"Always been green" is a slogan you may see next to the letters BASC (British Association for Shooting and Conservation?) on a car sticker. The BASC is the latest to jump on the green bandwagon and represents thousands of shooters who kill various species for sport. They are responsible, directly and indirectly, for the death of thousands more animals than all of the organised hunting with hounds.
Conservation to the shooting fraternity is selective conservation. The only animals that benefit from the sort of conservation shooters waffle on about to defend their pastime, are game animals; which are non- indigenous to this country anyway. It is true that shooters plant coverts and encourage undergrowth in coverts. Unfortunately a lot of people are fooled by this and think that, although they may not approve of shooting, the habitat it maintains is good for other animals. However, unless you happen to be a game animal, shooting does nothing for you; apart from shoot, dig, gas, trap and snare you out of existence.
Shooting also involves the scattering of large amounts of lead pellets all over the countryside. Millions of lead cartridges are sold every year and emptied into the environment that shooters claim to conserve. The R.S.P.B. and Wildfowl Trust have reported numerous deaths due to ingestion of shotgun pellets, involving swans, geese, mallard and general other species. Apart from the shot, try counting the amount of empty cartridges next time you go walking in the countryside. Couple all this with the activities of gamekeepers and you're "starting" to face the grim reality of shooting and conservation.
The type of shoot depends on the species shot, terrain and financial backing. Let us first concentrate on the most "sporting" variety - driven shooting. Driven pheasant shooting is perhaps the largest and best known. Pheasant poults (young birds) are bought or reared and released into release pens in woods on the shoot. After a while they will be allowed to roam free, although feed hop pens will be positioned so that they return to the relevant woods for food. Many 'keepers feed by hand as they walk their beat. The season runs from the 1st October to 1st February. Several days shooting will be organised by the shoot owner, club or syndicate depending on the amount of poults released.
Shooting is bought or by invitation. It can be extremely expensive with payments for the actual days shooting plus the cost of every brace of birds the shooter wishes to keep. Shooting is a lot more privately run than hunting with hounds.
A days shooting will consist of several drives which means that beaters, friends or hired for the day, will beat game to flush them out of cover over the heads of the strategically placed "guns", who slaughter them. Many guns are bad shots which results in thousands, hundreds of thousands of wounded birds which are either retrieved by dogs or die in agony. A few hundred birds can be shot during one day. If a shoot, say, shoots 10 days per season it can slaughter about 2,000 birds and thousands of additional animals classed as vermin. At least ten million pheasants are shot every year by sporting, conserving people.
Partridge shooting is not found on the same scale as it used to the partridge has seriously declined due to the food chain being destroyed by agricultural death chemicals. It is not unusual to find mixed pheasant and partridge shooting and the procedure is much the same as pheasant shooting, except that partridge tend to lie up in fields, hedgerows, and root crops. The season runs from the 1st September to the 1st February, although they are generally not shot until October.
Grouse shooting has been written about many times previously in Howl. The grouse is a moorland bird, living in areas such as Wales, North England, and Scotland. Gamekeepers keep moorland as the perfect environment for artificially high levels of grouse to thrive so that they may be beaten over the heads of guns in strategically sited butts to be shot in large numbers. Yet again, there is persecution of predator species and the moorland is rotationally burnt to encourage new heather growth, (food for grouse)- preventing any regrowth of natural flora. Grouse moor owners dislike people walking across their moors and formed the moorlands association in the North of England to fight against the campaign for free access on unenclosed land such as moors and heath. They claim free access is a danger to wildlife on the moors. Perhaps they should have a word with their gamekeepers about their activities, notably the killing of protected Raptors (poisoning birds of prey) which anti-shooting activists have been accused of killing and planting to discredit shooting. A problem with grouse shooting is that it is big money with wealthy, powerful people involved. It is also carried out on large traits of so- called private land - however, if properly planned, it is one of the most vulnerable to pressure sabotage. The season runs from 12th August to 10th
December, although the first 2 or 3 months are the most important Sabotage has been increasing over the past few seasons and is likely to continue to do so.
