The most interesting thing about this story in the Telegraph is its byline: that of Patrick Galbraith, former editor of Shooting Times and author of this blog’s Book of the Year (2022), In Search of One Last Song, and his most recent book, Uncommon Ground which in my view is a cracking read (see review) but is not universally popular (click here and here). One of Patrick’s favourite words is nuanced, so it will be interesting to see how he gets on at the Telegraph where nuance is a different country.
Still, he gets off to a good start with this article quoting a load of leftie, urban, tree- and Pheasant-hugging liberals as criticising the idea of big bird days in Pheasant shooting (the ‘big’ here refers to the size of the pile of bodies at the end of the day rather than of the individual birds). These were the Green Party’s Natalie Bennett, LACS’s Emma Judd and me.
I said: “I can’t understand these big days. Is killing 500 birds 10 times as much fun as killing 50? This isn’t sport, it isn’t anything to do with enjoying the countryside – it’s simply carnage.”
Richard Negus, another author (see my review of his book – click here), but one who might regard himself as a real country person, was pretty critical too.
That is a broader range of comments than usually get into the Telegraph’s environmental coverage, but maybe that’s because it appeared in the Business section?
[registration_form]
Patrick Galbraith aired this same issue when at the Shooting Times. He got put in his place – as it seemed to me – both in print and perhaps behind the scenes also, by a powerful and well connected shooting industry figure in particular. Issue wasn’t really given a vigorous discussion thereafter. And of course Patrick Galbraith left the Shooting Times. The big bag model makes serious people serious money – pottering about with friends for a small mixed bag doesn’t.