RSPB have pheasant shoots in their sights

[nick...]

I can see this coming.we rented farm out 15 years ago to neighbouring syndicate.they continually took the pee including standing in straw filled pig sheds smoking.they used to put a lot of ducks onto some ponds we have and ducks were so tame they would follow tractors when ploughing and drilling.when they came to shoot them the ducks would hop from one pond to another,we had 9 ponds and they put dogs in to move the ducks.it was like shooting fish in a barrel.all shooting stopped after that.the cheeky buggers woukd also allegedly come on to our land and chase game back over the road to their land very early in the morning.saw plenty of foot prints but never caught them.ive let pigeon shooting in the past and it’s just the same with shooters doing what they want including driving round margins and shooting pheasants for them selves.this has stopped aswell now.ive no sympathy for any of them.im sure it’s just not me but anyone coming here who I’m helping with things just takes the pee.
Nick...

 

[Johnnyboxer]

Some of the large shoots give game shooting a bad name

The small farming shoots and syndicates on the other hand do lot for wildlife, feed on tap in mid winter for wildlife,take that away and small birds will starve. They also shoot smaller no,s and all the one,s i know, the bag gets used by syndicate members and guests. Nothing gets wasted.

Yep [emoji106]

Best way to do it
15 brace is a good day

 

[Longlowdog]

Been shooting heaps of times (I particularly liked Bolton Castle) and never paid anything....father in law told mother in law it was an essential exercise in building up a relationship with me. It took him 26 years of trying. Sometimes he tried 4-5 times a year to build that elusive rapport.
If they kill shooting a lot of beaters/picker ups are going to loose a lot of money over the winter, that's not going to go down too well or do much to improve the already lousy opinion of the RSPB held by most true country folk.
Field trialling will go down the pan.
Tens of thousands of dogs will be out of a job. Not all are house dogs/pets. Many are kenneled and not house trained or house savvy. What realistically will happen to them?
If bird shooting goes by the wayside regardless of the countryside implications what's next? Stalking?

 

[icanshootwell]

The big bags are going to ruin the job.
Had our first day out yesterday on a “farm shoot”. We stopped before the last drive as we had already managed 85 in the bag. Everyone had a good day, plenty of shooting and ALL the game was divided and taken by the people present.
On a larger syndicate shoot that I frequent we are looking for max 150 bird days this season.
You can have a great day out at those levels without having to do 300, 400 or above days if your pocket is deep enough. It’s all about the whole day out. Best thing for me yesterday was seeing our young dog retrieving for the first time and having the time of her life; for me that made the day.

Lost my old pointer back in the summer, missed him when i went for the 1st time this season, he loved picking up when i was shooting on the peg, the problem was he loved it so much he picked the guys birds up that was standing next to me, it was not uncommon to have a dozen or so birds dropped at your feet. Will have to try and train the next one to a higher standard.

 

[A1an]

Been shooting heaps of times (I particularly liked Bolton Castle) and never paid anything....father in law told mother in law it was an essential exercise in building up a relationship with me. It took him 26 years of trying. Sometimes he tried 4-5 times a year to build that elusive rapport.
If they kill shooting a lot of beaters/picker ups are going to loose a lot of money over the winter, that's not going to go down too well or do much to improve the already lousy opinion of the RSPB held by most true country folk.
Field trialling will go down the pan.
Tens of thousands of dogs will be out of a job. Not all are house dogs/pets. Many are kenneled and not house trained or house savvy. What realistically will happen to them?
If bird shooting goes by the wayside regardless of the countryside implications what's next? Stalking?

Fishing

 

[Pilatus]

A great shame that arrogance and greed will eventually lead to the end of shooting and fox hunting.
I do hope I am proved wrong,as the above provide so many jobs,directly and indirectly.