Other birds that can be "shown" as part of a days driven shooting are wild birds such as woodcock or snipe. The woodcock is classed as an exciting bird as it is so difficult to hit due to its erratic flight pattern. The season runs from l9th October to 31st January. A prestigious honour in the shooting world is to become a member of the woodcock club. This has to be witnessed and involves the shooting of 2 consecutive woodcocks with a "left and right" without the gun leaving the shoulder. I wonder how many birds have been wounded in the attempt. Driven shooting may also involve fox, hare and duck. Duck can be "shown" on a shoot which has ponds / wetlands on its area. Hares used to be driven and slaughtered. They supposedly ate too much pasture grass' crops or heather. It is not as common nowadays. Fox driving is rampant - notably in Wales where they use hounds to flush foxes out of woods or across rides to waiting guns. The massacre that results sometimes includes hounds.
As well as driven shooting there is walk-up shooting or rough shooting. Any number walk along until they put up animals and shoot them - usually anything that moves. The larger groups may separate and take it in turns to beat for each other. Dogs may be used to point and flush animals as well as retrieve. This is as widespread as driven shooting but probably kills less animals. A lot of people rent or lease rough shooting over large areas although keepering tends to be not so intensive but often forms part of the days sport. Special days may be set aside for drey poking - grey squirrel dreys are poked to make them bolt, they are then shot. Alternatively, a days rabbit shooting or walked-up crow shooting together with the destruction of any nests seen.
Wildfolwing also accounts for many birds lives, inland and coastal species of duck and geese are shot from September to February. The shooter's lie in wait either at dawn or dusk and wait for fowl to return or leave their feeding grounds (called flighting). The effects of the lead shot have already been mentioned but wildfowling is also an extremely vulnerable bloodsport both to sabotage and for local campaigns. Some South of England authorities have recently come out against wildfowling due to local campaigning by hunt saboteurs and concerned groups and individuals.
When the game and fowl seasons have ended most shooters turn their attentions to "vermin" shooting of which pigeon shooting is the most popular. More pigeons are shot than pheasants every year due to the lack of a close season, pigeons are 'fair game' all year round. Shooting takes place from hides which are constructed from bales of hay or professionally built and then camouflaged by netting and branches from trees. Decoys are placed to attract birds and are either manufactured from wood or plastic or are dead birds that are propped up with sticks. These are placed in a field to lure pigeons down to their deaths. With roosting taking place before and at dusk shooters wait in a wood for pigeons to come to roost and then kill them. Whatever the methods pigeon shooting is mass murder.
Finally we have to consider deer shooting and stalking. Deerstalking is widespread in the Scottish highlands where they are spied, stalked and then shot with rifles. Apparently increasing in popularity deerstalkers claim that unless culled the deer will die of starvation. They do not however mention that the dears natural habitat is being eroded all the time and no matter how much deer 'management' is undertaken this will never stop. All the time when we are sabotaging bloodsports we are told that nature needs managing or controlling. I find it outrageous that the biggest pest on the planet can condemn other animals by classifying them as pests and for simply existing. Basically all the claims from bloodsport freaks of pest control, conservation and culling are absolute nonsense. They shoot for sport, for enjoyment and are responsible for the persecution for nearly every living creature you can think of - in large numbers and in many horrific ways.
With the recently failed wild mammal protection bill also appears numerous press articles stating our intentions to step up activity against shooting and angling. There is a lot of talk that we should concentrate on hunting first as we have more chance of disposing of it in parliament. To me hunt sabotage is all about not waiting for politicians to act but save as many animals lives as possible until they do. If we have a choice of hunts to sabotage we try to concentrate on that which kills most, why is it then that is logic isn't taken further to properly include shooting on our agenda? We are still learning about our tactics when sabbing shoots but, as with hunting, with time and perseverance we will work out our tactics properly and become more effective.
If the bill had gone through we were facing our last hunting season, we would be in a serious position. We are not prepared sufficiently to take on the shooters so we have got to get to grips with it now otherwise we will be thrown in at the deep end and lose vital momentum that a hunting ban would hopefully generate. Not to mention millions of dead animals at the hands of the gun freaks.