Shooting Times & Country 18-May-2022

Last Sunday I had lunch with the owner of a small estate in the West Country, who said they’ve decided to give their shoot tenant the heave-ho. It’s always sad to hear about the breakup of what will inevitably be a little community. Interestingly, the landowner I was lunching with reckoned the pheasants damage his woods. We didn’t get into stocking densities or any of the details, but I walked home hoping that they don’t mothball the whole thing. Perhaps it had all got a bit intense and the tenant was having to go a bit hard to make his numbers add up. But what about scaling back? Dig a few ponds, walk the field margins for snipe when numbers allow, and cut down to only one or two release pens.…

Use of lead ammunition for live quarry would be banned under proposals from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The sweeping restrictions — which would also apply to most forms of target shooting — have been proposed in a ‘restriction dossier’ from the agency. “An unacceptable risk has been identified for both hunting with lead shot and from sports shooting,” said the HSE, adding: “There are no realistic ways to limit the amount of lead entering the environment or to eliminate the risk to humans from ingestion of lead when lead shot is used for hunting.” For rifle ammunition, the proposals would mean either an 18-month or a five-year transition period between the introduction of the rules and a ban coming into force. “We will not accept restrictions that disadvantage shooting” The 18-month period…

A pioneering trial designed to unlock the conflict between hen harriers and grouse shooting has been extended. The Hen Harrier Brood Management trial uses a combination of relocating chicks and providing diversionary feeding to allow land managers to maintain healthy numbers of hen harriers and an economic density of grouse. Dave Slater of Natural England explained: “In 2021, trial interventions were approved at two nests. For 2022, Natural England has issued a further one-year research licence to allow the fifth year of the trial to go ahead, following the two-year licences issued in 2018 and 2020. “The trial will operate this year in much the same way as it did during the first four years. There are strict measures in place to safeguard the birds’ welfare and to ensure the local population…

RATS Warm weather and abundant food will have lured rats outside and rodent control efforts need to follow them. Rats are one of the main environmental problems associated with shoots and it is our responsibility to manage them. While poisons will do the bulk of the work, air rifles, small-bore shotguns and terriers all have their place at this time of year. SHOOT Try non-toxic rifle ammo on the range. No responsible hunter would try new ammunition for the first time on live quarry. Non-lead ammunition behaves quite differently from lead, so make sure you give yourself adequate range time and an adequate supply to be confident in it.…

Country dwellers and nature lovers have reacted with anger after a ‘land reform campaigner’ led a mass trespass on a shooting estate — and claimed that a month of similar actions was planned. Justifying the event, author and land reform campaigner Guy Shrubsole told The Big Issue: “Regular access to nature is vital to people’s physical and mental health, yet so much of England’s countryside is shut off behind fences and intimidating signs.” The organisers of the Right to Roam protest claim that 200 people joined the event near Totnes in Devon. The marchers targeted an estate owned by the Duke of Somerset. Predictably, they chose to focus their attention on the estate’s pheasant drives. Along the way, they found what they claimed was a ‘pheasant graveyard’ — a single fuzzy image…

In a scene that might have come straight out of the 19th century, gamekeepers have helped to tackle a moorland fire started by a steam train. The blaze was started by sparks from a steam locomotive pulling carriages on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. The scenic track runs over an 18-mile route between Whitby and Pickering and is a popular tourist attraction. The fire came at the worst possible time for the local wildlife, coinciding with the peak nesting time for threatened ground-nesting birds. Fortunately, gamekeepers from the North York Moors Moorland Organisation equipped with 21st-century technology were on hand to put out the blaze. This is not the first time the train has started a fire and the repetition was met with indignation from locals. Resident Nicola Turford said: “I understand…