The shooting industry is the blanket term we use to describe everything from shooting estates (where most commercial shooting takes place), gamekeepers (who are responsible for the birds that estates rear to be shot), shooting syndicates (groups that rent a shoot and use membership subscriptions to fund the operation of a shoot) and shooters themselves (who go to estates or are syndicate members who pay to shoot birds).

‘Shooting industry’ may be an unfamiliar pairing of words. ‘Shooting’ itself doesn’t refer to itself as an ‘industry’ of course because it conjures up images of automated factories, of processing goods, and of soulless supply and demand. It would prefer we think of shooting in wildlife-friendly terms and as a loose collection of ‘sportsmen’ spontaneously enjoying the fresh air, but an industry is exactly what it is: an enormous and highly-focussed business that uses birds as replaceable resources and that makes huge amounts of money selling its ‘goods’ to its clients

It’s worth a great deal of money, owns a lot of land, and has wealthy and influential supporters.

It is also utterly selfish, responsible for the deaths of millions of birds, and for trapping and snaring hundreds of thousands of mammals.

It has no place now or in the future.