Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
The Grouse four month long shooting season begins later today.
But experts are warning of a fall in the numbers of Grouse due to the cold wet spring.
The only brace of Grouse I like comes from a bottle in large measures with no ice.
Chin chin
Howard and Barry W-S must be on the way to Bonnie Scotland as we speak...lol
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Cheers Marek - I'm with you on this one!!
Guest 657- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,037
Real grouse are beautiful and shouldn't be shot. Keep Grouse in a bottle!
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Just found this article on the ''Shooting and Conservation Club site''..which seems to be a contradiction in terms..?
August 12 marks the start of the grouse shooting season. Throughout this period shooters from all over the world head for the moors of Scotland and northern England. The season lasts from August 12 to December 10 on mainland Great Britain and from August 12 to November 30 in Northern Ireland. The grouse are wild and not artificially reared.
Most grouse shooting takes place in a formal setting with birds being driven over the shooters. The Guns are placed in butts (a hide for shooting screened by a turf or stone wall) and the birds are driven towards them by beaters. There is a strict code of conduct governing behaviour on the grouse moor for both safety and etiquette. Grouse shooting can also be undertaken by 'walking up' grouse over pointers, or by flushing the birds with other dogs.
This is a traditional sport which was largely supplanted by formal driven shooting in the mid to late 1800s, but which is seeing a resurgence in popularity, although driven grouse shooting is the only commercially viable means of running a grouse moor
Cheers Bern.
With the weather taking such a nasty turn and a third of Augusts rainfall expected within the next couple of days together with gale force winds blowing through the channel it would appear that the Grouse drinking season has started bang on time..
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Actually Marek I dont see any contradiction between shooting and conservation.
If you want something to shoot in future seasons then you need to conserve your prey and their environment.
To expand this theme on another tack, in parts of Africa conservationists support controlled elephant sporting shoots in order to aid conservation. Too many elephants create pressures on the environment damaging trees etc and the numbers need to be controlled. Also there is the problem of ivory poaching sometimes by criminal gangs but often it is poor locals trying to live. By offering elephant hunting safaris to rich westerners they put the profits back into the local community, employing many of the poor natives to protect the elephant from the criminal gangs and help/guide/serve the shooting parties.
So there is certainly no contradiction...
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
BarryW
If we didn't shoot the Grouse then surely that in itself would help conserve the species.Conserving them purely so that they can be shot by rich townees with nothing else better to do appears to me to be barbaric.
Local farmers popping them off to put in the dinner pot to feed the family I have no problem with but the Land Rover driving ,corduroy trousered,checked shirt ,flat cap and barbour wearing brigade descending on jockland hisses me right off.
You'll be advocating shooting a hoodie season next...now come to think of it..lol..only a joke...before I receive numerous complaints...
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 641- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 2,335
Bagged a couple of brace so far, my man is off beating the grouse to the right of us as we speak, so Howard has kindly offered to be my 'ghillie' for the day, damn fine chap, salt of the earth.
Marek, your idea for a hoodie shooting season is a sound idea, we can send some beaters up the Western Heights to flush them out...only joking..
Joking apart, I'm not against the Glorious Twelth, but as you say the best grouse comes in large measures in a glass, but no ice for me please.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
i am tugging my forelock baz, i know my place, incidentally it is now coming to light that a lot of rare and valuable birds of prey meet their end during the grouse shooting season.
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
If hunting is so good for the animals what happened to all the boars, wolves and bears that used to be native to this country?
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
i always find it amusing that ethnic cleansing of wildlife is ok, but of humans in eastern europe is wrong.
where i used to live urban foxes, grey squirrels and canada geese were ruling the roost.
no doubt that has changed now due to nature running its course.
marek said earlier about someone killing something to eat, surely that is the way it should be.
that is what animals do, except cats and humans who do it for fun.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
I wouldnt mind leashing off a volley or two but at the local pigeons ....
I agree that hunting of any kind is not good animal preservation. In the case of grouse though its very different in that they are heavily man managed, re-stocked and so on, and bread simply to be shot, as though on a fast forward conveyor belt to an early grave. It is rather an odd practice when you think about it but it is as it has always been.Similarties abound with fox hunting in that its rather a flat cap corduroy death by amusement thing...as Marek has said above.
These practices seem at odds with the highly sensitive 21st century.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Chris - all those disappeared from the UK long before the word and concept of conservation was invented. You had might as well have also mentioned sabre toothed tigers and wooly mammoths. Not really a point relevant to this thread.
Howard - grouse are eaten. I see no problem about having fun hunting while out and about catching your foodstuffs (or killing pests like foxes come to that!)
PaulB - the 'sensitive 21st century'.... You are talking really more about us cosseted and excessively soft townies, some people do still know what the real world of the countryside is all about and it is not this Beatrix Potter fantasy that so many seem to have.
You are right though about the breeding of grouse for the shooters. That goes hand in hand with the conservation of their moorland habitat. As for pidgeons, its the seagulls I would like some volleys fired at and I am not joking!
Now then PaulB - I also detected a touch of the old class war in your post. It didnt work in Crewe and it doesnt work in this context either. I can immediately think of 3 of my clients who are likely on the morrs right now. One is a plumber, another an ex sergeant in the Queens Regt who is now a self-employed sign maker and the other is an insurance agent. The insurance man is the nearest to your idea of a shooter as he is an ex farmer, but knowing him, no it really doesnt work there either... Shooting is not just for the rich and you dont have to be rich to participate, I know people who spend more on ciggies than these three spend on their shooting hobby.
Has Barry W S got something against us on the western heights, or does he know something I don't?
Guest 641- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 2,335
Oh no, Phil, that is purely a joke, 'tongue in cheek' no offence meant
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
One slight correction here. Boars were hunted by British royalty and various Kings kept areas of the country purely for their enjoyment of the activity. Surely an early example of hunting as conservation, that failed.
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
The Monarch still keeps a large number of Boars..namely the hangers on in the Royal Family.It's just a pity we are not allowed to hunt them...
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Chris - it is still a fact that they disappeared before conservation was ever thought of. Now it is central to all hunting and fishing sports. We live in a different world now. Just look at the example of the elephant I gave earlier, tieing together the interests of native tribes and the local economy with that of the elephant, conservation and controlled sport hunting.
I thought Chris was referring to hunting, not conservation in its modern concept...? Marek - I can't help liking you!!!!
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
I was Bern. I still think hunting as a means of conservation is just a very poor excuse to continue with a practice that demeans our supposed civilised status. But I do like Marek's ideas.
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
