Glorious Twelfth: Yorkshire estates delaying start to shooting season due to short supply of grouse

Gamekeepers and owners of grouse moors are reporting that the start is being put back to September, such is the concern about the birds.

Ian Sleightholm, head gamekeeper at the Bolton Estate in Wensleydale, confirmed his estate is one which has decided to delay.

Grouse are wild birds, so landscapes have to be managed to enhance their breeding chances, rather than them being introduced for shooting purposes. However last winter produced the worst of environments for the birds to breed.

Mr Sleightholm explained: “Grouse need hard winters, snow and hard frost to kill all the bugs and the worms that affect them

“The worm burdens in the winter were high which is what grouse suffer from, with the warm wet weather, worm-breeding weather, that builds up in the grouse and they’re not very well so they are in poor breeding condition, and then the spring has been pretty cold, not the best, with not many insects, so a lot of grouse have died in the winter and spring time.

“They are totally wild birds, we just enhance where they live by managing the heather which is what they feed on, and the predator control. All the work still goes on, whether we have no shoot days or whether we have 30 shoot days.”

Bolton Castle has 5,000 acres of heather moorland, managed primarily as grouse moors in agreement with Natural England and as a member of The Moorland Association, whose members are responsible for more than a million acres of moors in England and Wales.

A wide range of rare plants and wildlife benefit from the management techniques practised at Bolton, including an established population of curlew, lapwing and snipe, ouzels, golden plover, stone chats and many birds of prey including merlin and short-eared owl.

“The moor that we look after are probably the wildest areas we have in England but they are all managed,” said Mr Sleightholm.

He said that with surrounding estates, during the shooting seasons about 200 people a day are working, making them some of the biggest employers in the Dales.

He said he does not know any estate which is shooting today, many being put off by issues caused by saboteurs.

“People seem to dodge the 12th,” he said. “I always encourage anybody who questions what we do to come out with us, I’ll show you, I’ll take you round, it’s the best way, especially in spring time, we got all the waders back breeding, there’s no place like it.”

The cancellation of many shoot days in Yorkshire has seen warnings that local businesses could lose millions of pounds of revenue as a result.

Simon Fenwick, the owner of Gilsans of Yorkshire in Richmond, which sells sporting guns and clothing, said they have a large fall in sales due to the lack of grouse shooting this year.

“Sales of country clothing, footwear and ammunition are considerably down, we expect this trend to continue through to October due to the lack of customers that normally travel to our area for the grouse season.

"This will also have a knock-on effect throughout the year as all the people employed directly and indirectly by the grouse shooting industry will have far less income to spend in our shops. This will be a very challenging year for our business.”

Andrew Gilruth, chief executive of the Moorland Association, said: “The coming season is likely to be very poor and the number of shoot days will be curtailed, but it is a timely reminder that the red grouse is a wild bird. We can protect and improve its habitat, but there is nothing we can do about the weather.

“Red grouse are wild birds and cannot be reared; as such they are at the mercy of Mother Nature.

“Despite the poor prospects for shooting, grouse estates across the country will invest more than £50 million in the conservation of the moorlands which benefits not just red grouse but other ground nesting birds such as the curlew, red grouse, merlin, lapwing and ring ouzel. This investment continues regardless of what the season brings.”

The total value of sporting shooting in England is £7.8 billion, according to the Value of Shooting Report commissioned by 24 rural organisations and published in June by data analysis firm Cognisense.

In North Yorkshire, Farndale, Bransdale and Snilesworth Moors jointly host around 120 days of shooting per year on average, of which there are typically 30 grouse shooting days. The estates have 18 full-time staff, while each grouse day employs around 30 people from the local area. Additional staff, including a full-time chef, provide hospitality for guests in the two sporting lodges.

On the North York Moors, the expected loss of income to upland estates is estimated at £2.37m.

Local people employed on a grouse day include beaters, pickers-up, flankers, loaders and caterers. This year they will lose out on approximately £253,500 of income in the North York Moors alone, with the situation replicated across the north of England.

Opinion; Page 13.