen the damage done to the RSPCA's reputation over the politicisation of the organisation over the hunting issue but they would ban all shooting outright tomorrow if they had half a chance.

Saying the RSPB are not anti shooting is total fucking bullshit. Sorry.

Sorry, to you too, but the RSPB's position on shooting is neutral. The society is not campaigning for any kind of ban on shooting. They are campaigning for appropriate action to deal with illegal raptor persecution.

And hen harriers are not habitual carrion-feeders. They prey mainly on small rodents, and small birds such as meadow pipits. However, like most birds of prey they will take carrion at times, esp when there are chicks to be fed. It's great to hear that diversionary feeding is working on your friend's land. But there is no denying that this species is in trouble, especially in England and mainland Scotland, and illegal persecution is a key cause. The same is true of golden eagles in Scotland.

Officially yes they say they are neutral but as I said they have watched the RSPCA and the position they have gotten themselves into and are keen not to follow suit.
Their position on shooting is anything but neutral and if / when a time arrives when they think they might be able to further their cause by admitting it, then they will show their hand publicly.

RE Hen harriers - yes they are in trouble but grouse moors and shooting are not the problem, hen harrier numbers are very high on most moors, much higher in fact than on many of the RSPB's own reserves. This fact really needles them - they continually try desperately to explain this away without actually giving any credit to the shooting community because that would mean admitting we aren't all monsters hell bent on killing everything that moves for the fun of it.

As for hen harriers, they are wonderful creatures and the killing of them by gamekeepers is very very rare.
No the prosecution is rare cos they don't get caught. Wildlife crime units are understaffed, and being able to actually catch anyone is pretty difficult. Like I said up thread, the Birders Against Wildlife Crime site is worth a peek. And here is a bit of documentation about raptor persection
And being interested in wildlife doesn't make people into "meat is murder" extremists.

The first line of the article. Latest figures from the RSPB...
Hmmm, the same RSPB that claim to be so neutral about shooting? Surely not?
Also, what makes you think it is only gamekeepers who dislike hen harriers?

I agree that being interested in wildlife crime doesn't make one an extremist, I am very pro wildlife. If I wasn't I'd have a lot more cash in my pocket and a porsche on my drive after turning my farm into a giant ecological wasteland to maximise production. My point was that the extremists keep trotting out the same old handful of case studies to make.

And sorry I don't consider an article by the Guardian 'documentation' of any sort - they are the most left wing , politically correct bunch of tree huggers going (IMO).

Unless someone has actual statistics supporting the theory that gamekeepers are the chief killers of raptors it is unfair to label them so. Difficult I know as it is an illegal activity but there are other causes of raptor decline. Idiotic egg collectors for one. Diminishing habitat another.

To understand the glorious twelfth is to understand it is a hobby, which thousands of people enjoy and which contributes to the rural economy. Any perceived damage caused by the rearing of birds for the table is offset by the conservation used. Birds are shot and usually die instantaneously. Birds are not killed because people enjoy killing birds but it's the skill of shooting them. They are not discarded but eaten or sold to shops/restaurants. It's free range and healthy meat.

And sorry I don't consider an article by the Guardian 'documentation' of any sort - they are the most left wing , politically correct bunch of tree huggers going (IMO).
And?
Last time I looked though there were actual laws about printing falsehoods, which the guardian does tend to follow quite strictly.
pink egg collectors are a minor problem. If it wasn't why are raptor numbers diminishing at a greater rate than other species?

manina
Tree huggers...... Oh how fucking original

Like Ohwhatfuckery says, egg collecting isn't a big problem (though of course it shouldn't happen at all).

Here are the basics from the RSPB's 2012 Birdcrime report.
208 reports of shooting and destruction of birds of prey
78 reports of poisoning and the use of poisoned baits
25 egg collecting incidents. There were two confirmed and four probable nest robberies of eggs and chicks of Schedule 1 species
25 reports of illegal taking, possession or sale of birds of prey
67 reports of illegal taking, possession or sale of wild birds other than birds of prey, predominantly finches.

There are links to the full Birdcrime report (and those from previous years) here. A snippet from the 2012 report, concerning golden eagles:

'A number of lines of evidence indicated that illegal persecution is principally associated with intensive grouse moor management in the central and eastern Highlands, and is the most severe constraint on Scottish golden eagle populations.'

and another concerning hen harriers:

'A scientific study in mainland Scotland between 1988 and 1995 showed there was much lower breeding success on grouse moors compared to other habitats. It was estimated 11–15% of breeding female hen harriers were killed each year on the Scottish mainland.' [the study referenced is this one: Etheridge, B., Summers, R.W. and Green, R.E. (1997) The effects of illegal killing and destruction of nests by humans on the population dynamics of the hen harrier Circus cyaneus in Scotland. Journal of Applied Ecology, 34: 1081 - 1105.]