Eat Wild lead-free register

[enfieldspares]

10 hours ago, Konor said:

If large commercial shoots wish to remain in business and require to make their by product saleable then only they should be required to forgo the use of lead shot.

This is 100% the mortal blow to this nonsense that is now being peddled by "Eat Wild" that "game shooting cannot thrive without a market for the birds". It is absolute rot. Well said KONOR. 

I would say all large big bag shooting be it commercial or non-commercial works does not work on a financial model of needing to actually sell any of the game it shoots. Or if that revenue from selling the now shot bird is factored in it is at a received price of as low as 40p or 50p per bird only.

I have in the past been in a modern syndicate where the guns "buy" the season of X number of days as it were. On a number of such we have shot bags of over two hundred birds in a day. As elsewhere beaters, pickers-up, guns took what they wanted. I regularly took home ten birds. What was left went to sale by auction at Melton Mowbray Market a few days later.

But the shoot did not depend on that income from the sold shot game. So it did not matter if the whole days bag was given away or sold. Of if when sold it made but 35p a bird after auctioneer's commission.

IT DID NOT NEED - NOR DOES ANY OTHER COMMERCIAL SHOOT - NEED TO SELL ANY GAME THAT IS SHOT TO SURVIVE. SELLING DEAD GAME IS NOT ITS BUSINESS MODEL.

ITS BUSINESS MODEL IS CHARGING GUNS MORE TO SHOOT BIRDS PUT OVER THEM THAN IT HAS COST THE SHOOT MANAGEMENT TO HAVE THOSE BIRDS IN PLACE TO PUT OVER THE GUNS. 

It was just the same with hound sports. The business model of a hunt was not based on the number of foxes it killed. Its business model was based on members' subscriptions and followers' "caps" exceeding the cost of the huntsman, the whips, their mounts and second horses and the cost of the other hunt servants and of hounds and the accomodation and stables and kennels associated.

BASC and whatever the British Game Alliance calls itself this week needs to realise that some of us have been enjoying this sort of playtime for decades or in some families for well over a century plus in "living memory". My father had his gun which I still shoot with and did so on a couple of days the season just gone bought for him on his twelfth birthday in June 1919.

We are not stupid. We know that game shooting does not need "a market for the birds" to survive. It needs only to cover its costs (and there's always enough willing and waiting to pay those monies) and to dispose of the by product of that activity - dead shot birds - in an ethical manner.

That ethical manner was once easi!y achieved as what was not taken as grace birds or retained by the estate where it was shot was sold into a market hungry for shot partridge, shot pheasant, shot duck. That market has declined especially for shot pheasant. It is no different to, say, the market for now unfashionable vegetables or for whole milk.

For be in no doubt the matter at hand is not of nobody wanting to buy shot partridge but one of nobody wanting to buy shot pheasant. Just as today's market can sell as much asparagus as it can get, and more, such that asparagus now has to be flown in and imported from as far away as South America. Yet in that same market one now struggles to sell swede. 

So the matter in hand is what to do with unwanted shot pheasant where the demand in the UK is far less than what is shot. It is this which is the problem not whether the bird is shot with lead but whether the market in the UK exists for shot pheasant. Dead partridge sell. Dead pheasant don't.

YOU CANNOT BUCK THE MARKET. THE MARKET SETS THE DEMAND AND THE DEMAND SETS THE PRICE. AND IF THE DEMAND IS NOT THERE THE MARKET WILL NOT TAKE THE ITEM AT ANY PRICE BE IT EVEN GIVEN AWAY OR SOLD FOR PENNIES. JUST LIKE THE ROOT VEGETABLE THE SWEDE OR WHOLE MILK.

So you either process your product to add value to it (whole milk becomes skimmed or semi skimmed milk) or you find another market OR YOU REDUCE WHAT YOU PRODUCE TO THE AMOUNT THE MARKET REQUIRES. 

If no your only answer is to export the product you create that cannot be sold in the UK. And therein is the crux of it. Commercial big bag shoots produce more dead pheasant than the UK market requires or will take. And since Brexit if these dead pheasant are shot with lead there is an issue in exporting them to the EU.

So the answer is in the hands of the commercial shoots. They either reduce the number of pheasant shot to what the UK market will bear or they...the commercial shoots...stop their paying guns using lead shot.

But no.

