I’ve had a few conversations with American friends about grouse shooting and several have started with the American being sympathetic to grouse ‘hunting’ and them ending up saying ‘but that’s not hunting at all’. Correct! Driven grouse shooting is the most unsporting of sports and is akin to a computer game where one blasts away at targets. It’s a bit like dressing in tweed to play Candy Crush Saga.
I’ve sometimes wondered how Americans would react to Inglorious and now I know that at least one of them has got the message – it’s a good start as that American is John Riutta also known as The Well-read Naturalist who reviews Inglorious on his excellent website.
Here are some quotes from his thoughtful and very favourable review:
‘a style that flows smoothly back and forth between fact-based objective rationality and friendly, over-a-pint, good humor’
‘To read Inglorious is to allow yourself to be challenged; challenged to think deeply, to interweave what were previously unconnected bits of information into intricate tapestries of understanding, to seek answers to questions that extend far beyond the upland heathered moors and into the heart of just what the conservation of nature truly means. It’s a challenge well worth accepting.‘
http://www.christownsendoutdoors.com/2014/05/the-devastation-of-eastern-highlands.html
Well done. That looks promising from across the pond.
Found this link from the Guardian’s Environment blog but I expect you know it already.
He’s done Inglorious proud, he’s rational in his critique of subject and its author and let’s hope that he is sufficiently well read to encourage others to read and question.
The profile and more importantly the expose of the practice is now across the pond, excellent! I think a well deserved pint is in order and perhaps you might allow yourself a few moments off the throttle to savour the review and anticipate the surge in sales.
Have to confess I could rather picture some wealthy American millionaires enjoying mixing with some of the ‘establishment’ given the Americans at times insatiable appetite for quaint English pastimes even if they are ‘past time’? Let’s hope that a sense of fair play where sport is concerned wins over the majority, then as Riutta suggests the reasoned case convinces!
– that’s genius Mark. That’s the best put down of any so called field sport I have yet heard.
It is probably my age, but I always went with driven grouse shooting simply playing Nintendo Duck Hunt only it is even easier to set it on the easy mode.
“Driven grouse shooting is the most unsporting of sports and is akin to a computer game where one blasts away at targets.”
I simply don’t know how you can say that, Mark, since, as far as I’m aware, you have never been out on a day’s driven grouse shooting.
Please have another look at the comment I posted a few years ago, (https://markavery.info/2011/08/14/coping-grouse-shooting-coping-hen-harriers; final comment), where I tried to explain why driven grouse shooting is widely regarded as the most thrilling and challenging of field sports.
Lazywell – please re-read Chapter 2 of Inglorious including comments both pro- and anti- driven grouse shooting by shooting people.
Here’s one: ‘Traditionalists decried the unsporting nature of this driven shooting, where the shooter was not remotely a hunter of grouse but a mere recipient of a mass of live targets provided by the sweat and activity of the beaters.’