Seems a bit sick to me to rear birds just to be living targets. In Wiltshire it used to be mayhem when the new pheasants were released. Round the back of the Downs you could be driving over small carpets of crushed pheasants. I have no problem with a competent individual shooting for the pot but dislike organised shoots. Disliked them even when I used to go beating and stopped as my opinion got stronger as to the ethics of using living animals as things.
Pheasants.
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It does seem excessive sometimes. We have a shoot nearby with 500 birds in a day with up to 300 extras. The guns have loaders so they can shoot enough. It seems pointless - except that my mate brings me lots of pheasants in the season.
Yea commercial shoots are ticky ethically, and I trained as a gamekeeper and find myself saying that.
As for the legality, it has to be on your land, and in season, if it's out of season and not your land don't even think about it. If you get caught I can see some one in the CPS who belongs to the ethical treatment of vegetables lobby making a fuss over it.
As for the legality, it has to be on your land, and in season, if it's out of season and not your land don't even think about it. If you get caught I can see some one in the CPS who belongs to the ethical treatment of vegetables lobby making a fuss over it.
Yeah, but its great fun
Have you got a nice pair of breasts in your freezer, chap?
I like mine dusted in flour with a bit of salt and pepper.
I don't see much sport in driven birds to be honest. However, I have lived on and helped out with a driven bird shoot. There are some things to reflect on:
1) The birds all get taken by a game butcher
2) The birds have at least as much freedom (in reality more) as a free range chicken
3) Game shoots keep many farms afloat - it can cost upwards of a grand a day per gun. This pumps a lot of revenue into the countryside.
4) Game shoots are havens for raptors, stoats, weasels and many other birds and mammals that exist on either the corn spun out for the birds or the birds themselves
Most importantly, the farmer whose land it was once said to me "I can't make money from mixed woodlands, so if the birds go, I will clear fell and plough the land - I will have to to stay solvent".
Game shoots preserve and manage the woodlands we love, they generally avoid pesticides and keep nice open woods with glades and rides for the guns.
Pheasants were brought here to hunt, they get eaten and are bred for the purpose. I see no more cruelty in that - indeed less - than farmed livestock. As a bonus, it preserves woods and pays for them to be managed.
Its not my thing and I don't want to do it, but I hope it continues for the benefits it brings to the countryside.
Red
1) The birds all get taken by a game butcher
2) The birds have at least as much freedom (in reality more) as a free range chicken
3) Game shoots keep many farms afloat - it can cost upwards of a grand a day per gun. This pumps a lot of revenue into the countryside.
4) Game shoots are havens for raptors, stoats, weasels and many other birds and mammals that exist on either the corn spun out for the birds or the birds themselves
Most importantly, the farmer whose land it was once said to me "I can't make money from mixed woodlands, so if the birds go, I will clear fell and plough the land - I will have to to stay solvent".
Game shoots preserve and manage the woodlands we love, they generally avoid pesticides and keep nice open woods with glades and rides for the guns.
Pheasants were brought here to hunt, they get eaten and are bred for the purpose. I see no more cruelty in that - indeed less - than farmed livestock. As a bonus, it preserves woods and pays for them to be managed.
Its not my thing and I don't want to do it, but I hope it continues for the benefits it brings to the countryside.
Red
If it's legal to take a pheasant on public land by catty, why is it poaching to run one over and take it?
Or is that urban myth?
Or is that urban myth?
widu13
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
That's the aforementioned general licence. Good luck with getting the Government to sign off on including any game bird to it.
Myth partly fact partly, if you hit one while on private land it's still the owners. However if your on a public road and don't swerve to hit it you can pick it up.
widu13
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Some interesting points learned chums. Thanks for posting. Sad thing is about the 'shoots' around me is that they are run by prats pretending to be country landed gentry. It's not to keep farms afloat its to impress their betweeded green wellie Labrador owning marble in the mouth old school tie chums.
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Nothing like a bit of class hatred
Posh-talking or not, I'm gathering they still employ gamekeepers etc etc to manage the shoot. Which I'm guessing is appreciated by the local community. And as BR said, it's maintaining the land and diversity we all like to see.
It's not class hatred; it's simple annoyance at folks who don't belong to the area getting in the way.
To quote my bother, "It fair gets on your wick when you're out for a quiet walk and all that you can hear are the mating calls of bellowing plums!"
