On the Game

Well there are all sorts of ways of making money. It's pheasants, of course that are imported into gaming shoots for the pleasure some get in shooting them. One of them appeared under the bird table yesterday having first checked I was weaponless.

Grouse are wild and their numbers managed by shooting only the supposed 'surplus' birds to ensure a continuing population. They are protected by predator control until old enough to enjoy the privilege of being shot by, er, other predators. It may cost you £500 to £600 a day to go bang-bang on the moors. An essential management tool is the burning of heather to give the grouse fresh young shoots to eat. The practice of the conservation organisations locally is more likely to be to cut heather with farm machinery which does a similar job.

Conservation is a seriously compromised word now, being much used by shooting interests to try to add justification to what they do, as in the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust.  These organisations understand propaganda well and seek to make a connection in the minds of the public between guns and wildlife conservation, i.e. you can't have one without the other, as someone used to sing about love and marriage in days when things were a bit different.

The fact that the non-shooting conservation charities don't strenuously dismiss this weasel-word propaganda says a lot about them and their members.