The image above is from Gould (John). The Birds of Great Britain, 1862-1873.
A lively debate in the pub last night on a subject I often try to avoid or change because I tend to get overheated to say the least. Of the four people involved two were completely against me, one didn’t say much, one chipped in on my side from time to time. The subject was bird shooting, pheasants, partridges and grouse, which expanded to cover land ownership, trespass and more. On this occasion I remained relatively calm, somehow. I have written two books and hundreds of thousands of words on this blog in which I am very forthright in my views on these matters and I have done my research.
There were some pretty basic factual errors from my main opponent, for example that there is a right to roam in England, especially Yorkshire, he said, for some reason, but of course it only exists in Scotland. It has inspired me to imagine a scenario where bird shooting did not exist, a conversation between two owners of large swathes of land.
“I say old chap, I’ve had a brilliant money-making idea. It might sound a bit mad, but bear with me. We’ll charge people extortionate sums of money to come and shoot birds on our land, hundreds in a day if they want.”
“Any particular birds?”
“I’m thinking Asian, non-native anyway, pheasants perhaps, and partridges too.”
“Where on earth will you get them from?”
“No problem, we’ll battery farm them following the poultry industry factory model and if that doesn’t produce enough for the guns we’ll import them from France where they could also be battery farmed. We could tape their wings up and put plastic on their beaks so they don’t fly away or peck each other.”
“What sort of numbers are you thinking of?”
“As many as we like, tens of millions, forty million pheasants and ten million partridges a year maybe.”
“But that would make them the most common bird in the UK. And what about the native wildlife and plants they will destroy and consume?”
“Never mind that. What shall we call them, these birds we breed, import, confine and release and kill for fun? Sport birds? No, game birds, that’s better. Like the game animals in Africa.”
“So killing is a game. I see. Where will they be released?”
“Anywhere we like. The Chris Packham brigade might try to stop us doing it near or on SSSIs but we’ll just go ahead and do it anyway.”
“What about the effects on car drivers, the noise disturbance?”
“I really don’t care. Collateral damage. We’ll justify it in the name of tradition.”
“Isn’t that the last refuge of a scoundrel? Oh, no, sorry, that’s patriotism. That’s a lot of birds. Wouldn’t the market be saturated?”
“Yes, but we can just pile them up and leave them to rot. Or bulldoze them into pits.”
“How would you make sure that our fun isn’t impacted by the predations of other wildlife?”
“We’ll kill everything else. We’ll employ people, let’s call them gamekeepers, to do it.”
“Everything?”
“Foxes, stoats, weasels, corvids, mountain hares, birds of prey … We’ll call them all vermin.”
“Even birds of prey? I know that’s illegal.”
“We’ll do it anyway and get away with it. If we do get caught we are well connected, the police and the courts will do right by us. And farmers will love us.”
“It sounds completely insane. It will never be allowed.”
“I haven’t finished. We’ll designate some of our land differently, we’ll call them grouse moors. We’ll kill all the other wildlife there too, soak the ground with chemical grit (yes, yes it will get into the food chain but no one will ever check) and regularly burn huge areas so there will be more grouse. We’ll employ beaters too to make the birds fly up in panic, just in case the pheasants and grouse have some sort of a chance of not being shot. Some we’ll only injure, but that’s not our problem. We’ll use lead shot because … not sure why really when there are alternatives, but let’s stick with the mindset of poisoning and destroying the countryside as much as we possibly can.”
“What about those who object and protest?”
“We’ll just call them townies and say they don’t understand the rural way of life.”
“And people who live in the countryside who would be against us?”
“Well that would be most of them, but they are just peasants and can be safely ignored.”
“Wouldn’t it be subject to some sort of regulation?”
“That’s hilarious. We are far too rich and important for that.”
“Well it all sounds like a jolly good wheeze. We’ll be rolling in money.”
“I’ve had another idea. Foxes. Too many of them, right? We’ll keep packs of dogs in terrible conditions and treat them appallingly. We’ll train them to hunt foxes and any that don’t fit the bill we can just shoot. Then we’ll dress up in ludicrous anachronistic costumes and charge about on horseback, blowing silly little trumpets, brandishing whips and obliterating everything in our path. We’ll be able to go wherever we want – roads, railway lines, people’s gardens, schools … Obviously we’d have to kill as many badgers as possible or at least block their setts. I’ve had an idea about that too. We could tell farmers and the government that they give bovine tuberculosis to cows.”
“Bovine tuberculosis? Are you sure it’s from the badgers?”
“Of course it isn’t but that’s not the point.”
“What if they made fox hunting illegal?”
“I reckon we could just carry on for at least twenty years. We could say we were trail hunting. A smokescreen if you will. If the police are called out they’ll most likely arrest the protesters.”
“I am not so sure. The trouble with these people is they tend not to give up. What about poachers?”
“Oh they should definitely be locked up. Throw away the keys. Killing animals for the pot instead of sport? That’s disgusting.”
“Wouldn’t it be quite nice not to do any of this and leave the countryside as a place of peace and quiet, the only sounds those of thriving, abundant wildlife?”
“What would be the fun in that? I reckon with the help of a couple of other powerful lobbying groups we could get the government, the prime minster and some other senior cabinet member perhaps, to say that we shouldn’t be cherishing and celebrating nature, instead it’s a nuisance, an obstacle to development. As an official party line.”
“Oh come on, you’re entering the realms of fantasy now. That will never happen.”
“You want to bet?”
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