17 August 2017

A Beefy Game

The battle over shooting

by J.R. Thomas

It is that time of year again, when the Shaw Sheet puts on its best tweeds, tightens its plus fours, pulls on the old deer stalker, and goes for a walk on the wild side to hear the sound of gunfire.  Not for the Glorious Twelfth, you understand, but for opening salvoes of the annual match between grouse shooters and the RSPB (the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds).  This year each side has nominated a champion to do the fighting; so in the tweedy corner is Ian (“Beefy”) Botham, practised all-rounder of this parish, and for the orange anoraks, Chris Packham, a BBC journalist.

It would be a fair comment to say that these two gentlemen are not keen on each other.  Sir Ian, having had a distinguished if noisy career in cricket, has settled down to be a rosy cheeked country gent, and a spokesman, largely self-appointed, for the country sports lobby.  Mr Packham, who is lead presenter on the BBC’s popular show “Country File”; has also appointed himself a spokesman concerning country sports; to an extent where he must be pushing BBC rules on impartiality.

Regular readers will appreciate that when we say “country sports” we don’t mean fell-running or knockabout village footer, or even country house cricket.  We mean the pursuit of country animals and birds with an intended outcome relating to a cooking pot (or not, in the case of foxes).  We should also say that a lot of the respective backers of these two fine gentlemen don’t actually live in the country, or even earn their living there.  They tend to live in nice streets in smart suburbs but drive out to the country to pursue their interests.  The true country resident is probably more likely to be a Botham supporter than a Packham one, but he is even more likely to be out snaring a rabbit or poaching a pheasant, or in the Dog And Whistle, just having one more.

Mr Packham is very opposed to the pursuit of country creatures (maybe making an exception for rats and wasps as many animal lovers do), but he would like to see recreational shooting and hunting ended, at the least.  In particular he would like the early introduction of strict controls, to say nothing of a ban, on grouse shooting.  Grouse shooting and fox hunting cause particular angst amongst the anti-country sports lobby, which their opponents strongly suspect relates to class matters as much as the outcome of the tweedy chase, the end usually being the same whether the pursuit involves firearms, fishing rods, or horses and pink jackets.  But the perception is that as hunting and grouse shooting are expensive they tend to be more exclusively the interests of the better heeled, or better saddled.

Last year at about this time we introduced readers to the hen harrier.  This rare bird lives on moors in the north of England and in Scotland.  It is a handsome raptor and a very rare one, strictly legally protected, and adopted by many bird supporting groups (as opposed to game bird groups) as a symbol of what the moors are all about.  It has one unfortunate habit, which is, like many gentlemen with traditional tastes in dining, that it likes to eat grouse.  The gents like them fully grown and hung in a larder for a few days; the hen harrier prefers grouse chicks seized from the nest for immediate consumption.  (The gents tend to add roast potatoes, cabbage, and gravy, but the hen harrier has not listened to the nutritionists and eats its grouse sans accompaniments.) You will see the scope for particularly bitter conflict between mature grouse eaters and supporters of hen harriers.

The RSPB says that in England there are only three pairs of breeding hen harriers left (there are more in Scotland, maybe 350 pairs, but there too numbers have generally declined).   It blames the grouse business for this, saying that moorland keepers are eradicating hen harriers on their moors to make sure there are plenty of grouse to shoot each autumn.  So we have a perhaps slightly confusing conflict between a group determined to protect a bird whose apparent sole interest in life is to kill and eat other birds, and a group who would like rid of the hen harrier to enable them to cut out the intermediary in killing and eating other birds.  (Nobody says that conservation or country sports are logical.)  But getting back to the fisticuffs stuff, certainly gamekeepers have been convicted of killing hen harriers and other predator birds, though it is a rare offence.  Indeed, with hen harriers being so carefully monitored, it would be a very rash gamekeeper that would shoot one, though the preferred agent of death, says the RSPB, is poison, and that is very difficult to pin on any particular person.

This year that conflict has become even more bitter than usual.  Sir Ian lost the First Test of the season and had his barrels bent during an interview by BBC Radio 5.  He stumbled over questions on whether shot birds, especially pheasants, had been buried because there is no market for their meat, in contrast to the shooting lobby’s line that all meat goes into the food chain and is fine lean natural meat at that.  The Botham temper is always a treat and Five Live listeners certainly got some entertainment that day.

But the RSPB was badly wrong footed last week when a new report was published which considered the quantum and diversity of bird life on shooting estates and moors.  Far from being deserts, on which only grouse thrive, the report says that managed estates show many more birds and many more varieties of bird life, than estates where there is no shooting or keepering.  They quote for instance 24 times as many lapwing, 6 times as many curlew, and so on.  Many more rare birds indeed than on, for example, the extensive upland and estuary lands owned by the RSPB, which have notably low diversity.  Red faces round at the bird lovers HQ and glee amongst the tweedy set.  The RSPB grumbled that this was far from an independent report, as it had been commissioned and paid for by a number of estate owners.  This did not go down well with the universities of Newcastle and Durham, who conducted the research and said that their results were free of any pressure or polishing.  They indeed pointed out that their results do not apply to all birds – some, such as pipits, prefer unmanaged land which suits their feeding and nesting habits better.  (They also found no hen harriers at all, they added.)  But generally, they said, managed land has less predators – the keepers keep off the foxes and rabbits and stoats and weasels and badgers (do insert your favourite Wind in the Willows character).

So Second Test to Sir Ian and the shooting lobby.  The Third Test was run earlier this week, with the RSPB trumpeting that a very rare stone curlew had bred on the beach at Dunwich Heath in Suffolk, the claims that keepers were needed to keep pests down thus being disproved.  Unfortunately that seems to have become a sort of LBW (Leg Before Wicket for the non-cricket-lovers) for the RSPB when it was revealed that it had put an electric fence round half an acre of beach to keep all those predators off.  Not really practical for all the British Isles, crowed the shooting lobby.

That will not be the end of it for this season.  Like the Archers, this everyday story of country folk has plenty of life (or death) in it yet.

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