Pheasant Shooting

"having the food as a by-product seems disrespectful,"

The food element is not a by product it is part of the supply chain that starts with the landowner employing a game keeper to rear the pheasant chicks into game birds and care for the landscape to provide covers. The shooting chaps harvest the birds and the birds are sold on to butchers shops - how else do you think that pheasants get to be sold in shops in the towns.

Come, Simon, let us not delude ourselves.

People who go to organised shoots do so because they enjoy killing live animals not to fill their larders. If it was for the pleasure and enjoyment of the skill of shooting itself then clay shooting would satisfy their needs.

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Originally posted by Derek Wright:
The shooting chaps harvest the birds and the birds are sold on to butchers shops - how else do you think that pheasants get to be sold in shops in the towns.

There you go then. Refer to Nigel's reply above

Nigel and Rasher

I have been thinking long and hard about this. There are two main points if you look at it in a simplistic manor.

1 - Does one shoot birds rather than clays for the "Thrill of the Kill"?

2 - Can you realy argue that it is the wrong way around, ie the food is a coincidental bi-product of the "blood lust"? And if so, does that matter? Ultimatly Is it wrong to enjoy the shooting of game that will then be eaten?

In answer to number 1; When shooting a bird I felt no more thrill or emotion than when shooting a clay. When deciding to shoot at a bird I would excersize discretion on the following grounds: A, is it too close? ie. will I render it inedible with the shot. B, is it too far away and I will only wound it causing it distress. One does no try and shoot everything and at least on the shoot I attended, killing as much as one possibly could was not the aim of the day. I think that this satisfies me at least that I am not driven by blood lust.

Question 2 - Is it wrong to enjoy the shooting of game that will then be eaten? The answer - if it offends you, dont do it. But assuming all the pheasants are eaten, is it relevant? What difference does it make? Only if you are a vegetarian can you really argue this point I think. And if the activity encorages investment into the countryside, and the active conservation of heathlands etc, then it is hard to argue against.

It was David Bellamy who remarked that flying over the British Isles you could easily spot the areas where field sports flourished – it was where there was still a patchwork of woods, hedges and small fields. The landscape which we
cherish is man made and it can only be maintained through man’s efforts. Shooting’s effort amounts to £250 million of investment and the equivalent of 12,000 full-time jobs. In preserving and enhancing habitat for wildlife, shooting is necessarily sustaining the natural beauty of the countryside. This is something from which we can all benefit.

WE made guns. Nature made birds.

Nature made us, we made guns therfore Nature made guns?

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Shooting’s effort amounts to £250 million of investment and the equivalent of 12,000 full-time jobs. In preserving and enhancing habitat for wildlife, shooting is necessarily sustaining the natural beauty of the countryside. This is something from which we can all benefit.

This spurious argument that killing is ok because there is money to be made out of it is a tad silly at best and at worst could be used to justify the building of concentration camps.

PS - I used to live in a simplistic manor at one time.

Acad, you've missed the essence of mine/Simon's posts. Not that shooting is good because it makes money, but that it is good because it actually helps the conservation/preservation of wildlife and the countryside. The industry puts money back into the environment it cherishes-and needs.

Bruce

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could be used to justify the building of concentration camps.

This comment is at best crass and at worst offensive.

Acad - please confirm that you do not own any animial derived products from which you derive any pleasure.

Simon

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Originally posted by i am simon 2:
[QUOTE] could be used to justify the building of concentration camps.

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This comment is at best crass and at worst offensive.

Oh do explain how exactly.

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Acad - please confirm that you do not own any animial derived products from which you derive any pleasure.

I stop at killing animals and I stop at requesting others to kill animials (sic)on my behalf. I am not a strict vegetarian but I am heading in that direction. I may well have some 'animal products' - my leather shoes for example but I did not kill the animal nor did I ask for it to be killed. Once it has been killed and made into shoes I might as well use them. Is this encouraging the killing of animals - yes, probably and I admit the possibility of hypocrisy here but if you are trying to say my limited use of animal products is on the same level as shooting pheasant for sport you will have a hard job to convince anyone.

Simon - I'm still stuck on this Shooting for food vs. Shooting for sport issue. You ask if it is relevant if all the pheasants are eaten, but I still think it is. Maybe I'm just an idealist but I keep thinking about respect and responsibility and so it isn't right to kill unless it is for food for yourself - not to be sold or passed onto people who won't think about it or respect this philosophy.
No, I'm stuck with that idea & I can't seem to better it at the moment. The naming of killing as "sport" is dodgy to begin with.

