The Sporting Life

The first weekend of the grouse shooting season brings celebratory articles in the conservative press. Some, such as that by Max Hasting in The Spectator(subscription needed), are better written, unsympathetic though one may be with his enthusiasm, but that from Nicholas Soames, the outsize MP for Mid Sussex, in the Telegraph is scarcely disguised propaganda from organisations such as the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Moorland Association. It repeats the same tired old spin about the grouse killing industry being splendid for conservation and our landscape and nobody who even slightly doubted the slogan “probably the best lager in the world” could possibly fall for it. The idea that this can be presented as a sport has always intrigued. Hastings makes a passing reference to hedge fund managers buying up moors and then arriving by helicopter for their ‘sport’, something he clearly disapproves of, preferring to drive up with his pointers to what he calls ‘the great heather wildernesses’ finding ‘no greater joy than seeing a covey break over the horizon’. As far as helicopters go it would probably take a brace of Chinooks to get Nicholas Soames up any hills. Soames claims that “attitudes to grouse shooting have... been changing”.
“Say it who dares, grouse moors are no longer exclusive nature reserves for the wealthy. People can and are enjoying the hills like never before” (sic). At least Hastings is a more honest and sophisticated writer than Soames and tells us that in 1970 he paid £500 for the right to shoot 100 brace and that this now would cost him almost £20,000.

Life’s never been so tough for those at the top.