Fellside

I would like to respectfully disagree. The environmental movement embraces the notion of local sustainable food. Only circa 5% of the UK population are veggie. There is therefore plenty of scope for game management - and all of its habitat benefits for wildlife - to be carried along by the ‘green wave’. After all you can’t find a bird much more ‘free range’ than a pheasant. Given good practice and the correct message, shooting could (and should) provide a good fit within the environmental movement. I don’t obviously refer to the animal rights extremists here, but more to the average member of the public with a green conscience.

I do agree that we should all individually do more - write to the press and media to bring the true and proper context re shooting and wildlife. I often write to the BBC, RSPB, MPs and various newspapers etc. usually in response to an attack or wrong assumption re game shooting. With email these days it only takes a minute. If we all did this I am sure it would have an impact.

JohnfromtheUK, I feel your pain and frustration and wish you all the luck in the world. The main problem with your case - and all of this - is the lack of public awareness about the massive wildlife benefits which shooting secures. We all know this but the general public, in the main, do not. Bureaucrats are members of the public and often lack any real countryside management depth.

I think Defra will clarify this pretty quickly - and its likely to be quite workable as per the General Licence sort out.

Sorry for repeating similar points to Greylag. Greylag’s post popped in just before I sent mine. I do agree that this is more about the big (BIG!!) shoots. I don’t think the average syndicate has much to worry about.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom with the usual predictable BASC bashing here. Of course Avery et al will claim a victory - that’s just how it works. However, they never got their 5km exclusion zone...... did they. When the licences come on stream (which they will), then if a local syndicate is releasing small numbers anyway, they should be compliant by default, and therefore not be impacted. There is another potential positive - and that’s the Brexit dimension. Who knows what value the EU directives may have post 1st Jan? How much longevity will the ‘awkward ones’ have? I think it’s also important to recognise that this scenario didn’t develop as a result of any BASC or other shooting org’s non action. It resulted from ‘The Feckless NE (TFNE)’, as I have named them, simply not doing their duty re surveys. I have had a lot of dealings with them - and believe me the above title is entirely accurate.

I don’t personally know anything about this mp spend - but It would certainly seem very sensible if true. I hope that it did happen.

There are only 275 SPA’s and 656 SAC’s in the UK - many are coastal or off shore sites, in fact quite a lot of them. While I share the disappointment that this hasn’t been kicked in to the long grass, including the protagonists responsible, I honestly don’t think this is a significant blow. It’s not rocket science to plan releases of poults 500m from one of these sites. That’s only approximately a field away. Chin up and happy hunting everyone!

Great work! I think you’ve found a good cartridge there. I also use 24 gram size 7 1/2 (12b). They really kill very cleanly inside about 30 yards. Low recoiling too - sweet to use. I have a choked barrel with 30 gram size 6 for the longer ranges. Nearly all my crows are shot inside the deac’ pattern with the lighter cart’s though.

Back to the subject in hand. This attempted bill amendment is hardly likely to gain traction. What it possibly more important - if we pull back and look at the big picture - is Labour’s alarming disconnect with rural affairs, and particularly shooting.

As and when Charles succeeds there will be a planned scale down of royal patronages. I sincerely hope that the RSPB loose their ‘Royal’’ prefix. They are now more aligned with animal rights extremism - rather than good pragmatic conservation.

Good work!!

Many moons ago, I shot sporting clays with a chap who had quite advanced Parkinson’s. His scores were always consistently high - I would say about top 6 in the club. People would often crack the joke: ‘hey I want some of the tablets you’re on’......etc. He loved getting some banter for being a good shot of course. The Parkinson’s didn’t seem to take anything away from his shooting skills. Incidentally, he had no trouble getting his renewals either. Long may your shooting continue.

Great - good work BASC!!

Good post. It’s worth bearing in mind that generally, the average Jo citizen doesn’t give a damn about shooting either way - and has very little awareness (if any) re the lead / steel ammunition debate. I meet a lot of people and I am quite open about being a shooting man, if anyone I’m chatting with asks what I did at the weekend, I just tell them.... “I went shooting”. The vast majority are perfectly comfortable with it. It is worthy of note however, that the only negative replies I have ever experienced, relate to big estates shooting excessive bags - rumors of dumping game etc. I soon put their mind at rest by relating the modest bags that I’m involved with and so on, but nevertheless I’m quite surprised at their level of awareness re the excessive bags issue. Clearly this has a negative PR impact. If anything it is this issue which needs to be urgently addressed more than any other. Never (and I mean never), has anyone mentioned the use of lead shot - not even re wildfowl. This debate has been generated and ‘milked’ for all its worth essentially by anti’ lobbyists, both within the EU context and domestically. It is important to keep this in perspective. The average person on the street is not trying to stop us using lead. They have much more immediate and pressing matters to concern themselves with - especially during these rather strange times.

