And now from AA to RSPB

No, not those nice people who fix your car by the side of the road, not those nice people who help you give up the booze, but those people, who sent me thousands of postcards disapproving, in no uncertain terms, of the RSPB’s position on culling Ruddy Ducks many years ago – Animal Aid. Animal…

A good week for the friends of the Hen Harrier

It’s difficult to keep up – there’s so much going on:   Severn Trent say ‘yes’ to Hen Harrier Day in Peak District. Hen Harrier Day in Peak District reaches capacity – any more attendees will jam the car parks… August Birdwatch has ‘Stop killing our Harriers’ on cover. M&S shelve plans to sell Red…

NEWS: M&S drop grouse sales in response to threatened boycott

Ben Webster in The Times: Game Over: M&S takes grouse off the shelves after boycott threat. M&S won’t sell grouse this year and tests new code for grouse moors after boycott threat http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article4156994.ece … We did that!  Consumer power. Well done M&S!!  I’ll be shopping with you again later today.  And we’ll be watching you carefully…

Game Fair 6: this blog, ‘overheards’ and en passant

‘Oh we all read your blog – don’t you worry‘ – a senior staff member of a pro-shooting organisation. Trimbush – was that you entering Churchills’s tent at around lunchtime on Saturday? ‘Ian Coghill out-Faraged Nigel Farage‘ – a back-handed compliment, if a compliment at all. ‘Nigerian Garage‘ – how the GWCT’s Chair was reported…

Game Fair 5 – missing my bison burger for breakfast

Of course, man cannot live by blasting birds out of the air alone.  One has to eat. And although there are an awful lot of places to buy a bacon buttie at the Game Fair (including the one Indian Food stall that I spotted) other foods are available. Sloe Motion is run by a former…

Game Fair 4 – BASC, seriously nice people

I spent some time, on both Saturday and Sunday, talking to BASC people on their stand at the Game Fair. I’ve always thought that BASC was the serious and nice end of shooting with lots of wildfowlers and not many grouse shooters, and my conversations strengthened that view.  They also plied me with cold drinks…

August Birdwatch coming soon – Stop Killing Our Harriers!

Coming through your letterbox or to a newsagent near you very soon. There is a striking editorial by Dominic Mitchell and a couple of pages on the subject of Hen Harriers by yours truly. I just hope that many newsagents put this next to The Shooting Times and The Field on the shelves. Birdwatch is…

Game Fair 3 – in photos

This must be about my 20th Game Fair, so I realised that when it said that it opened at 9am this was just nonsense – soon after 8am I had parked, got a lift on a trailer from the car park to the entrance, paid to enter and then started walking down the hill where…

Game Fair 2

What sort of people come to the Game Fair – you might (or might not) wonder? All sorts – although there is more tweed worn at the Game Fair than you will see at most July events with the temperature in the high 20sC. But judging from the cars parked near mine on my two…