They choose the easy answer which is a call via BASC who they are unfortunately now more and more perceived as being a mouthpiece for big bag commercial shooting for a total ban on the use of lead shot for live quarry shooting across the sport to be imposed on all. Regardless of if those "ALL" never have a problem of ethical disposal of what they...those who make that "ALL"...have shot.

So let the commercial shoots get their own house in order and reduce the size of the bags they produce or insist their paying guns use non-lead shot before telling me, through BASC or BGA or CA, how I should run my house!

 

 

 

 

Edited May 7, 2024 by enfieldspares

[Konor]

1 hour ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Please stop spreading misinformation on this forum. There is a voluntary transition away from lead shot and single use plastics for live quarry shooting with shotguns being encouraged by many shooting organisations and it underpinned by GWCT advice. The key issue is lead shot being picked up by birds as grit. You are free to do what you want and there is no conspiracy. You must by now understand the situation having had it explained to you many times unless you are completely tunnel visioned. PW members and visitors can therefore conclude that you are using this forum to deliberately spreading misinformation. Which is unacceptable.

Could you be more specific Conor as your post has failed to address the points I  made and your accusation of my spreading misinformation is baseless. Did your speed reading fail to notice the word perception in my first sentence. And surely you can't believe that the voluntary move away from lead has not been compromised by your emotive posts regarding the danger to partridge chicks with no substantiating scientific data.

I think it more likely that you are the one deliberately spreading misinformation as you have done over various threads. Your agenda is to use  misinformation and half truths with no substantiating scientific evidence with the objective of bringing about a cessation of the use of lead shot. Any points made to counter that agenda are not acknowledged. I have made my position crystal clear you seem to prefer throwing accusations around rather than addressing the points made both  in my and others posts. 

[Smudger687]

41 minutes ago, Konor said:

Could you be more specific Conor as your post has failed to address the points I  made and your accusation of my spreading misinformation is baseless. Did your speed reading fail to notice the word perception in my first sentence. And surely you can't believe that the voluntary move away from lead has not been compromised by your emotive posts regarding the danger to partridge chicks with no substantiating scientific data.

I think it more likely that you are the one deliberately spreading misinformation as you have done over various threads. Your agenda is to use  misinformation and half truths with no substantiating scientific evidence with the objective of bringing about a cessation of the use of lead shot. Any points made to counter that agenda are not acknowledged. I have made my position crystal clear you seem to prefer throwing accusations around rather than addressing the points made both  in my and others posts. 

You're wasting your breath Konor, you could put a mathematical proof in front of BASC and unless it lined up with what they already wanted they'd refuse to acknowledge it.

[wymberley]

Hopefully this topic and similar ones are contained within a few members of PW as all that we're doing otherwise is the governments job for them.

It seems that once again whole milk is in the ascendant. 

 

[Conor O'Gorman]

44 minutes ago, Konor said:

Could you be more specific Conor as your post has failed to address the points I  made and your accusation of my spreading misinformation is baseless. Did your speed reading fail to notice the word perception in my first sentence. And surely you can't believe that the voluntary move away from lead has not been compromised by your emotive posts regarding the danger to partridge chicks with no substantiating scientific data.

I think it more likely that you are the one deliberately spreading misinformation as you have done over various threads. Your agenda is to use  misinformation and half truths with no substantiating scientific evidence with the objective of bringing about a cessation of the use of lead shot. Any points made to counter that agenda are not acknowledged. I have made my position crystal clear you seem to prefer throwing accusations around rather than addressing the points made both  in my and others posts. 

It's very simple. If shoots want to go lead-free that is their choice and if they wish to join the Eat Wild register that is their choice also. Please stop hijacking my threads with your misinformation.

[Rewulf]

2 hours ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

I agree. It may not matter to most what type of shot was used to shoot the bird nor what shot might be present in the meat. It's more a case of what game dealers, supermarkets, butchers, restaurants etc will take, based on what their clientele require or what the perceived requirement is. It's market forces.  If shoots want to go lead-free that is their choice and if they wish to join the Eat Wild register that is their choice also.

Personally, I would think the retailers, and consumers, would prefer there has no shot at all in the prepared bird ?
So if you truly believe there is a market for wild , free ranging game birds, why dont they just farm them, and prepare them like chicken... ?

But..But.. But... The customer wants a bird thats been shot , err , naturally .. No they dont , the general public wants to eat the meat, the same way they eat chicken ! The premium is the free range aspect.
This negates your argument, that there is a market for the 'by product' of large commercial shoots, and the complete and utter lie that the money is in the meat.

