Shooting’s proud heritage

Grouse shoot member Adrian Thornton Berry pictured with his dogs at Arkengarthdale, for the Glorious 12th Grouse Shoot. 12th August 2003.

Having been brought up within half an hour’s walk of a grouse moor, the Glorious Twelfth of August has always dawned with a special frisson of excitement.

As a schoolboy I earned good pocket money as a beater, plodding mile upon mile in an extended line of other beaters as though we were on some kind of military manoeuvre, striking the thigh-deep heather with a long stick. This had a white rag attached to one end, which would be held aloft and waved in the air the moment grouse were put up while we shouted our lungs out in order to drive the birds towards a row of shooting butts.

The moorland perfume is at its most pungent and addictive on a hot August day. Usually, I managed to enjoy eating some of the red grouse, roasted by a gamekeeper’s wife as a treat for the beaters, and somehow its taste seemed to concentrate all those the mingling smells of heather, bilberry and blanket bog in one mouthful.

Although a junior member of the RSPB at the time, not once did I stop to consider that grouse shooting might be incompatible with my conservation beliefs. Now, though, it seems I am supposed to make a choice, and revile the sport as abominable and archaic.

The principal cheerleader against grouse shooting is Mark Avery, a former conservation director of the RSPB, who has written a book with the unequivocal title Inglorious in which he argues that driven grouse shooting should be banned.

In his preface, Avery admits this is a big ask yet goes on: “It’s demise is inevitable, because it is a practice pursued by the few to the detriment of the many. I am sure that driven grouse shooting will be consigned to history within the next few years.”

I’m not cross, but I am concerned. There is certainly a serious problem in the grouse shooting industry, which is what it has become. To use an expression that seems appropriate in the circumstances, some of the big commercial grouse moors which charge parties thousand pounds a time are shooting themselves in the foot by adopting a Victorian-era mentality towards the control of birds of prey.

The shooting of hen harriers on grouse moors continues in some areas, and it has managed to bring the entire sport into disrepute.

I hope this persecution stops, not only to save one of our most beautiful raptors from being wiped out in England, but also to allow the counter argument for grouse shooting to be heard. One is that control of vermin like crows and stoats to protect red grouse nests also benefits shorebirds like golden plover, lapwings and curlews which breed on the moors. Without such controls, our uplands would be poorer places in spring and summer.