 

[neilo]

On the very best keepered shoots bag returns are 55-60% of the birds put down and many part time keepered shoots have returns of half that. That means an awful lot of birds feeding wildlife or wandering off in to other areas. I wonder what the effect would be on buzzards. owls and other raptors if that significant amount of food items was removed at one fell swoop. Also, how many tonnes of grain go towards feeding released birds, how many farmers 'sell' a tidy few tonne to the shoot in exchange for shooting? How many little brown birds will perish when the food is removed from the woods and field fringes?
If the aim is to cripple the shooting industry what will happen to our cherished native partridge? Who will manage our moors for waders as well as grouse? Farms with shoots have habitat set aside for shooting, why would you maintain that if there was no fiscal return or will farm subsidies pay farmers to keeper the area but not shoot, simply having ground that is taken out of production is not the same as keepering? The attention seeking, band wagon jumping RSPB has too many answers to unasked questions and not enough for the questions being asked of them.

On the other hand.... the self keepered ‘shoot’ (I use the term broadly) here put down wheat from one of the syndicate members, who just happens to have the dirtiest farm in the area, the only one smothered in black grass and wild oats ffs. They put absolutely nothing down in terms of covers and do no maintenance or conservation work at all, but their tame chickens make good use of the wild bird seed covers I grow each year for Glastir (& my crops, but that’s another argument), so are reducing the feed supply for those wild birds over winter.
Iirc they claimed to average 7 shots per bird here last year, and were proud of it! That despite being flat country where a ‘high bird’ would be flying at about 20’.

I’m not anti-shooting in any way, as ‘proper’ shoots do an awful lot of conservation work that wouldn’t be done otherwise and the industry employs a lot of people in rural areas. However, there are some real winkers involved too, and I find it far easier to justify fox hunting, than ever I do the shooting of industrially reared coloured chickens, just for the fun of it.

 

[Longlowdog]

I did gamekeeping at college and have had the pleasure of working on some very forward thinking estates, but that does not preclude me agreeing that there are some awful ones too. However big numbers do not necessarily mean bad estates. As a more avid beater than game shot I've gone beating on some big days and I have to say that those days were the hardest work with birds being gathered from much bigger acreages. Some small shoots have their pet budgies trained like Pavlov's dogs and crammed together like battery hens.
Blanket statements from both sides are inappropriate and can be made without fear of having to provide substantiating evidence but even though the idea of shooting raised birds has waned in me and I now prefer a bit of rough shooting or estuary wildfowling I do still strongly believe that the benefits of reared game shooting extend far beyond lining the pockets of hoity toity lairds and lords contributing as it does to environmental management, rural employment, the provision of free or cheap game meat to many families and perhaps providing some folk with a genuine feeling of connection with the land.
I don't shoot game on my wee place, I allowed myself to become too invested in it and no longer enjoy shooting wild game I have watched being raised but I do enjoy watching others or teaching others how to shoot and harvest game ethically. I would be very upset if a morally ambiguous organisation were to have countrysports outlawed for the sake of scoring a few brownie points and earning yet more income from guilty feeling mad cat women.

 

[nick...]

The syndicate who shot here done no maintenance what so ever.they were all take and no give.the game keeper even gave others permission to come onto farm and shoot pigeons in our wood without asking.that soon stopped along with everything else as mentioned above.really annoyed me having to clean up their feeders and other mess and take it back to them,aswell as having to get vermin man in to kill rats after end of season and rats coming into yard after they run out of maize and food in feeders
Nick...

 

[icanshootwell]

The syndicate who shot here done no maintenance what so ever.they were all take and no give.the game keeper even gave others permission to come onto farm and shoot pigeons in our wood without asking.that soon stopped along with everything else as mentioned above.really annoyed me having to clean up their feeders and other mess and take it back to them,aswell as having to get vermin man in to kill rats after end of season and rats coming into yard after they run out of maize and food in feeders
Nick...