Yes - a very worth while reminder. Let’s all stay street wise on this!

👍

In my area there’s a lot of ferals near any large cattle sheds - but also a good population of stock doves. Sometimes they can look virtually identical in profile. I have therefore taken to only shooting birds with a significant amount of white in their plumage. This means that some ferals slip through the net - but I still manage a good number of ‘flying rats’ in with the woodies.

Hopefully in time he will gain trust and permission elsewhere and spread out his efforts - or get sick of empty skies.

Bags do vary enormously from one area to another etc. However, I find the biggest silly claims are about cartridge / kill ratio. I was shooting over laid barley on a friend’s farm last year. I had been there most of the day and shot perhaps twenty odd - quiet really. At about 3 in the afternoon, there was a sudden a step change, and the birds came thick and fast. In no time the bag was fiftyish. Then two characters appeared and set up in the next field down wind. I still managed a shot now and then, but for the remaining 4 hours or so they had nearly all the shooting. Just for something to do I counted their shots. My numbers weren’t perfect as I stopped counting shots at circa 190 plus. Their shooting wasn’t steady - sometimes a barrage, sometimes a double pop etc. They were using semi’s, so able fire a few. I met them on their way out the farm and chatted a while. They had 38 birds picked - and claimed to have only fired 60 cartridges...?! I didn’t challenge - preferring instead to let them enjoy a moment of hero status. Incidentally, they weren’t invited back for all sorts of other reasons. I hear these wild claims sometimes in game shooting too. I have known people even count the number of birds in their ratio which they believe to have been hit - hilarious. I was once on a pheasant drive with a chap who did this often. One day, after using both barrels at a fairly average pheasant said to his loader, “I think that’ll come down.’ The reply came, “aye....when it’s hungry sir.”

There are plenty of reasons why some (and only some) estates don’t want shooting activity - or indeed random people around - during poult rearing time. That’s their choice really - and I won’t let anyone near my pheasants either. However, game rearing aside, there are good legitimate reasons for pigeon shooting over stubbles: 1. Pigeons need thinning out when at peak population density (late summer) - prior to anticipated winter crop damage. 2. Pigeons, being very social birds and habit forming, will build up in a stubble area - and cause damage in the general locality to other crops. Thus their flight lines and habits needs to be disrupted. 3. It’s only a couple of weeks or less between stubble and sewing. If pigeons develop a local feed/roost routine on stubbles, they are often still present to take any top seeds on newly sewn ground. It is well recognised in the ‘spirit and principle’ of our general licences, that pigeon control has whole area relevance, and is not merely farm centred. Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot here. Decoying over stubbles is entirely legitimate! (This has also been much discussed on PWF recently)

If you can as get as much as poss’ out on the shoot (i.e in to feeders), then it has less chance of issues. In other words ‘in store’ and ‘in use’ all in one. Big feeders are great for this - as long as they are stable, watertight and regularly checked / unblocked etc. We tend to get 2 or 3 tonnes out in one visit - and do this just a few times in a season We do store some wheat bagged up in metal drums, but not very much. Hope that helps - good luck!

It has been made clear in this thread that ag’ intensification has occurred via central policy drivers - and was never a farmer lead construct. In other words ag’ intensification was imposed upon farmers not initiated by them. The opposite to farmer bashing in fact. No one could be more pro farming than I am. And yes, the pace of change has slowed (or even been slightly reversed in some systems) over the last two decades - primarily due to European directives on ‘Agri-environment’ schemes. However we are still essentially operating an intensive legacy model. That’s just an evidence based fact of life - not an opinion. Again far from farmer bashing - just a recognition of the journey which farlmland Britain has endured. It helps us to understand where we are and why.

Yes - great effort!

What is not so well known - is the high numbers of tragic farm bankruptcies which occurred post war, mostly resulting from a failure to embrace the new intensive model.