The media coverage of the Inglorious Twelfth is very muted this year.
Daily Telegraph – a rambling piece as much about Pheasants and partridges as Red Grouse. At least it admits that game shooting is in crisis but says it is an ancient sport. That’s as ancient as the Victorian age as far as driven grouse shooting is concerned. Neither the author nor the sub-editor, or their combination, seems to have been paying more than a cursory attention to the words for this alleged sentence to have got through ‘And, of course, there’s the march of the Scottish National Party against English landlords; the very idea of grouse shooting and allegations that gamekeepers have illegally killed predatory birds who threaten their beloved grouse.‘. The article sounds almost like an au revoir to shooting grouse click here.
Yorkshire Post – this (news)paper can never say anything bad about grouse shooting, and doesn’t here. Everything’s great – especially in Yorkshire click here.
City A.M. – treats the whole thing as an excuse to dress up in tweed – click here.
The Independent – from what I gather before it disappears behind a wall of adverts (and it doesn’t look interesting enough to bother to register to read more) it’s all about being flexitarian… Pity about the lead content, of course.
But the interesting commentary is in the Shooting Times. Shooting Times arrives at my house each week and from the envelope I can’t tell whether it is Birdwatch or Shooting Times so I open it and then feel disappointed. But, actually, it is often quite a good read – in some ways, a better read than Birdwatch although I often read Shooting Times several weeks after it arrives.
No Red Grouse on the cover this week, no editorial comment by the editor, but a couple of articles trying to make the best of what is likely to be another poor season for grouse shooting – although nobody actually says that.
On page 5 we are told, by Matt Cross, there will be a ‘steady’ start to grouse shooting which sounds like a stuttering start given that ‘early season days are hard to find’ and although there is some attempt to blame this on lack of beaters (I thought these were all locals gagging for, and dependent on, the cash in hand?) it is likely that when the article says that numbers are ‘recovering’ from poor breeding last year that may often mean ‘haven’t recovered from poor breeding last year’.
A few pages on, page 14, and Lindsay Waddell, retired gamekeeper, confirms that he expects ‘a few moors [to do] reasonably well, some doing less so and sadly some not having much to shoot at all’. He describes that as ‘an old-fashioned’ grouse year. But since this will be the third poor year for many, and fourth for some, capital values of grouse moors, which are influenced by game bags, will be falling. Also very interesting, is the suggestion that this might be the end of medicated grit because it is no longer having enough impact. There are rather cryptic mentions of ‘other problems’ appearing in grouse populations. This might well mean bulgy eye or it could even mean, pure speculation on my part, bird/poultry flu. After all, if Hen Harriers have tested positive for bird flu why not Red Grouse? I hope no-one would be covering up bird flu in Red Grouse populations.
There’s more about shooting abroad than about shooting Red Grouse at home in this week’s Shooting Times dated 10 August.
But there were two very interesting political snippets in here.
First, in an ‘exclusive’, Shooting Times reveals that ‘Sunak family ‘are shooters” and Rishi is ‘an active game shooter’. He will , apparently, ‘continue to protect our countryside from those who don’t understand the rural way of life’. I can only ponder in awe quite where Rishi picked up that understanding of the rural way of life growing up in Southampton and doing the books (as we have heard) for the family business, going to prep school at Romsey, on to Winchester and then Oxford, with vacation jobs in Asian restaurants, before a job at Goldman Sachs.
Second, Matt Cross’s article quotes Ross Ewing, Scottish Land and Estates director of moorland as saying that we should not expect any substantial developments on licensing of grouse shooting or muirburn ‘until next year’. Well next year isn’t that far away but I wonder… Burning restrictions came in in England last year.
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Yep, I can just imagine Rishi Sunak’s loader having a stressful day with him, “not that one Sir – its a peewit not a grouse…beaters now in front Sir…slightly dangerous shot that one Sir…Slightly dangerous again Sir…we mustn’t swing through Sir…SIR! Get down Sir! That blonde haired gentleman in the next butt is shooting at us Sir!”
The World Land Trust logo , on the wrapper, must be confusing. Does it raise any revenue for the charity ?.
I usually like what Lindsay Waddell has to say, it is always easy to write with hindsight, but i dont think he has ever been a great fan of the overstocking supported by drugs, and has questioned whether modern day ” record bags ” should be talked of in the same breath as those obtained without medicating.
Medicated grit was originally concieved as a means of “smoothing out” some of the population crashes in Red Grouse, giving owners / tenants confidence to invest in, and maintain their moors, not neccessarily a bad idea at the time.
That this has been routinely abused, bringing about many of the ills described by Lyndsay, is beginning to sink in , but how many will bite the bullet voluntarily , standing alone from their neighbours ?.
Many of the younger generation of moorland keepers, brought up with medicated grit, have, until fairly recently never experienced the regular population crashes, whole seasons without shooting , lack of extra income etc: that their forebears lived with.
Agree with all of that. How long would a Headkeeper with his approaches to the key aspects of the job last in one of the big jobs these days? All of the top agents would advise to get him out the door without delay. Neighbouring Headkeepers would wish him gone too, which I think was said to be the case back then. He was extremely lucky to have a boss of a similar mind.