Shooting Wildlife for Fun and Profit

Not being able to see myself ever wanting to shoot wildlife for pleasure makes it less easy to understand or empathise with those who do. I think at times I’ve been guilty of underestimating just how deeply ingrained shooting is among those who see themselves as country people (including those who work in the Square Mile). Shooting can be within the law and outside the law. Both happen on National Trust land as well as private land. That makes it even more an issue of real public concern, much more so, I would say, than whether NT always uses the word Easter when it maybe should.

It’s been mainly bird watchers who’ve been active in petitioning the NT against grouse shooting on their land principally in the region of NT’s estates in the High Peak. They have, inevitably, been lobbied also from the other side by shooters  themselves. The big problem of course is that those who manage moors to provide grouse shooting for wealthy bankers etc. from the city, don’t like the fact that some of the grouse get to become food for other wildlife. Inevitably many birds of prey and other predators get killed: for the culprits it's hard to think you need to look further than those who gain by the absence of predators, and some gamekeepers have been successfully prosecuted. The whole business of managing moors for grouse tends towards the eradication of anything that is the grouse’s enemy – except man-with-gun who somehow survives to kill again. In parts of the country even mountain hares are being shockingly killed in large numbers because they are deemed incompatible with management of grouse moors. For some us we only need to look at a grouse moor to know there's something deeply wrong, even corrupt about it.

I have tried to keep this blog to matters that directly relate to Blacka Moor, and I don’t think I’ve strayed from that very often.  But it would be wrong to ignore some of what goes on elsewhere because it sets much of the management here in a context; especially when some of it is not very far away and involves some of the people and organisations that have a direct link with this local landscape. It's possible that some shooting has happened on Blacka and there’s no doubt that wildlife gets shot for fun on adjoining land. The nature of the activity means it's hard to know how much; those who partake are not keen on being observed, but every so often evidence comes to light.