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I also read about the Golden Eagle being poisoned to…

I also read about the Golden Eagle being poisoned to stop it from taking the Grouse. The glorious twelfth they call the start of the game shooting season. It is any thing but glorious, in my opinion for what it is worth game shooting is the most evil of all blood sports. Worse even than hunting with dogs, that is now banned. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone hunting with dogs, but how that was banned and not game shooting I really don’t know.

Hunting with dogs although cruel, had a purpose to control. Game shooting only to kill. Like it or not there has got to be a certain amount of culling in the countryside. At Denbury we have a problem with Doves. Doves breed all through the year. Try as we might with oiling and blowing the eggs, we have even advertised them to give away. The population just keeps on increasing to an unacceptable amount. The mess they make is not nice, at times what ever you touch you finish up with droppings on our hands. A young lad culls the Doves at Denbury, he takes them home to be eaten. Rabbits, Fox, Deer and Badgers do not give us any problems. Other farmers do find them a problem. With Fox and Deer hunting banned, farmers who would let the hunts control Fox and Deer will now allow shooting on their property, which sometimes results in animals being wounded, rather than being killed outright, they die in agonising pain through infected wounds. As much as I dislike hunting with dogs, it is very often preferable to shooting.

To me there is no justification in game shooting. I have no objection to someone who goes out and shoots Rabbits or Pheasant to put on their table. Game Birds Pheasants, Grouse etc, are bred for one reason, to kill. They are incubated, sold normally at day olds and then hand reared in pens. In the summer they are then released into the open countryside to fend for themselves. Near to Denbury for the first days of the Pheasants release, they can be seen along the lanes, they have no sense of taking cover. Some drivers don’t wait for the Bird to get out of the way and run them down, many more are taken by the Fox until the learn how to survive, by hiding in the artificial cover that is grown specifically for that reason.

In the shooting season organised shoots are arranged. Beaters with dogs and calling to frighten the birds, flush them out of the artificial cover into the direction of the waiting guns, to be shot. Many of the organised shoots are corporate or company events, as a perk to employees, who have never handled a shotgun in their life. They are given minimal training in the use of guns and let loose to the slaughter. And that is what it is. Over the country every year millions of game birds are shot with shotgun cartridges that are packed with small shot that gives a wide spread, so that the birds are hit by even the most inexperienced shot, not really mattering if they have been killed outright, for the gun dogs will find the frightened injured Birds, to be taken back to the guns to be bashed on the head. Many of them are not killed outright only wounded and not found, left dying for days.

At the end of the shoot, the beaters and those shooting, get an unprepared brace or two of the game birds, some are sold to game merchants and local butchers, but vast amounts are dumped. Those taken home by corporate or company employees are also mostly dumped. Their partners take one look at the dead bird, they haven’t the slightest idea of how to pluck or gut them, why should they.

This is only my thoughts on game shooting, I would not expect any one to agree with it, or would I try to influence any person with my opinions. I did have a shotgun and Jade our Springer Spaniel was a gun dog, I went shooting once, but never again. Man is naturally a hunter gatherer, nowadays they can do that in the super market.

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