I missed seeing Sir John Lister-Kaye at the Bird Fair but I’m told he gave an excellent talk about raptor persecution. He’s a good speaker, I know, and I’m sure his talk will have motivated many of his audience on this important subject.
I’m told, by upwards of a dozen people (so I’m pretty sure that this was the case) that Sir John said that the trouble with my position on the grouse industry was that I want to see all grouse shooting banned – whereas my actual target is driven grouse shooting, the most intensive form of the non-sporting ‘sport’.
I have written a book on this subject and if Sir John were to read it then he would be better informed. Inglorious was on sale at the Bird Fair and continues to sell pretty well – it’s not very difficult to find out what I think about grouse shooting.
Indeed if Sir John were to go into a bookshop and just flick through the passages at the end of each chapter entitled ‘What I would like you to take away from this chapter’ he would notice the word ‘driven’ in each of them – every one, Sir John!
Another clue might be that I have initiated three UK parliament e-petitions which have called for a ban on driven grouse shooting.
So, Sir John, you misrepresented my views but no hard feelings. Except that a lot of your audience knew you had got this wrong and so some of them would have been wondering what else you might have got wrong, which is a shame as I know you are passionate about this subject and you and I are very much on the same side. I’m sorry I didn’t see you to have a chat over the three days of the Bird Fair – it would have been nice to catch up.
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In one of his books he mentions a deer stalker he used to know who took a bottle of strychnine with him to poison the gutted deer’s grallochs to kill any eagles and foxes that feasted on them. How bloody awful to have someone tell you that, must have been soul destroying. Obviously the grouse moors are the nemesis for eagles, but still significant incidents of eagle (golden and sea) persecution over to the west too. I listened to a crofter recently telling the interviewer with a straight and serious face that sheep farming on the west coast was now no longer economically viable due to sea eagles. Funny I thought it had never been which is why they were getting lots of subsidy.