It's only a buzzard and pheasants are expensive

[boatman]

Justification please for this by shooters and supporters of landowners.

https://raptorpersecutionscotland.w...icence-to-kill-buzzards-to-protect-pheasants/

What is so stupid is that if there is an empty Buzzard friendly (apart from gamekeepers) space created a young buzzard is likely to occupy it.

 

[boatman]

Sorry about the thread's original title mix up

 

[Janne]

I sm a shooter, a hunter and a fisherman. My rule is: kill it only if you eat it. I do not see the need to kill birds of prey.. Sure they eat pheasants, but that many that the land owners feel the need to kill them? I do not think so.

 

[Countryman]

By January Pheasants have cost the shoot at least £25 per bird to rear and conserve. The income derived from the shoot may well be the difference in keeping the estate floating.

Nobody would countenance the protection of a wild predator that decimated dairy herds.

I have some sympathy with the estate which already has protected predators on it in the form of badgers. Whilst these birds are deeply beautiful and charismatic they are apex predators and not in danger.
Natural England do not issue licences like this lightly. There must be really significant damage and overpopulation in the area. Yes no doubt the gap will be filled in due course but perhaps it will allow such an estate a respite.




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[boatman]

If a landowner or shooting business chooses to overstock its land with game birds then any losses due to predators are a cost of its business. Not the same as a dairy herd, when released these birds are wild and may be shot by anybody on whose land they alight while making the releaser not liable for any damaged caused to vehicles when they roam onto roads, which they do in large numbers.

 

[Wayland]

Perhaps they should start gunning down all the car drivers who constantly hit pheasants that dash out into the road around one shoot I know.

After all saturating an area with game birds, that are too stupid to live, so that over wealthy shooters can line up and have them driven towards their own inevitable slaughter, is much more important than the damage caused to the general public's vehicles.

This is yet another example of the complete disconnection from reality that some of these inbred landed pillocks gain from their isolated, privileged upbringing. ( This is where people start to jump in to tell me how wrong I am and that these people really care about all the indentured servants that they call "staff" on their estates. Try telling that to someone too afraid to leave their job with a tiny cottage and such low pay that they can never afford a deposit on their own property somewhere else.)

I have nothing against real hunting for the pot but anyone listening to the noise of shotguns blasting off at a frequency that sounds more like machine gun fire or seen the lined up carcases that are mostly fed to the dogs because there are too many to eat, knows this is nothing to do with hunting. It's all about a pathetic and pointless effort to to imitate the so called "aristocrisy" which they think are some kind of superior stock (Spelling intentional by the way it rhymes with Hypocrisy.)

Mankind will never be free until the last king, aristocrat or jumped up millionaire is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. (Borrowed and adapted from Denis Diderot.)

Hunt and Eat the rich I say.. (Borrowed and adapted from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.)


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[brambles]

I live in an area full of pheasant shooting estates. Raptors are not the problem, the pheasants are. They have to be the most suicidal animals ever to have evolved, the roads are absolutely littered with their corpses all the time. I have been working in my garden beside the road and had 4 or 5 pheasants an hour killed by cars and knocked over the fence towards me and have lost count of the number which have thrown themselves under my car as I drive around.

 

[Leshy]

Mankind will never be free until the last king, aristocrat or jumped up millionaire is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. (Borrowed and adapted from Denis Diderot.)

Hunt and Eat the rich I say.. (Borrowed and adapted from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.)


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Awesome quotes.
(Notes to self: read more about Denis Diderot)
I agree with you 100% Wayland!

It's a rich man's sport and reading the article has just enforced that.
It's obvious they have been pushing this law year after year .
Their persistence has paid off for now , but if the public outcry got this shambles reversed before , it will do so again.

Raptors are not abundant everywhere, as it states in this article, in some areas they are indeed endangered, and thus they're a protected species... And so they should be.
I am emailing DEFRA today and will pass this on to all my relevant contacts so they can oppose it too.

Thanks for the OP for the info and hope everyone who opposes this decision , does something about it rather than just accept it in disbelief.

Regards

 

[Countryman]

Awesome quotes.
(Notes to self: read more about Denis Diderot)
I agree with you 100% Wayland!

It's a rich man's sport and reading the article has just enforced that.
It's obvious they have been pushing this law year after year .
Their persistence has paid off for now , but if the public outcry got this shambles reversed before , it will do so again.

Raptors are not abundant everywhere, as it states in this article, in some areas they are indeed endangered, and thus they're a protected species... And so they should be.
I am emailing DEFRA today and will pass this on to all my relevant contacts so they can oppose it too.

Thanks for the OP for the info and hope everyone who opposes this decision , does something about it rather than just accept it in disbelief.

Regards

So if it were a 50p a bird that would make you feel different?

In the countryside there isn't a lot of industry and a lot of people are employed in sports you would probably find elitist.

It's a living working countryside, not a theme park for townies.

English Nature are protectors of our countryside, if they have issues a licence it will be for good reason, based on substantive evidence.

