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

Nope still as clear as mud? Can you explain please

Excellent. I’m glad you’re happy.

Insightful! You mean a landowners opinion piece about why the RSPB should stop trying to interfere in grouse moors and shooting birds.

Thank you. I'm just about always happy. Life's too short to be otherwise. Hope you're lucky enough to feel like that too.

Murderous, ignorant pricks the lot of them.

Would love to see them accidentally shoot themselves tbh- live by the sword, die by the sword.

A reason I actually like Meg.

The Guardian is hardly a bastion of landowner rights?

@antelopevalley

No, I mean insightful as it's well balanced, using a breadth of well respected sources and shows the complexities around what is clearly an emotive issue.

Undoubtedly balancing the needs of different bird and animal species is complex, they can't all thrive equally.

I found the research into the declined of some bird species on the reserve moorland interesting as it wasn't something I'm aware of.

We don't always have to agree with what we read, but it's best to remain level headed in debate.

On a personal level I have breeding sparrow hawks in my garden, they're certainly beautiful but there is therefore a decline of small garden birds. Additionally they have had several moorhen chicks which I've been keeping an eye on. So the debate on balance of raptors vs other birds is personally interesting.

It is not insightful.
I am not a personal supporter of the RSPB so am quite willing to read if they have got it wrong.
But this is an opinion piece that has anonymous "quotes", dismisses research without explaining why, and promotes other research for no obvious reason except that it promotes their point of view.

Show me an article in Nature arguing grouse moors are good for conservation and then I will take notice. Nature would never accept such an obviously shoddy article.

So published in Nature - correlation between grouse moors spreading and hen harrier population plummeting.
www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09044-w

@antelopevalley

what on EARTH does ‘the pheasant population is kept artificially high’ mean?

It’s not a native species, what do you think the natural population level/density is?

I don’t think you understand a lot about this topic. You just look for anything, however tenuous, to link to your Royal Family obsession, and start (yet another) thread

and that’s not a personal attack either. It’s a statement of facts, as anyone who takes a quick glance at your posting history, can see

In one breath, you claim to read scientific papers for a living

In the next, you don’t understand the difference between correlation and causation..?
come on, now…

What did I not understand?
I used correlation i.e. grouse moors spread and hen harrier populations plummet.
Correlation means they both happen together. Causation scientifically means you have scientific proof that one causes the other.

I can not stress how much I disagree with shooting and hunting, the royal family need to stop in line with public opinion. Here they kill pheasants and birds. It’s barbaric.

@antelopevalley I think you are getting stuck on one specific bird though (incidentally a criticism of the RSPB) and ignoring absolutely everything else which isn’t how land management works.

@Festoonlights why? Deer culling of non native species for conservation purposes is essential. Deers live natural lives and then are eaten as venison. Woodland bird populations decline by 50% in areas heavily populated by deer because they eat their habitats. There are thousands of acres of SSSI woodland that are rated unfavourable because of the impact of deers damaging and killing trees.

@fyn I totally agree that good land management is not about focusing on one species of bird. I simply shared the link to the Nature article as an example of what decent research and meaningful reporting look like.
Sadly there is a lot of junk "research" around, usually commissioned by organisations with big money behind them and with a clear idea of what they want the "research" to find. So I am always wary of any so-called research that is not also reported in quality journals as well as the wider media. It usually means it is not good enough to report in anything except general media to be read by members of the public who do not know how to read it critically.

The game bird industry puts millions in to the economy

Where? I’m 58, I’ve never come across a grouse in my whole life. What millions into where?

£2billion from shooting each year according to shooting groups.

Discount that by 50% if you don’t believe them but it’s still a lot of money.

Not a big fan of grouse to be honest. I prefer other game birds like pheasant

According to shooting groups?🤔

That’s why I thought we’d discount by 50%

We eat mainly game in the season surely ethically better as a meat eater than eating cheap chicken? Have you seen how cheap chickens are kept and also killed? We have also raised our own chickens for meat as it is important to me to know if I want to eat meat that I am prepared to slaughter it myself. Why shouldn’t George be at the shoot? What is worse about that then helping in an abattoir? Surely everyone who eats meat shout be prepared to at least visit an abattoir to understand what happens to the meat they eat. The game birds have a lovely life and a much nicer death generally. Our son has been around shooting since he was 5 as we both shoot and at 9 got his own shotgun, he is still in training though until we let him game shooting as we need to know he is accurate so it is clays for now.

@Florin

I agree, as a meat eater I find battery farmed chickens much more 'barbaric' than hunting or shooting.

It’s true - no one who eats intensively farmed meat can be against game shooting if they are honest with themselves

Have name changed for this.

Am interested in this thread, for a couple of reasons.

I am from a country family, although I don't now live in the country myself. My family, who in some cases farm and who've lived for several generations in the countryside, generally regard grouse shooters in the same way as they regard the local hunts; they put up with them because it's an accepted part of where they live, but they don't support them. They consider them in the main to be arrogant, and to have a general disdain with regards to people's land and property and also in several cases, to have a very 'flexible' view of the law. I say this as a person whose father was a member of the BASC and who also had uncles involved in management of beagles for hunting. I am a meat eater and I love pheasant, but that doesn't mean I can't also think country sports in some cases are questionable in their operation. This idea that everyone who is a true country person supports all blood sports is incorrect. There are plenty who do not.

From a professional perspective, I had the misfortune to have to deal with the land manager and external agent of a large grouse estate as part of one of my projects. The manager, agent and keepers were difficult beyond belief, both physically and administratively obstructive, and in some cases actually physically threatening towards staff working on the project. They demanded compensation at every possible opportunity. The ecologists working on the project were of the same view as many above, that raptors in the area were far fewer than should be expected in that landscape, and police later confirmed that they were well aware of raptor persecution in that area, but had insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution.

The Royal Family in its current guise will likely not give up country sports, nor will many of those who see participation as very much status linked, but that doesn't mean that questioning it makes you a naive, towny fool!

@oncewasacountrydweller

A measured and interesting post, thank you.

@oncewasacountrydweller Thank you for that. Very interesting.
My family are farmers but not near grouse moors and have the same view of you about the hunt. They destroy hedges, go on land they are banned from, and kill livestock. My family shoot foxes as pests so they are not sentimental about foxes. But they are not fans of the hunt and the damage they do.