"Thus every kind their pleasures find
The savage and the tender
Some social join and leagues combine
Some solitary wander
Avaunt, away! the cruel sway
Tyrannic man's dominion
The sportsman's joy, the murdering cry
The fluttering gory pinion"

Robert Burns.

I agree with Rasher. Killing for food (especially the life or death survival of one's family)and killing for profit or for 'sport' are entirely different. Simon has yet to clarify how shooting unarmed defenceless animals is a sport at all?

I would suggest that using a shotgun with hundreds of pellets is only one step from shooting fish in a barrel.

Is Simon saying that corporate chappies or even the small syndicates are motivated by the need to supply much needed food for the table to the degree that they invest in thousands of £s for guns and clothing and take time off work as a friend of mine has done recently. He asked me if I would drive him to the shoot and I declined.

Rasher

I am grateful for your comment, and I do not think we are far apart on this one. Indeed as I said earlier I was not convinced that I was going to enjoy the game shoot, but rightly or wrongly I did, not for the killing itself, but the day out, the surroundings, the testing nature of the activity itself, the people, and the oportunity to enjoy the countryside.

This is indeed an interesting debate, and it seems my moral values have swayed slightly differntly to yours.

Acad

This is a matter of degree, a sliding scale if you will. You have indeed been honest accepting the possibility of hypocrisy opposite the leather shoes, and from there on it is simply a case of where on draws the line, it happens that each of ours is drawn in a differnt place.

The concentration camp comment just touched a nerve I guess. To suggest you could ever begin to justify such event is in poor taste - thats all.

Kind regards

Simon

I think choice comes into all this somewhere. I am not a vegetarian, but quite often feel I should be. I feel we, as humans have many more choices than the wildlife we use for food. We can choose to be humane for example (I guess the Saddam hanging business thread highlighted this to an extent). We can to some extent choose how and where we live. Animals don't have these choices (though some would argue why should they). It's a strange world, but I fear sometimes we like to play God a bit too much and I'm not sure I even believe in God!

That's all.

Regards

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and I do not think we are far apart on this one.

No we're not, we just have differing opinions; at least we can talk about it. It would be interesting to see it fully from your viewpoint having been on a shoot and understanding the "at-one-with-nature" experience that you had, but of course my principles are never going to allow that to happen, which leaves me at a disadvantage.
It seems to me that this issue between townies and country-folk usually leads to arrogance on both sides and no attempt to understand the opposing viewpoint. I wonder why that is? It seems an all-out war most of the time and I think neither side present valid arguments in place of dismissive comments. There seems to be a lack of respect for an alternative view on both sides. I’m sure this one will run forever out in the fields.

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It seems to me that this issue between townies and country-folk usually leads to arrogance on both sides and no attempt to understand the opposing viewpoint. I wonder why that is?

I wonder if this is partly because the media portrayal of 'the countryside' is so choclate-box ridiculous. I also think that there are some genuinely different priorities. I have a big issue with supermarkets-who have been a driving force in the 'sanitisation' of food. No blood visible around that joint of meat, no link to what is actually wandering around the fields. No mud on your perfectly straight carrots. No seasonality to produce availability.

I think that suburbia has become quite divorced from food production, and perhaps with it other rural issues.

Conversely I am now a total hick when I visit any large city, not least when confronted by traffic congestion!

Bruce

Simon:

When shooting a bird I felt no more thrill or emotion than when shooting a clay.

So why do it?

…not for the killing itself, but the day out, the surroundings, the testing nature of the activity itself, the people, and the oportunity to enjoy the countryside.

Can you not enjoy nature without killing what lives there?

The landscape which we cherish is man made and it can only be maintained through man’s efforts. Shooting’s effort amounts to £250 million of investment and the equivalent of 12,000 full-time jobs. In preserving and enhancing habitat for wildlife, shooting is necessarily sustaining the natural beauty of the countryside. This is something from which we can all benefit.

Those habitats in which pheasants are reared are not available for the enjoyment of the general public, quite the contrary – the public are not allowed anywhere near it lest they disturb the birds.

The income and jobs relating to shooting are for the most part supported by what shooters are prepared to pay for the privilege of blasting birds out of the sky; there is a very small market for pheasants as food and the profit margin is miniscule.

I have a question of my own: In a civilised society is it right to kill for fun?

