Country Matters by Arrowsmith, August 26: Glorious

PICTURED ABOVE: A roe deer.
The twelfth of this month sees many people with shotguns heading for the moors of Yorkshire, Northumberland and Scotland as the grouse-shooting season, which lasts until the tenth of December, begins to attract wealthy men – aged around sixty and over – to participate in an elite activity estimated to be worth over 100 million pounds annually, and which supports approximately 2,500 jobs.

Grouse aren’t bred for the entertainment of those able to afford the expense, amounting to an average of twelve thousand pounds a year, of this premium pastime.  Grouse, unlike pheasants and partridges, are wild birds. Their prevalence is encouraged by managing their moorland habitat.  Gamekeepers protect the stock by fostering their interests, which includes managing the landscape itself so young birds can feed on tender heather shoots. To achieve this, staff burn patches of old heather promoting fresh new growth.  This is thought to be damaging as it causes charring to peat moors and adversely affects natural carbon-dioxide sequestration and probably contributes to climate change.  The scarring of the moorlands can be seen on aerial photographs and observed from satellite images.

The RSPB, who’ve criticised driven grouse shooting, have shown that grouse moor operators have been killing Hen-Harriers and Peregrine Falcons, together with other predators which target grouse.  They also raise concerns that grouse are being medicated against diseases which would otherwise reduce the population available for ‘hunting’. At a little over £200.00 per brace of grouse, they are an expensive accompaniment for your game chips…

Pheasants, partridges and wildfowl all have their seasons, and aren’t quite as expensive – although it’s much cheaper to buy them from a retailer.  If so inclined, you can shoot Pheasants from October to February, and Partridges from September, when you can also shoot ducks and Geese until the New Year.  Handy for Christmas.

When it comes to ‘posh’ food from the British countryside, the most exclusive is wild Salmon.  The famous Scottish rivers such as the Tay and the Tweed are beginning to show signs of reductions in their spring runs of Salmon, and although the Tyne, Wear and Tees are showing some stability, closer to home the Wye has reached a level of pollution, much of it from slurry running-off poultry farms, which mean Salmon-fishermen are instructed to release their catches back to the river in an attempt to re-establish stock threatened by extinction.

Of course, we see quite a few native species being reintroduced, such as beavers, otters, pine martens, and, controversially, wild boars. Once there were bears and wolves. Just recently however, our farmers have had to start culling deer, because they are damaging crops, and generally upsetting the balance of natural sustainable systems.

We in the Southwest are badly affected by the almost explosive growth of herds of wild deer. It’s estimated that over the last half century, the UK population of wild deer has grown fivefold to over two million, with almost half a million of these being the Red Deer found in remote moorlands and forests. Together with Roe Deer they form the original native population, but for centuries they’ve been joined by Fallow Deer introduced by both the Romans and Normans. Much later, as the British Empire expanded into Asia, Sika, Muntjac and Chinese Water Deer have been imported. They eat our crops, damage our woodlands, collide with our vehicles and carry disease.

It’s time to go huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’. Rifles rather than shotguns. Tom Lehrer, American Math professor and comic songwriter who died earlier this year sang; “I went out and shot the maximum the game laws would allow, two game wardens, seven hunters and a cow.”

Go and do likewise!

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