Shooting Times & Country 6-Apr-2022

Dogs, eh? They’re pretty amazing. It might sound like the sort of thing some drunkard says to you at the pub. But they truly are. The other night I sat out by the fire in Norfolk, in the dark, and my terrier switched on to high alert, looking into the blackness for any danger. There was something primal about it — man has cooked meat over a flame while their dog keeps watch for more than 10,000 years. This week’s issue is a celebration of working dogs and our extraordinary relationship with them. They make shooting better, they make hunting possible and they even do their bit on the battlefield. A few weeks ago, I went to Crufts and witnessed all sorts of things, including a depressed-looking poodle being prodded and…

Despite recent defeats, Wild Justice has launched a campaign to shorten the season for woodcock. In a letter to George Eustice and Edwin Poots, the group calls for the season for the birds to be moved from the start of October — September in Scotland — to 1 December. “The rationale for such a change has been set out by the pro-shooting GWCT and rests on the fact that the UK woodcock population is swelled by large numbers of migrants in winter, and in midwinter the continental birds outnumber the UK birds by about 10:1,” it says. The GWCT has long pursued a policy of voluntary restraint in the shooting of woodcock before 1 December. Numbers of breeding woodcock have declined significantly in Britain but the much larger migrant population, which arrives…

An effort to restrict the breeding of gamebirds has made progress through the House of Lords. The Game Birds (Cage Breeding) Bill aims to “prohibit the use of raised laying or battery cages to keep certain game birds for the purpose of producing eggs”. The bill is sponsored by former Conservative deputy chief whip Lord Randall, who noted it was “not about the rights and wrongs of shooting per se”, adding, “well-managed shoots can be of conservation benefit, in terms of habitat management”. However, his fellow peers clearly saw it as an opportunity to push forward restrictions. Green Party peer Baroness Bennett said: “The Green Party also supports the bill. It provides some limited but important protections for the welfare of animals whose short life begins in captivity before they are released…

The politically powerful French hunting lobby has thrown its weight behind incumbent Emmanuel Macron ahead of the vote on 10 April. President of the Fédération des Chasseurs (National Federation of Hunters) Willy Schraen announced his backing for the En Marche candidate in an interview. Mr Schraen, who recently announced his own reelection bid, said: “[Macron] did not disappoint me. No law or amendment that could damage hunting has been adopted in this five-year period. Each time we had a problem to settle with a minister of ecology, he intervened,” he added. With characteristic bluntness, Mr Schraen continued: “If we have a president called Jean-Luc Mélenchon, there will be no more hunting. If it is Marine Le Pen, she will remove a series of practices deemed incompatible with her ideas. We must weigh…

CHECK Ticks have become almost as much a feature of the spring countryside as daffodils or frogspawn. Dogs should be checked frequently for these parasites and any found should be removed with a tick removal tool. Your vet should be able to provide a product that reduces the number of ticks your dog picks up. SHOOT Try the GWCT accredited game Shot test. This free test covers gamebird releasing, predation control, habitat management and all the other topics required to equip you with the right questions to ask when choosing where to go shooting.…

Avian influenza is continuing to ravage the north-west of France as British shoots make contingency plans. Data released by the French ministry of agriculture showed that in the last week of March, cases in the main gamebird-rearing areas of Vendée and Loire-Atlantique continued to increase, though the rate of increase appears to be slowing. Shooting Timesunderstands that these figures are likely to go on rising for some time as a sizeable backlog of cases are checked and confirmed by French veterinary authorities. As cases continue to increase, it has become clear that hopes that imports of chicks and eggs may start in early June are optimistic (News, 30 March). Where a premises has had an outbreak, the period from the slaughter of affected birds to restocking is more than 50 days; an…