The transition to lead free is simply an excuse to preserve the big bag shoot fees, the preserve of BASC.

You need to decide whether it is the 'birds eat the lead shot and die' aspect , or , its to 'promote lead free game meat'
Because both arguments are built on some very shaky ground, and the net results of lead being outlawed are catastrophic for the vast majority of game shooters.

And the fact that BASC et al are pursuing this agenda , without consultation, is unacceptable.

[wymberley]

28 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

It's very simple. If shoots want to go lead-free that is their choice and if they wish to join the Eat Wild register that is their choice also. Please stop hijacking my threads with your misinformation.

Posts on here are just like pheasants. Once released they're 'wild' so anyone is entitled to take a shot at one. If you would prefer it otherwise, it's very simple.

[Konor]

27 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

If shoots want to go lead-free that is their choice

At present, but how long will that last when you are continually advertising the massive effects of the toxicity of using lead shot inland without a shred of scientific evidence to substantiate that claim? You have the gall to accuse me of misinformation in my posts while you are pedalling that line. Everyone knows that this whole lead shot fiasco has been poorly handled from the start and to continue down the road of attempting to justify past mistakes is pointless. BASC and others need to get a grip of this issue and work towards a more measured response to the calls for a total legislative lead ban instead of sticking their head in the sand and crying out that it is only a voluntary move away from lead that is the issue. 

[Rewulf]

2 minutes ago, Konor said:

BASC and others need to get a grip of this issue and work towards a more measured response to the calls for a total legislative lead ban instead of sticking their head in the sand and crying out that it is only a voluntary move away from lead that is the issue. 

This 

 

[Gordon R]

Excellent posts by Rewulf, Konor and a particularly good one from enfieldspares. The latter lays the situation out crystal clear.

[Conor O'Gorman]

33 minutes ago, Konor said:

At present, but how long will that last when you are continually advertising the massive effects of the toxicity of using lead shot inland without a shred of scientific evidence to substantiate that claim? You have the gall to accuse me of misinformation in my posts while you are pedalling that line. Everyone knows that this whole lead shot fiasco has been poorly handled from the start and to continue down the road of attempting to justify past mistakes is pointless. BASC and others need to get a grip of this issue and work towards a more measured response to the calls for a total legislative lead ban instead of sticking their head in the sand and crying out that it is only a voluntary move away from lead that is the issue. 

That is simply more misinformation. And in any case the OP is about the Eat Wild lead free register for shoots. 

3 hours ago, enfieldspares said:

This is 100% the mortal blow to this nonsense that is now being peddled by "Eat Wild" that "game shooting cannot thrive without a market for the birds". It is absolute rot. Well said KONOR. 

I would say all large big bag shooting be it commercial or non-commercial works does not work on a financial model of needing to actually sell any of the game it shoots. Or if that revenue from selling the now shot bird is factored in it is at a received price of as low as 40p or 50p per bird only.

I have in the past been in a modern syndicate where the guns "buy" the season of X number of days as it were. On a number of such we have shot bags of over two hundred birds in a day. As elsewhere beaters, pickers-up, guns took what they wanted. I regularly took home ten birds. What was left went to sale by auction at Melton Mowbray Market a few days later.

But the shoot did not depend on that income from the sold shot game. So it did not matter if the whole days bag was given away or sold. Of if when sold it made but 35p a bird after auctioneer's commission.

IT DID NOT NEED - NOR DOES ANY OTHER COMMERCIAL SHOOT - NEED TO SELL ANY GAME THAT IS SHOT TO SURVIVE. SELLING DEAD GAME IS NOT ITS BUSINESS MODEL.

ITS BUSINESS MODEL IS CHARGING GUNS MORE TO SHOOT BIRDS PUT OVER THEM THAN IT HAS COST THE SHOOT MANAGEMENT TO HAVE THOSE BIRDS IN PLACE TO PUT OVER THE GUNS. 

It was just the same with hound sports. The business model of a hunt was not based on the number of foxes it killed. Its business model was based on members' subscriptions and followers' "caps" exceeding the cost of the huntsman, the whips, their mounts and second horses and the cost of the other hunt servants and of hounds and the accomodation and stables and kennels associated.

