Grouse season starts - Royal Family shoot

[antelopevalley]

Grouse shooting season starts. People who get fun out of killing birds largely bred to be shot for fun.
The Royal Family take part in grouse shoots and controversially George was present at a grouse shoot at only five years old.
Is this really a suitable leisure pursuit for the Royal Family? To shoot birds for fun?

www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/travel/controversial-royal-family-summer-holiday-tradition-starts-today-but-they-ve-been-urged-not-to-include-prince-george/ar-AA10B485?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=3ba1e30265144c75c5e573a3fa41a20e

Shooters spend £2.5 billion each year on goods and services
Shooting supports the equivalent of 74,000 full time jobs
Shooting is worth £2 billion to the UK economy (GVA)
Shooting is involved in the management of two-thirds of the rural land area
There are 4 million (est) airgun owners – of which 1.6 m shoot live quarry
600,000 people in the UK shoot live quarry, clay pigeons or targets
Shoot providers spend nearly £250 million a year on conservation
Shooters spend 3.9 million work days on conservation – that’s the equivalent of 16,000 full-time jobs.

I copied and pasted this, but can link to site where full value of shooting survey will enlighten more if anyone wants.

Hen harriers (protected species) like catching grouse.

A bit of a mystery with Prince Harry being around when 2 were shot

It's all Harry's fault, it had to be!

What has an 11 year old story about Harry got to do with the subject matter?

Shame..an informative post spoilt for dragging him into it.

I thought my post was Informative about the input to the economy.

Harry was an aside, he does shoot however, but maybe he has been on a course now which has cured him.

It’s also a shame that the OP thought bringing Prince George into it was ok?

George is an heir to the throne and lives here. He's been grouse shooting since the age of 5 so it's obviously a tradition that will carry on.

Harry who we don't pay for is not a working member of the RF and lives in the US and that's an old article. Who knows his views now, it's irrelevant, he carries no bearing on the ongoing traditions of the RF.

I didn't know every post about anything to do with the RF has to have a post knocking Harry in it.

😂

@Roussette

Prince George has been see accompanying his dad on a shoot so will obviously carry on (have you got a crystal ball)?

DH shoots, took DS on a couple when he was young. Apart from the initial excitement of running round with the dogs flushing out the birds, it wasn’t for him. He likes shooting, but only does clays.

Prince George isn’t a working member of the family either (yet). You do not know his views either. So he too by your chain of thinking must be irrelevant.

It is relevant to bring Prince Harry into it when grouse shooting is legal, and they go into the food chain. Shooting a couple of hen harriers is not legal. But we will never know who did it because the bodies were never found.

Prince George has been see accompanying his dad on a shoot so will obviously carry on (have you got a crystal ball)?

No. I didn't say he would carry on. I said the tradition would carry on.
It's been in place since the 18th century, so I can't see it stopping any time soon. No crystal ball needed for that
George accompanied his father at age 5 and 7, who knows what his views will be in time to come.

Harry doesn't live here anymore.

Yep, not to mention the awful welfare costs to these birds. Raised and fed in a protected environment to just be released one day with no access to shelter, food or water and left to starve to death or get run over. The lucky ones get shot. It's abhorrent.
Only you ignorant here @Northernlurker

What is this thread actually about?

I’m assuming that those posting about the welfare of the birds are vegan?

I’m not vegan but only the deliberately ignorant don’t care about burning of peat lands.

Go clay pigeon shooting, don’t destroy critical environment.

@crabcakesalad Grouse definitively aren’t bred in captivity. Pheasants and partridges are, red grouse are not.

@Roussette

Lets put it down to semantics.

He's been grouse shooting since the age of 5 so it's obviously a tradition that will carry on.

I read it as Prince George has been shooting since 5 (as opposed to accompanying his father), and a tradition that will carry on to me infers that it’s passed down to next generation.

Anyway, I now have a bloody Cliff Richard earworm going round in my head!. Hope you’re of a certain age and you end up with it too😂

Lots of people getting grouse shooting and pheasant shooting mixed up here - both have environmental issues, but grouse aren't bred, reared and released.

It's a sad but unescapable fact that the rural economy in many areas is reliant on money from people who enjoy killing animals - however we can't go cold turkey on it, it needs to be a long process of withdrawal from this sort of activity, and a restructure to different types of land management and employment.

For the upland moors, soon water management and fire risk are going to become the dominant factors, followed by carbon storage and capture - however people whose identity is built around shooting birds and mammals for fun aren't going to give up without a long and bitter argument. And it's not all bad news - game management does provide some benefits in the current unnatural and precarious ecosystems we have, keeping some bird populations hanging on by a thread through control of predator species and some habitat management. There are so many factors that have resulted in us ending up in this manufactured landscape, we are going to have to gradually manage our way out of it and personally I think we will need to work with the moorland owners and managers to do that over a long period.

I've worked with gamekeepers on upland bird management (waders, hen harriers, SSO), and can never forget chatting with a keeper who spoke with knowledge, enthusiasm and real love about the snipe, and then followed it up with excitement about a future which might mean killing more of them each year. Such cognitive dissonance.
For a glimmer of hope, google the Langholm Moor Community Buyout.

(Short eared owl SEO not SSO doh)

Oh and given this is on a Royal Family board not an environment one, I will add that the RF have a real opportunity to lead change in the shooting community, but it doesn't seem like they genuinely want to.
Like many people, they get a kick out of killing wild animals.