Protecting apex predators is always a balancing act.


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[Wayland]

My family made their own living in the countryside for centuries until the enclosures act made it impossible and forced them to work for the rich men who stole the land.

Now their decendents expect us to be grateful for the crumbs they throw us so that they can live as they choose.

The countryside is mostly a theme park for the rich and privileged now. They shouldn't expect any sympathy from me.

 

[Countryman]

Ok. It's just got political now rather than a matter of either animals or countryside so this chaps is where I bow out.


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[Tengu]

Lots of buzzards around here, -they eat roadkill

(mostly badgers and rabbits and pheasants)

would we care if they were vultures?

 

[Janne]

When I lived in Sweden and UK, I used to stop and take the game home after I hit and killed it.
Want not waste not....

 

[boatman]

Of course it is political when they get a law suspended in their favour but weirdly it seems that to be against that is to be political by to be pro is not.

 

[Countryman]

Oh I'm sorry to get in the way of the hysteria.

It's not a suspension of law it's a licence to cull a limited number in directly threatening someone's livestock - pheasants in this case.

This is not political. It's what Natural England do.

One day I walked into a field with 16 buzzards in it. A magnificent sight but not exactly supporting a theory of shortage.


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[boatman]

Seen a flock of starlings recently, are they under threat or not? Nil argument. Hysteria is the next accusation of choice, wait for "Class War" and the "Politics of Envy" accusations. Smokescreen to hide the fact that the decision was wrong and pointless. A licence to do something normally unlawful is a suspension of the law in that instance, what else is it?

As with foxes a major killer of pheasants is traffic.

 

[Janne]

Can you eat buzzards?

 

[Wayland]

I guess so but it wouldn't be as tasty as a nice fat landowner...

 

[Drain Bamaged]

Janne, you can eat practically anything, But! it might kill ya.....I imagine being quite long lived they could well be a bit tough and having seen some of the stuff they are prepared to eat I'd be tempted to settle for a Bacon Sandwich......37 is the most I have seen in one go in the field at the side of my woods, the numbers grow each year as they get commoner and commoner, there is also a rumour that 2 pairs of Red Kite have successfully reared quite close to me this year so it would not surprise me to see them appear this year come ploughing time. the pair in my own woodland have now reared 11 chicks in the five years and I had to actively discourage a second pair from nesting this year.......2 adults and 3 young my ducks and I can just about live with but not 2 breeding pair. I saw the Male Buzzard take a Kestrel earlier in the year, I have watched them regularly rob Sparrow Hawks after a kill (a bonus because eventually the Sparrow Hawks move on) I have seen them worrying Barn Owls that are out hunting in the day time and despite the fact that most of the Corvids will mob the Buzzards given the chance the Buzzard will turn the tables, they have certainly driven out (or I assume it is them) the Jays and Magpies from my woods (another bonus as far as the song birds and ducklings are concerned) They really are great birds to watch and I am lucky in so much as I can get within feet of the pair in my woods, I have what amounts to a large bird table around one of the trees onto which I throw breasted pigeon, Rabbit carcasses etc. the Female Buzzard I believe with encouragement could be persuaded to take them from my hand (not something I would do as it's not fair to either the bird or neighbours but it certainly makes for some good views)....They have their good points and their bad but the truth is they are getting up towards numbers (in certain areas) where their bad points are beginning to out way the good. Their very nature, one of being less territorial than many other birds of prey means that if a good source of food is available they are quite tolerant of the company of their own kind so a lot of damage can and is done when they appear in numbers. Another problem that is not immediately apparent is they will eat almost exactly the same food as your average Fox (only they tend to be better at it) so problems can be exasperated by the Foxes who have to resort to getting into places that the Buzzards can't.

D.B.

 

[KenThis]

A quick google gives the number of breeding pairs of buzzards in UK at 70,000
Buzzards prey on small birds and mammals and carrion, (not solely on pheasant)

The number of breeding females of pheasants (a non-native bird) 2,300,000
with 25,000,000 released into the UK each year, with 50% mortality.
Biggest cause of death appears to be foxes, followed by people (driving) and lastly only approx 1-4% of lost pheasants due to raptors...

I'm not aware of all the facts surrounding the arguments but it seems to me after only 20 mins of research that the proposed cull is a bad idea.
Although it MAY make a difference in this instance because this estate MAY have a real problem with buzzards, it will not be the solution in the majority cases.
Others MAY erroneously use this specific example as justification for their own illegal buzzard culls.
If this DOES work due to the specific situation then others MAY try to use it as justification for their own illegal buzzard culls.

Pheasants may be a valuable resource in the 'countryside' but it seems to me that their value is only in terms of what rich people are willing to spend for the thrill of shooting animals. If pheasants were ONLY shot for food then I imagine some clever sod would have started farming them for food only and not to be shot.

I'm all in favor of hunting for food, but hunting wildlife to 'protect' non-endangered pheasants that are only around to be living targets for stupid rich sadists seems morally wrong.