Interesting thread guys.
Let me throw my thoughts in with some positioning first.
1) I am a clay shooter
2) I don't shoot game.
3) I do beat for a local syndicate, which I find a very pleasurable activity. I get out into parts of the countryside that would be normally not accessable and see more wildlife than I ever see from a public footpath. It is also damned good exercise.

4) I do have an "anti" friend who believes that beating is no better than the shooting, i.e. I am contributing to the kill, just the same as if I pulling the trigger. I disagree on this. The bird does have a sporting chance.

5) I do really enjoy eating game. As already mentioned the primary reason for shooting is sport and no game shooter would deny that. Food is a by product, not the means to the end. Everyone knows it costs significantly more to raise a pheasant than can ever be realised by selling the meat. The fact I get a brace of pheasant after a day's beating is nice. Having to prepare the bird for the pot does bring home where all our meat comes from, which is something that was a living creature. That does me me no harm and it would be good to see some of the supermarket brigade get some reality beyond the plastic wrapper.

6) As for "I would suggest that using a shotgun with hundreds of pellets is only one step from shooting fish in a barrel." I would like to get "acad tsunami" out on a clay ground and see how hard it is to hit a clay flying in a consistent direction, let alone a driven pheasant which will be changing direction and speed.

7)The have been comments made about the tweed suited business brigade. While it its true that there are big corporate shoots who do charge big bucks and attract this sort of clientele. I would say that the majority of game shooting is carried out by small syndicates of "normal" people. The syndicate I beat for is made up of farmers, builders, car mechanics, etc.

8) The conservation message cannot be overstated. The majority of english countryside looks the way it does primarily because it is managed for shooting.

9) Lastly, what does the forum think about falconry and hawking? Is this any different to shooting? I have a friend who is into hunting with hawks. He says is that he doesn't eat game he has caught with hawks, because of the stress of the hawk kill toughens the meat. He is more than happy to eat game he has shot though.

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Those habitats in which pheasants are reared are not available for the enjoyment of the general public, quite the contrary – the public are not allowed anywhere near it lest they disturb the birds.

That is not true near here. The grouse moor closest to me is in fact open access land, although it is occasionally shut for the actual shoot the bridleways and footpaths always remain open. Other areas close by (where pheasants are reared and shot) are on private farmland but once again have rights of way open across them all year.

Bruce

The conservation message cannot be overstated. The majority of english countryside looks the way it does primarily because it is managed for shooting.

Is that true?

Seriously - is it?

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flighing rats

ie pigeons

You artificaully keep chickens the fox does what comes natuarally. It's unfortunate that they kill more than they need ,probably to keep the others quite.
Killing more than needed ? Man is pretty good at that too.

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I am grateful for your comment, and I do not think we are far apart on this one. Indeed as I said earlier I was not convinced that I was going to enjoy the game shoot, but rightly or wrongly I did, not for the killing itself, but the day out, the surroundings, the testing nature of the activity itself, the people, and the oportunity to enjoy the countryside.

Simon, next week I am off to visit and perhaps stay a short while with a friend who takes an active part in the local hunting, shooting and fishing life that happens in his part of the world. Apart for shooting both birds and clays he teaches the finer arts of both shooting (clays and game birds) and fishing to the likes of local six formers, trophy wives and young rich daughter's of the well very well to do and this is by far the fastest growing segment of his market. He also belongs to a couple of local rough shoots who are welcomed with open arms by local land owners when time comes around to clear the land of assorted pests and such like and every once in a while he is off with his nets and ferrets for a bit of rabbiting. Now while he is not living the country life to the full he is wresting with the black arts of exotic computer code and being a stay at home Dad. I think that he is making a good job of living the rural idyll, supporting both local life and his family and yes shooting pheasents it part of his life but not a big part when looked at as a whole.

Is this my life or the life I want? No, well not for fifty-two weeks a year but for one or two . . yes but then I feel the need to return to my life in the city.

I reckon that is true for some of my local areas and habitats. Upland heather moor for example.

Bruce

This really is qute simple:

pheasant have little value as a "crop" otherwise they would be reared and sold like free range chicken;

the economic benefits come from the money that people are prepared to pay for the sport of killing live birds;

the "conservation" of the countryside is not some altrusistic endeavour, it is to provide a habitat for pheasants the shooting of which is big business; access to most of it is restricted;

this is in no way analagous to the rearing of sheep or cattle for food; when I want a steak I buy it from my butcher, I don't take a gun and shoot a dozen cows for fun;

falconry is the same except the head count is smaller;