Now they want to ban game shooting!

[Nickijem]

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Then to cap it all when they've been shot, the majority of the carcasses are buried in a big hole because the people who shoot them dont want them and have never had any intentions of them being used for food!



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There probably are some shoots (although I have never known of any) who do this but the only ones I have ever been involved with use ALL their pheasants and partridges for food.
A lot of the birds are taken by the the members of the shoot who will give a brace to their neighbours/friends/family as well as keep some for themselves. Any that are not taken will be sold to a local game dealer.
I understand that you don't like the thought of birds being purposefully bred to be shot but personally I would rather eat a bird that has had an unbringing as close to natural as possible then shot in its natural suurroundings than eat a factory farmed bird that has been transported to an abbatoir then had its throat cut after having been stunned.
Personal choice I guess.

 

[Luci07]

we used to have a shoot come through our woods who would always dontate a brace which was welcomed. We had a slight falling out one year when my mother threw out the remnants of some lethal home brew which had corn and raisins in it. Turned out she managed to ensure that a lot of the would be targets had to be left as they were too drunk too fly... we had pheasants staggering around for quite a few days! Did take a serious amount of apologising I seem to recall...

I am a bit more pragmatic about shooting - my uncle would shoot, and eat what he had shot. I drew the line at helping him pluck and draw them though!

 

[mrussell]

My problem is not so much WHAT gets shot but the fact that the rabble that shoot in our village think nothing of shooting over my boundary, landing shot on my horses and my stables... and then letting their ruddy dogs tear round my paddocks flushing out birds after the drive has ended. Dammit

I say give the game weapons of their own and see whos the better shot....

 

[camilla4]

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Hell why they are trying to ban anything to do with the countryside, why dont they just concrete over any green areas and slap a load of houses up for all the vicky pollards out there

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I think that's pretty much their ultimate aim! Gordon Brown is determined to turn us into one big urban sprawl!!

 

[cptrayes]

"and an instant death."

You have to be joking!

Peppered with shot, winged so you can't fly, drop out of the sky alive to be picked up by a dog and taken to a man so you can have your neck wrung. (I have a friend with a dog in training and it's being trained only to pick up live birds, not dead ones, so that the necks can be wrung as quickly as possible, which is not quick enough.)

What proportion of birds shot with a shotgun die "an instant death"? Pretty few, I reckon. And what proportion of shot birds are eaten? Precious few, I reckon (who wants balls of metal shot in their game, most restaurants would rather served farmed birds than face lawsuits for the broken teeth.) Just because you breed thousands and hundreds of each thousand escape does not make a barbaric "sport" acceptable!

Lets not fool around here. Shooting these days is done for the thousands of pounds a day that the bankers and their ilk will pay to be seen in the "right" company. I've had enough company dinners with them to know. It's not conservation, love of the countryside or anything else most of the time, it's the moolah.

Sooner it's banned the better. And in case you think this is potilitical leftism, angling is indefensible too and that's a Labour voter sport.

 

[Nickijem]

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"and an instant death."

You have to be joking!

Peppered with shot, winged so you can't fly, drop out of the sky alive to be picked up by a dog and taken to a man so you can have your neck wrung. (I have a friend with a dog in training and it's being trained only to pick up live birds, not dead ones, so that the necks can be wrung as quickly as possible, which is not quick enough.)

What proportion of birds shot with a shotgun die "an instant death"? Pretty few, I reckon. And what proportion of shot birds are eaten? Precious few, I reckon (who wants balls of metal shot in their game, most restaurants would rather served farmed birds than face lawsuits for the broken teeth.) Just because you breed thousands and hundreds of each thousand escape does not make a barbaric "sport" acceptable!

Lets not fool around here. Shooting these days is done for the thousands of pounds a day that the bankers and their ilk will pay to be seen in the "right" company. I've had enough company dinners with them to know. It's not conservation, love of the countryside or anything else most of the time, it's the moolah.

Sooner it's banned the better. And in case you think this is potilitical leftism, angling is indefensible too and that's a Labour voter sport.

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No I am not joking. I might be generalising as I am well aware that some birds are not killed instantly but are picked up quickly by the dogs and are then put out of their misery. However, the shoots I have been on, most birds are dead before they hit the ground (maybe we have some sharp shooting guns?!)
Our shoot is relatively small. We probably kill 60 birds at the most on a shoot day and I can guarantee that these birds are either taken by the members of the shoot for their own consumption or are taken to a game dealer.
Now I am only talking from experience here, there may be shoots that don't work like ours.
I have eaten a very nice pheasant casserole this evening and I thoroughly enjoyed it knowing that the bird had a natural upbringing and I know exactly where it came from.

As well as the satisfaction of knowing where the bird has come from, I also have the satisfaction that the money we put into the sport (and those corporate bankers), is helping to conserve our environment.
If it were not for the shooting half the woodlands in our area wouldn't exist - they are there as cover for the game birds. The heather moors in Scotland wouldn't exist as they are managed for the grouse. Many wetlands and estuaries are conserved by wildfowlers. In fact much of the countryside would change without the shoot.
Should shooting ever be banned (which I can't see happening because of these reasons), the effect on our countryside would be mainly detrimental, let alone the effect on the rural economy.
I shall be out beating tomorrow with a clear conscience (sp?!)