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…
Category: EVENTS: BirdFair, HHDay, Game Fair etc
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…
Game Fair 1
This year the Game Fair is in the grounds of Blenheim Palace. The Game Fair could keep a blogger going for full year, but let me tell you about some sensible people I met today. Today, Saturday, is ‘Conservation’ Saturday apparently. I noticed that there was a talk about rivers but it was as much…
What they say 10:
The latest in the excellent series of BAWC podcasts – this one by Terry Pickford. ‘In 1974 we had 39 breeding females…every single estate had hen harriers…but many of them were interfered with’ ‘It changed about 1980’ ‘Derek Ratcliffe was asked the reason why there had been such a calamitous collapse in Hen Harriers…
Looking forward to being at the Game Fair at the weekend
e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting. Hen Harrier Day with Chris Packham. A grouse with M&S and more in today’s Telegraph City Diary Lead poisons children.
What they say 9:
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Andre Farrar of the RSPB talks to BAWC’s Charlie Moores in the latest of these excellent podcasts: ‘Back then we had double figures pairs of hen harriers [in the Forest of Bowland]’ ‘It was quite a shock…the visceral loathing that gamekeepers had for Hen Harriers’ ‘Little’s changed over the intervening 30 years – except…
Calling all media
In a month’s time, if history is any guide, you will be publishing some puff pieces about grouse shooting and the Glorious 12th. Be aware, that this year is different – public opinion is turning against this ecologically damaging ‘sport’ and largely economically irrelevant ‘industry’. This is what…