@Lolliesareonme How very dare you send me a Cliff Richard earworm! That's my worst nightmare. 😂🤣

Yes, we just had a few crossed wires there, no problem, we will see what the future generation does! Who knows!

@Ihaventgottimeforthis Very interesting informative post from you.

I readily admit I know little on the subject so can't knock it totally, but I do think the RF have to lead from the front. If there's any leading to be done.

Goodness, there is so much ignorance on this thread, it’s quite incredible. Admittedly I live in the countryside and get to see the shooting industry first hand, so to some degree I can’t completely dismiss other people’s opinions on the basis that their ill informed. Likewise, I would never dream of commenting on threads, making statements that I knew little about or have simply read somewhere on social media.

In my own little way, I’ll try and alleviate some people’s concerns and misunderstandings;

• Grouse are not reared. They are a completely wild bird which thrive on our beautiful heather moorlands.
• Heather moorland would not exist without careful management. It would simply revert back to scrub and bracken.
• The thousands of acres of private moorlands survive only by many millions of pounds of private funding.
• Raptor persecution is thankfully a thing of the past. Doubtless there will still be the odd rogue keepers breaking the law, but the numbers speak for themselves. In recent years more hen harrier and merlin chicks have successfully fledged on managed grouse moors than anywhere else in the country, including rspb managed lands. This is entirely down to the hard work of the keepers creating a safe habitat.
• Water run off creating flooding. Again, a mis used argument; moors often had drainage channels cut into them between 50 and 100 years ago to create a drier environment for sheep to graze. Again, millions of pounds of private investment has been ploughed in over recent decades to reverse this. If anyone lives near a managed moorland, I’d actively encourage them to visit. Take your binoculars and physically list the amount of diverse wildlife you’ll see, only then might you truly appreciate the tireless efforts of the keepers and moor owners.

The RSPB published a report this year about the harmful impact of managed grouse moorland on the environment.

Equating this with moors generally is a misnomer. Grouse moorland is managed in a way to maximise grouse at the expense of the wider environment,

A report for Revive, a coalition of environmental and animal rights groups, has found grouse moors cause significant ecological damage by burning heather, allowing heavy grazing by deer and sheep, and using intensive predator control.

"The grouse shooting industry accounts for huge areas of Britain, its characteristic open heather moorland symbolic of the upland landscape. But grouse estates are under the spotlight as never before, implicated in controversies around animal welfare and wildlife crime, and blamed for environmental ills such as biodiversity loss, downstream flooding, upland fires and the spreading rash of unplanned estate tracks."

www.ukhillwalking.com/articles/opinions/grouse_moors_-_benign_tradition_or_eco_disaster-12522

Grouse moors account for around 550,000 acres of land in England and Scotland.
The Grouse Hunting Season is 4 months long and starts on ‘The Glorious Twelfth’ (of August).
Grouse moors have to be prepared before the shooting season begins, which often involves burning heather fields.
To increase red grouse numbers, heather is burned and to provide a mixed-age profile of heather plants for the birds to eat, wet areas are drained to encourage heather growth.
Native birds and mammals who ‘interfere’ with grouse shooting are trapped, poisoned or snared. Victims include stoats, weasels, hen harriers, red kites and golden eagles.
Mountain hares carry ticks that affect grouse, so are killed.
The Committee on Climate Change estimated that some 350,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year is emitted from upland peat in England, the majority of which (260,000 tonnes) is due to burning on grouse moors.
Burning the peat-rich moors to produce dry ground suitable for growing heather, reduces the moorland’s ability to absorb and retain water.
Large quantities of lead shot are discharged, which is toxic to wildlife.
Grouse shoot operators – whose clients can each pay more than £3,000 for a single day’s shooting – receive millions of pounds annually from the taxpayer via the Common Agricultural Policy.
Grouse shooting brings around £32 million to the Scottish economy and supports approximately 2,640 jobs.

greenecofriend.co.uk/grouse-moors-flooding/

I'd be quite happy to see off a few dozen pheasants in my locality. The birds are notorious for wandering into roads and running at cars. Not because they are naive wee hatchling who can't take care of themselves but because pheasants in general are idiot birds that like to try and fight bigger animals than them, which include cars.

And whilst pheasants are smaller than cars, their idiot heads and bodies appear to be made of steel girders and can do a hefty amount of damage to a car.

Grouse on the other hand like to wander aimlessly and are fond of being fed from giant tubs.

I'd rather the demise of the birds didn't mean the countryside filled up with the Huntin' n Shootin' n Fishin' boors though.

It's a fair point that heather moorland needs management to stay in the condition we are familiar with at this moment in time, however it is a very intensively manufactured almost artificial ecosystem, a result of hundreds of years of draining, grazing and burning. If we had left it alone in the past, we would have a much more biodiverse mosaic of bogs, fens, scrub, clough woodland, open water and heather, looking very different to what it does now.
Should our uplands remain in this bleak condition? It's true that allowing them to naturally regenerate will in the short term create a lot of scrub and bracken, and also perhaps molinia and other rank grassland, and in the meantime there will be impacts on familiar views and perhaps even increased fire risk. And maybe therey are too far gone to get back to a truly natural ecosystem.
But - there are ways to improve our upland management, and the fact that some people like killing birds and deer, and make money out of it, isn't a good enough argument for us to not try to change things for the future.
In short, our uplands aren't rich in wildlife, they are not delivering the environmental benefits they should, and raptor persecution is happening.
But there isn't a simple solution, and there are social and cultural issues to consider as well as environmental. So there needs to be a joint solution.

I think we have a lot of much bigger problems to worry about. Can't get excited about this.