BASC and whatever the British Game Alliance calls itself this week needs to realise that some of us have been enjoying this sort of playtime for decades or in some families for well over a century plus in "living memory". My father had his gun which I still shoot with and did so on a couple of days the season just gone bought for him on his twelfth birthday in June 1919.

We are not stupid. We know that game shooting does not need "a market for the birds" to survive. It needs only to cover its costs (and there's always enough willing and waiting to pay those monies) and to dispose of the by product of that activity - dead shot birds - in an ethical manner.

That ethical manner was once easi!y achieved as what was not taken as grace birds or retained by the estate where it was shot was sold into a market hungry for shot partridge, shot pheasant, shot duck. That market has declined especially for shot pheasant. It is no different to, say, the market for now unfashionable vegetables or for whole milk.

For be in no doubt the matter at hand is not of nobody wanting to buy shot partridge but one of nobody wanting to buy shot pheasant. Just as today's market can sell as much asparagus as it can get, and more, such that asparagus now has to be flown in and imported from as far away as South America. Yet in that same market one now struggles to sell swede. 

So the matter in hand is what to do with unwanted shot pheasant where the demand in the UK is far less than what is shot. It is this which is the problem not whether the bird is shot with lead but whether the market in the UK exists for shot pheasant. Dead partridge sell. Dead pheasant don't.

YOU CANNOT BUCK THE MARKET. THE MARKET SETS THE DEMAND AND THE DEMAND SETS THE PRICE. AND IF THE DEMAND IS NOT THERE THE MARKET WILL NOT TAKE THE ITEM AT ANY PRICE BE IT EVEN GIVEN AWAY OR SOLD FOR PENNIES. JUST LIKE THE ROOT VEGETABLE THE SWEDE OR WHOLE MILK.

So you either process your product to add value to it (whole milk becomes skimmed or semi skimmed milk) or you find another market OR YOU REDUCE WHAT YOU PRODUCE TO THE AMOUNT THE MARKET REQUIRES. 

If no your only answer is to export the product you create that cannot be sold in the UK. And therein is the crux of it. Commercial big bag shoots produce more dead pheasant than the UK market requires or will take. And since Brexit if these dead pheasant are shot with lead there is an issue in exporting them to the EU.

So the answer is in the hands of the commercial shoots. They either reduce the number of pheasant shot to what the UK market will bear or they...the commercial shoots...stop their paying guns using lead shot.

But no.

They choose the easy answer which is a call via BASC who they are unfortunately now more and more perceived as being a mouthpiece for big bag commercial shooting for a total ban on the use of lead shot for live quarry shooting across the sport to be imposed on all. Regardless of if those "ALL" never have a problem of ethical disposal of what they...those who make that "ALL"...have shot.

So let the commercial shoots get their own house in order and reduce the size of the bags they produce or insist their paying guns use non-lead shot before telling me, through BASC or BGA or CA, how I should run my house!

Nobody is telling you to do anything. Its very simple. If shoots want to go lead-free that is their choice and if they wish to join the Eat Wild register that is their choice also. 

[clangerman]

8 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

That is simply more misinformation. And in any case the OP is about the Eat Wild lead free register for shoots. 

 

it’s a thinly disguised pr stunt for large scale game shooting and you need to stop slating members who see through it! 

[welsh1]

@Connor O'Gorman

Does basc fund eat wild?

[Conor O'Gorman]

7 minutes ago, clangerman said:

it’s a thinly disguised pr stunt for large scale game shooting and you need to stop slating members who see through it! 

I am not slating anyone. I am challenging misinformation as it arises, and at the risk of repetition the OP is about the Eat Wild lead free register for shoots.  

1 minute ago, welsh1 said:

@Connor O'Gorman

Does basc fund eat wild?

No.

[Konor]

17 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

That is simply more misinformation.

Could you be more specific, which of the 4 or so points I have raised constitutes misisinformation. You are given the opportunity to strengthen your point of view by countering my points but instead you resort to accusation. 

[welsh1]

4 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

 

No.

But you did support the game alliance?

[Gordon R]

I had been in the garage for a few hours and my back was aching, so I sat in my comfy chair and listened to Conor O'Gorman's recommended podcast with Dylan Williams.

I warn you now that if you are averse to hearing the word "assurance" incessantly, do not listen.

