It's a shame more grouse shooters don't turn the guns on each other.
Much as I sympathise with this view (I'm vegetarian), as long as butchers, restaurateurs and their customers are prepared to pay good money for grouse, upper class hoicks will go on shooting them. At least the grouse have lived wild and natural lives, rather than the short and miserable existence of much farmed livestock. Would landowners preserve the moors if there were no commercial benefit?
There are rules about animal welfare on farms @josusa47 and the UK tends to be ahead when it comes to implementing them. There will always be exceptions tho.
Not sure about grouse but pheasants are reared for hunting and I know hunters who won't shoot them because they don't stand a chance. Reared in cages, fed in small areas of woodland so they have no natural survival instincts and are easy to find and startle into a short, fatal flight.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
Bleh. I went to pick up my new greenhouse today and snuck some cash out of the emergency fund to pay for it. The emergency fund is there in case something like the freezer breaks or equally nightmarish occurances happen. Anyway I handed over the cash to the bloke and just as I was driving off the phone rang. "The freezer's broken" I thought she was winding me up but no it's actually broken and all the food is ruined
I get home and it's recycling day so all the food waste from the freezer needs to go out today or wait a week. It's lunch time though and son No1 is hungry and son No2 has just done a No2. So I'm stuck feeding son No 1 while my wife deals with the No2s. Son No1 decides to eat very slowly Finally my wife can take over feeding just as I hear the recycling lorry heading up the street. I run downstairs and frantically start shoving anything that will be stinking in a week's time into food waste bags and ran out into the street just as the bin men got there. They gave me some odd looks standing there looking a bit wild eyed in my socks clutching bags full of food waste with blood (actually blackcurrant juice) all over my hands and the bags.
Apart from having to replace the freezer the damage isn't too bad. We've been living out of the freezer since son No2 was born and we were down to the frozen fruit mostly. I'll mourn the loss of a couple of very nice pies but I'm quite glad to see some of that fruit gone if I'm honest. We had a bumper crop last year and we still hadn't finished the stuff from the year before. If a freezer could pick a good time to die now wouldn't be far off. Glass half full...
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Exactly! @ wild edges. Any comment from your wife about the disappearance of the emergency money though and how are you going to explain the greenhouse when it arrives??
I think there's enough left in the fund for a new freezer, just. I've sold a couple of things and I'm just waiting for them to be collected so that will cover the greenhouse. She was very supportive of the new greenhouse so with a bit of careful selling I think I'll scrape out of this one. I might even be able to use the old freezer in the garage to store the bird and pet food safe from the mice which will free up a load of space in the utility room. That's bound to improve her view of the whole situation.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Much as I sympathise with this view (I'm vegetarian), as long as butchers, restaurateurs and their customers are prepared to pay good money for grouse, upper class hoicks will go on shooting them. At least the grouse have lived wild and natural lives, rather than the short and miserable existence of much farmed livestock. Would landowners preserve the moors if there were no commercial benefit?
As Obelixx says, pheasants for shooting are reared in worse conditions than battery hens, fed - overfed - and herded together after release to keep them from straying into the next Shoot's territory and all that corn just chucked about for the birds encourages pigeons, squirrels, even deer and all the things that eat them to come in. Which the game keepers then trap and poison, killing all sorts of other birds and animals by accident. And to round it all off there is no market for the birds they shoot. No good for posh restaurants - too much lead shot in the meat. There's a business round here that makes sausages and burgers from them, which at least stops them being dumped.
meh
My proper curmudgeon for today is people - generous and kind people - buying items in an online charity auction. I'm responsible for checking off payments on paypal so that the items bought can be sent out. But lots of people use a different name in their online profile than in real life. Do they put a note on the payment to say 'by the way, my name in the auction is xyz'? Nope. I'm supposed to be able to guess. We currently have one person with one name, say it's Fred Jones, but who is known on the auction as Mary Stevens. And one person who's name is Harry Brown, but who's auction name is Fred Jones. Confused? Oh yes It should be an easy job but it's taking hours
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
At least road kill pheasant seems to be keeping a lot of wildlife fed. Red kites wouldn't be doing so well without them I'm sure. Although if we didn't have millions of posh chickens released into the countryside every year the wildife might be doing much better anyway so it's a hard one to judge. Making lead shot illegal would be a great start though. The fact that it isn't tells you plenty about the political weight behind the shooting lobby.
Landowners preserving the moors is a whole different debate. They create good habitat for grouse and a small number of breeding wading birds but not much else. Since the land management is tax payer subsidised I see very little value for money. I'd like to see a couple of moorland estates managed solely for wildlife and then subsidies paid based on grouse moors matching the ecological value of those sites. No breeding hen harriers? No free money M'lord
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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Not sure about grouse but pheasants are reared for hunting and I know hunters who won't shoot them because they don't stand a chance. Reared in cages, fed in small areas of woodland so they have no natural survival instincts and are easy to find and startle into a short, fatal flight.
I'd like to be a fly on the wall when that conversation takes place........
And to round it all off there is no market for the birds they shoot. No good for posh restaurants - too much lead shot in the meat. There's a business round here that makes sausages and burgers from them, which at least stops them being dumped.
meh
My proper curmudgeon for today is people - generous and kind people - buying items in an online charity auction. I'm responsible for checking off payments on paypal so that the items bought can be sent out. But lots of people use a different name in their online profile than in real life. Do they put a note on the payment to say 'by the way, my name in the auction is xyz'? Nope. I'm supposed to be able to guess. We currently have one person with one name, say it's Fred Jones, but who is known on the auction as Mary Stevens. And one person who's name is Harry Brown, but who's auction name is Fred Jones. Confused? Oh yes
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...