It generally helps if the farm owners are involved in the shoot, therefore it,s run in an appropriate way, heard many stories like yours, letting small woods out and a few game cover crops for cash,(not saying you did that) you need to know who is shooting on your ground and picking up. There are a lot of undesirables out there in there camouflage jackets and panel vans.

 

[kfpben]

There are plenty of good and bad ways to run a shoot in the same way there are good and bad farms. It’s no reason to outlaw something though.

Loath as I am to encourage more regulation of any kind it could be an idea to introduce a maximum number of game birds put down per acre of land. Hopefully voluntarily initially.

Our small farm shoot does masses of conservation work which I genuinely believe helps wildlife. Similarly we lay a few stretches of hedge for the hunt to jump. None of this work would be done if it wasn’t for field sports.

 

[tinsheet]

Shoot next door (rich man's play thing, comes down 3 days a week in his helicopter, chef follows I. 2 nd helicopter) shot 750 in a day. 1000 shots on one drive.

Myself and a few other farmers shoot most weekends as vermin control! Nothing to have a bag around 100.
We eat well and so do the dogs, don't put a bird down!
Wouldn't bother me if they get it stopped.
Pheasant is an invasive species
Don't get me on about the antibiotics in feed etc ,

 

[Tim W]

This type of thing helps in changing public perception
https://www.thecountryfoodtrust.org/

 

[Still Farming]

Just ban EVERYTHING they be happy then?

Drugs are illegal and banned but they can't stop them even though we are an island.

World or rather this country is mad?

 

[teslacoils]

Wonder what the RSPCA would say if all the shoots took their dogs in for rehoming the day after game shooting was banned? Presumably they would spin it to be anti farmer too. Sigh.

 

[Pilatus]

This type of thing helps in changing public perception
https://www.thecountryfoodtrust.org/

Tremendous amount of dedication and effort,must be needed to keep that organisation going, especially as food is a perishable product.Well done to all those who are making it happen , “action speaks louder than words”.??

 

[Dry Rot]

I wonder if banning driven shoots would help? I am not anti shooting, far from it. but having seen driven shoots from the inside, so to speak, I do object to the way big business has taken over.

 

[kfpben]

I wonder if banning driven shoots would help? I am not anti shooting, far from it. but having seen driven shoots from the inside, so to speak, I do object to the way big business has taken over.

You may not like something but why BAN it? Fines, prison, criminal record to follow. Surely folk should broadly be able to do what they want. I just don’t understand the desire people have to outlaw things all the time.

Motorcycles kill huge numbers of people every year and pee me off hugely as some of our local roads are used as race tracks. Should they be banned? No.

If I ruled the country I’d start with a good long list of things I’d legalise because at the end of the day it should be a free country provided law and order are kept.

 

[Lazy Sod]

Many years ago, Dr David Bellamy was asked to investigate shooting. He came to it without any opinion either way. His opinion was that, environmentally, the pros outweighed the cons because of all the food it provides for many bird species and the habitat it creates.

Of course, that was before the big increase in mommoth shoots.

 

[Longlowdog]

The Game Conservancy farms have been providing peer reviewed data for decades evidencing the ecological benefits of both grouse and pheasant shooting and indeed the RSPB was a joint partner in the work on Langholm moor where it was proven unequivocally that keepering proving a very substantial ecological advantage over non keepered moorland. These activities cost a lot, keepers, vehicles, housing, feed, grit, tick mop flocks of sheep, part time shepherd, et al. Removing the financial incentive would stop this sport overnight.
If shooting in the grand scheme of things is perceived to be a rich man's preoccupation so what, so is owning a fast car, having three holidays a year somewhere sunny and being able to comfortably retire, no-one but a moron begrudges another man his success. The politics of envy is no way to create legislation. And besides, for every one gun on a peg on a Saturday in November there are ten guys walking hedges, on the foreshore or in a hedge waiting for geese.
If shooting is taken away without farmers raising a hand to stop it or indeed because a few farmers asked for it how many thousands of voices will be lost from the body of pro-farming advocates?