The 12th of August (the ‘Inglorious 12th’) marks the start of a key ‘season’ for the shooting industry. Over the next 121 days that industry will aim to sell hundreds of thousands of Red Grouse to shooters to kill.
It’s a huge business. Grouse moor estates cover an area of England the size of Greater London – some 550,000 acres – and are subsidised with millions of pounds in public money. Somewhere between 12% and 18% of the entire landmass of Scotland is given over to grouse shooting. Much of this land is in our so-called ‘national parks, torched every year, and shaped to provide shooters with live targets to kill.
That’s not how it’s sold to the public of course. Lobbyists for the shooting industry have been placing puff-pieces in sympathetic media outlets for weeks now. Outlets that deliberately use the term ‘glorious’ to describe the slaughter of a huge number of birds by ‘sportsmen’ who increasingly come from overseas or are city workers rewarded with bonuses’ to put holes into grouse.
With no explanation shooting websites call the 12th of August a ‘sacred date’. They talk of the ‘New Year’s Day of hunting’ (which makes no sense at all). The economic importance of shooting will have been blown up out of all proportion. The importance of shooting to ‘rural communities’ will have been vastly overstated – most money stays within already very wealthy shooting estates and the vast majority of people – rural and urban – don’t shoot birds of course.
Hotels, restaurants, pubs, and supermarkets get in on the act, using the tiny bodies of dead birds to sell the idea that the industry built around shooting them is somehow ‘glorious’.
It’s not just grouse that are being killed
To be financially viable a moor has to produce a lot of Red Grouse. Grouse are ‘stocked’ on grouse moors way over their natural density (in other words, far more Red Grouse than a moorland would naturally hold if it wasn’t being managed like an upland firing range using live targets). They naturally attract predators. And the grouse shooting employs gamekeepers to kill as many of those predators as they can.
Foxes, birds of prey, and mustelids like Stoats and Weasels are not ‘pests’ or ‘vermin’. They are a normal part of every functioning ecosystem. They play a key role in maintaining the natural balance of ecosystems, both by consuming prey and by altering prey behaviour and prey habitat selection. But grouse moors are NOT balanced ecosystems. They are managed to produce Red Grouse. The only ‘predators’ tolerated are the humans who pay to shoot Red Grouse for ‘sport’, not the animals that might eat them to survive.
Some of the most intelligent birds on the planet, crows are routinely caught as well, used as ‘calling birds’ to attract other birds to traps. Other crows that are trapped will be clubbed to death or shot right in front of them.
And the use of these cruel and indiscriminate traps is still legal in England. Not because the majority of British people want them to remain ‘legal’, but because MPs make laws in Parliament, and enough MPs are landowners or go shooting so are prepared to work on behalf of the shooting industry to keep them that way.
And because they are legal to use, if we try to release a trapped animal or damage a trap or a snare in any way we could be charged with criminal damage! Just for trying to help protect wild animals.
Raptor persecution
While all of this killing is legal, the deliberate persecution of birds of prey is most definitely against the law. And has been since the 1950s (see our Protectors page on Birds of Prey and the Law).
The shooting, trapping and poisoning of any bird of prey or their chicks is ‘raptor persecution’ and a crime.
Yet birds of prey are still being widely persecuted on shooting estates and grouse moors. Their crime? Feeding their young on a wide-ranging diet that perhaps includes the birds that estates want to sell to shooters.
- According to the RSPB more than two-thirds of all confirmed incidents of raptor persecution in 2021 were related to land managed for shooting.
- The government’s own research concluded in 2019 that 72% of the 58 Hen Harriers they had satellite-tagged (so they could track their movements) were confirmed or considered likely to have been illegally killed. Hen Harriers are ten times more likely to occur over areas of land managed for grouse shooting relative to other land uses.
It is extremely hard to prove raptor persecution as there are rarely witnesses: there were only five convictions for raptor persecution in 2021 for example – but all five people convicted were gamekeepers. Recorded incidents are widely acknowledged to be the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Most persecution takes place on huge estates well away from the public, investigators, and police officers.
It’s not just Hen Harriers of course. Peregrines are absent from many grouse moors. Golden Eagles are more or less confined to Scotland’s coast after ruthless persecution on inland grouse moors. Even Short-eared Owls are shot on some moors…
Licencing? No thanks.
Licencing is being increasingly touted as a way of controlling the illegal killing on grouse moors. It would involve a shoot or an estate obtaining an operational licence from a regulator which would, at minimum, have conditions attached mandating the shoot follows wildlife and environmental protection codes of practice and laws. Where there is evidence suggesting that a shoot has failed to follow those conditions the licence can be withdrawn.
Protect the Wild is fundamentally opposed to a ‘licencing lifeline’ being offered to grouse moor owners.
- A licence will legitimise the grouse shooting industry. It says that the legal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Red Grouse every year is acceptable. Not to us, it isn’t.
- Licencing essentially says that the legal killing of countless numbers of foxes, corvids, stoats/weasels, and other native animals in traps and snares to support the industry can continue. That is also unacceptable to us.
- We’re told that licencing will somehow stop raptor persecution. How? Legislation already exists to protect birds of prey and has done so for over half a century. Why would licencing change anything when there is no additional enforcement and estates are not being forced to report the wildlife criminals they employ?
- The entire shooting industry is expert at appealing charges and dragging cases through the courts. Withdrawing an operating licence once it has been issued will be protracted and expensive if not almost impossible.
- In our opinion, once the grouse shooting industry has the stamp of approval given to it by ‘a licence’ it will conclude ‘job done’ and getting rid of it will be made even more difficult.
Grouse shooting will end one day. The world is changing around it making it hugely unpopular, unprofitable, and unsustainable. It will make too many mistakes, commit too many crimes, and lie too often. Licencing it now makes no sense at all.
Nothing glorious about the Inglorious 12th
Grouse shooting is quite simply about making as much money as possible by killing huge numbers of wild birds on moorland estates owned by so-called ‘aristocrats’ or hedge funds. It relies on intensive and destructive land management, and its economic benefits are hugely overstated.
Its very existence means that vast numbers of birds and mammals will die. Nothing about this damnable industry will ever be ‘glorious’ no matter how hard it works to convince itself – and us – otherwise.