Afaik, and I know a fair number of beaters, they are often brought into an area in teams. Not so much a gang master as a gamekeeper with a list of solid and reliable folks. One neighbour regularly beats for shoots in Perthshire, the Borders and the Lothians, and slightly more infrequently in Argyll and Aberdeenshire.........and he lives in Lanarkshire. Few locals really benefit.
cheers,
M
To quote my bother, "It fair gets on your wick when you're out for a quiet walk and all that you can hear are the mating calls of bellowing plums!"
Afaik, and I know a fair number of beaters, they are often brought into an area in teams. Not so much a gang master as a gamekeeper with a list of solid and reliable folks. One neighbour regularly beats for shoots in Perthshire, the Borders and the Lothians, and slightly more infrequently in Argyll and Aberdeenshire.........and he lives in Lanarkshire. Few locals really benefit.
cheers,
M
Have a read of the pdf I linked too. I'd be interested to read a more recent one too. I could well be that the guy travels to beat at shoots as he's a good sort, and they can't get enough or any locals to go beating at those shoots.
Those pratts you talk about?
Round my way, they are generally decent working men who are trying to make a living out of crappy bits of land that have little other use.
Oh, by the way, 35 - 40 mph is the optimum speed to collide with a pheasant in a car. Don't ask how I know this
Round my way, they are generally decent working men who are trying to make a living out of crappy bits of land that have little other use.
Oh, by the way, 35 - 40 mph is the optimum speed to collide with a pheasant in a car. Don't ask how I know this
He is a sound man but the reason given for not employing locals more is that they don't want to have the locals familiar with their patch, and where the pheasants, etc., are
............and they wonder why the locals are scornful and unhelpful ?? Hoi polloi, and all that, y'know ?
So, at the end of the day, is it right to say that in appropriate season, and if on his own land, his garden or suchlike, then Filterhoose could have the pheasants ?
Method though ? I mean you can walk up to those daft birds and drop a jacket over them. They just coorie down and a moment later their necks can be snapped and they're on the way to becoming dinner.........or is that, "unsporting!", and therefore illegal too ?
I didn't know that guddling for fish was illegal until recently...........because the stupidity of the law is focused on 'sport' not on dinner on the table
M
p.s. Bushwhacker, no offence intended to your neighbours trying to make a living from small lands, that's not really the case where Filterhoose lives though.
but the reason given for not employing locals more is that they don't want to have the locals familiar with their patch, and where the pheasants, etc., are ............and they wonder why the locals are scornful and unhelpful ?? Hoi polloi, and all that, y'know ?
So, at the end of the day, is it right to say that in appropriate season, and if on his own land, his garden or suchlike, then Filterhoose could have the pheasants ?
Method though ? I mean you can walk up to those daft birds and drop a jacket over them. They just coorie down and a moment later their necks can be snapped and they're on the way to becoming dinner.........or is that, "unsporting!", and therefore illegal too ?
I didn't know that guddling for fish was illegal until recently...........because the stupidity of the law is focused on 'sport' not on dinner on the table
M
p.s. Bushwhacker, no offence intended to your neighbours trying to make a living from small lands, that's not really the case where Filterhoose lives though.
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I don't know how they do it in Scotland, but around the shoots I have lived on and near its all locals that work there. The keeper I knew lived on the shoot (housing provided) with his lass (a local farmers daughter). The feed was local grown and sold through the feed merchant down the road. The beaters came from the local pub that Bushwacker Bob and I used to drink in, a local catering firm did the food and the college kids served it. I really can't imagine why anyone would travel to beat - it pays only beer money really - but the beaters got a brace of pheasant each, they also got to shoot a beaters day (when the normal "guns" drove for the beaters), got a good meal and extra money for trained retrievers. Heck beaters even have their own organisation
http://www.nobs.org.uk/
I have to say all the venom certainly sounds like inverse snobbery to me. I mean - no-one here would wear odd clothing to do traditional activities in the woods now would they?
Live and let live I say - if it preserves the woods, its okay with me
Red
http://www.nobs.org.uk/
I have to say all the venom certainly sounds like inverse snobbery to me. I mean - no-one here would wear odd clothing to do traditional activities in the woods now would they?
Live and let live I say - if it preserves the woods, its okay with me
Red
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