I found it better than the BACS podcast, which would not have been hard. The good points were that Dylan Williams dealt with the reality of what to do with thousands of birds which had been shot. Going back to 2017 - when shoots were being charged £1 per bird to have them disposed of. Whilst Dylan and co had made some progress towards building a market for birds shot with non-lead, I was unconvinced about his argument about putting a value on shot game. By suggesting a levy for each shooter on each bird they had shot, it seemed to be the same as paying to have the birds disposed of. In fairness he seemed genuine in his efforts.

The down side of the podcast:-

Dylan was loaned a Rigby 28 bore and his fellow podcaster said WOW. he commented that Dylan wouldn't have minded missing with such a gun. I thought the comment was very silly.

Dylan would prefer to eat venison at each and every meal, rather than pheasant sausage roll. No idea why the question was posed, but it follows the juvenile level of the previous Terry podcast.

Dylan's daughter held a game barbecue - where 160 people turned up, instead of the expected 20-30, which does show that people are always up for a freebie.

One of the podcasters said shooting and fishing  were like heroin. In fishing only 1 in 1000 needles had heroin in it. I have no idea what the meaning of that claptrap was, but thought it was in poor taste.

Assurances were mentioned so many time, I was tempted to stop listening, but this gem was worth waiting for. "Assurances demonstrate that you are sticking to guidelines.

The level at which my shoot releases is within guidelines that the impact on the local environment is kept to a minimum". If you can make sense of that vague rubbish - good luck to you.

 

[Conor O'Gorman]

5 minutes ago, welsh1 said:

But you did support the game alliance?

Yes, that was around 4-5 years ago.

7 minutes ago, Konor said:

Could you be more specific, which of the 4 or so points I have raised constitutes misisinformation. You are given the opportunity to strengthen your point of view by countering my points but instead you resort to accusation. 

No, I don't wish to be drawn into dozens of posts with you Konor - you know you are wrong in what you are posting and there is no end to it. Just phone me. A better use of both our time methinks.

[Gordon R]

Conor O'Gorman - you post like a stuck record. never any answers, just the futile offer of a phone call. It's embarrassing.

There indeed might not be an end to Konor's questions, but there isn't a beginning to your answers

[welsh1]

4 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Yes, that was around 4-5 years ago.

I am just curious as to the vested interest basc has in promoting eat wild, as it appears you were commited  to eat wild under it's old name.

"Tom Adams, managing director of the BGA, said: “The BGA is grateful for BASC’s support. Working together, we can focus on delivering our shared objectives of a sustainable game market and credible self-regulation.""

[Conor O'Gorman]

5 minutes ago, Gordon R said:

Conor O'Gorman - you post like a stuck record. never any answers, just the futile offer of a phone call. It's embarrassing.

There indeed might not be an end to Konor's questions, but there isn't a beginning to your answers

Well, perhaps you and Konor and Rewulf could all have a single phone call with me. That ongoing refusal for a single phone call despite dominating each and every thread with reams of text is something you each have in common. What do you have to hide?

[Konor]

6 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

No, I don't wish to be drawn into dozens of posts with you Konor - you know you are wrong in what you are posting and there is no end to it. Just phone me. A better use of both our time methinks.

As I pointed out in an earlier thread One post from yourself countering the points I am making would save us from dozens more but you avoid the issue and counter post with irrelevances (dozens of times) 

Yet more accusation Conor but to set the record straight I think I am right when I am posting, at least it's an accurate portrayal of an honest view. Can you state the same? 

[Conor O'Gorman]

7 minutes ago, welsh1 said:

I am just curious as to the vested interest basc has in promoting eat wild, as it appears you were commited  to eat wild under it's old name.

"Tom Adams, managing director of the BGA, said: “The BGA is grateful for BASC’s support. Working together, we can focus on delivering our shared objectives of a sustainable game market and credible self-regulation.""

I haven't mentioned BASC. I have posted an update about the Eat Wild lead free register. 

[Konor]

2 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

What do you have to hide?

😂More to the point Conor what have you got to hide. You've simply no answers to the points raised and now you are going down the conspiracy theory route, oh dear. 

[Conor O'Gorman]

2 minutes ago, Konor said:

As I pointed out in an earlier thread One post from yourself countering the points I am making would save us from dozens more but you avoid the issue and counter post with irrelevances (dozens of times) 

Yet more accusation Conor but to set the record straight I think I am right when I am posting, at least it's an accurate portrayal of an honest view. Can you state the same? 

Maybe just stop posting misinformation about BASC. Then perhaps these threads would be more useful to others. It's not all about you.