I forgot it! My dear farmer never forgot at Breakfast on August 12th to remark "Glorious Twelfth today". I am not sure why. We are surrounded by shooting estates and at this time of the year you can drive up on to the moorland and be sure to see Grouse. But my farmer was just not a shooting man. When the local farmers and a few friends formed a shoot and shot on our land it was rabbits, rabbits, rabbits. Maybe the odd pheasant but they quickly learned to keep well out of the way every other Saturday. The farmer was always a beater - never took his useless gun. He owned two guns. When he was diagnosed with Glioblastoma - in his case the most aggressive form of brain tumour - he had by law to surrender his guns. I took them to the 'Hunting, shooting, fishing' shop in our little town - one didn't function at all and was fit only for the scrap heap - the other was worthless. The shop dealt with the paperwork.
Not a shooting man, but a countryman through and through. And - like most countrymen- very aware of all that went on around him and had done for a very long time. The Twelfth came into being in 1831/2 when a previous law was overturned (banning hunting of game between August and Dcember.) From then on it has been Grouse from August 12th and Pheasant from October 1st.
I have a feeling that Grouse are almost impossible to breed 'in captivity' whereas Pheasants are reared all over around here and let out to be 'wilded' when they grow to a certain size. (but usually still fed by various means to fatten them up for October.)
It has always been so. I find the whole thing grotesque - but the shooting fraternity pay large sums of money for a day's shooting - money I suppose which goes towards keeping the shooting areas at their peak (e.g. the burning of swathes of heather in controlled burns to encourage the heather to produce new shoots for the young grouse to feed on.)
I remember as a child walking with my father and coming across a wire strung with the spoils of a local gamekeeper - dead stoats, weasels, crows, the odd very dead fox's brush,voles, all very dead and strung in a line for all to see. Rod Liddle in today's Sunday Times (where he decries the whole practice) asked a gamekeeper what proportion of what he, the gamekeeper, called 'vermin' he hoped to kill - he answered 100% but he said 'some slip through the net'!
I understand the big estates still rush grouse on the 12th up to London in time for them to appear on the evening menus of the 'posh' eateries. Have you ever tasted grouse? I have once. One mouthful was enough - my thoughts on the whole shooting thing being what they are plus the fact that the meat tasted of heather and nothing else was enough to just endorse my feelings about the whole thing.
Red kites were reintroduced into England, Wales and Scotland where there had been more or less a national extinction. The reintroduction has proved such a success. At the last count there were at least 4,400 breeding pairs. Their main foods are carrion, worms and small mammals. Yet they are destroyed where possible (it is a crime) in case they dare to pick off the odd grouse/pheasant.
The same goes for Buzzards and any other Birds of Prey who dare to encroach on the moors. Poisons which are illegal are still kept secretly and still used. Buzzards feed mainly on voles, mice, shrews, rabbits and pigeons (although there is a report of a Buzzard attacking a Yorkshire Terrier and badly injuring it. The vet managed to save it's life but the buzzard returned shortly after and this time killed it.)
There was a time when villages were small, many of the folk who lived there worked for 'the big house' - women as domestics and men looking after the estate in various ways. But - like the second home owners in places like Cornwall - life is not like that any more - incomers(a dreaded word to some in what used to be villages where everybody knew everybody - and often three quarters of the villagers were inter-related) : the genuine Countryman is dying out. Everything is mechanised. Villagers 'have cars will travel' and often go 30 miles or more to work each morning (clogging the motorways)- and have never even heard of the twelfth and probably never eaten grouse either.
I am not sure there is anything 'glorious' about it any more.
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20 comments:
Its wicked isn't it. It took years to hound fox and deer killing hunts to some sort of respectability. The so called Glorious twelfth is just a money making scheme on the part of moor owners, and countless other animals are killed to 'save' the grouse. The buzzard is my token bird and if I ever come back as a buzzard watch out.
Pat, this has to be one of the most powerful pieces you have ever written.
I concur completely.
Thank you for this perspective on bird hunting, with which I happen to totally agree. Having said that, here on the east coast US deer hunting is a valuable way to control the booming population with few natural predators and shrinking available habitat - in my urban/suburban neighborhood I see deer frequently crossing roads etc, which is a great danger to motorists, bikers etc. Programs to neuter or otherwise control reproduction are expensive and inefficient. What to do? Obviously not hunt here in the suburbs, but in the country, where most hunters eat what they kill, it seems OK, unless one is going to go completely vegetarian. Certainly wild deer live more humane lives than stockyard raised cattle? It's hard to know what is the right thing to do.
Ceci
An interesting perspective on modern day countryside ways Pat, presumably some borrowed from today's newspaper.
It's not quite as clear cut as you have made it. In most of the conservation articles that I have read, I have seen very little about persecution of Red Kites and if it is going on it must be miniscule.
The management i.e. culling, of vermin/predators in the countryside these days, is a necessary tool whether it be for the benefit of game birds for shooting purposes, or the protection of endangered wildlife species. Gamekeepers have historically used shooting/trapping methods against vermin but nowadays many nature reserves also annually use the same methods in order to try and protect species that are struggling to compete. Lapwings for instance suffer eggs and chick losses to crows, hedgehogs, weasels, stoats, gulls, birds of prey, and so conservation bodies such as the RSPB, employ similar methods as gamekeepers to reduce the predation rates. It's not always simply a case of, for or against, when it comes down to taking sides, there's a complex grey area in the middle that has to be mulled over.
Derek - interesting what you have to say here Derek and I agree with you it does make the whole issue much more complex than I had thought. I read Rod liddle in The Times but then spent an interesting couple of hours on Google which had lots of interesting bits on the subject. I don't know what it is like where you live but here we are surrounded by huge tracts of land belonging to Landowners Theselarge estates tend to join one to another and of course there is a lot of high ground as we are on the edge of the Pennines. It is 6 years since I left the farm but we still had plenty of curlews nesting - I just hope they are still there. Unfortunately among ordinary folk not everyone has the same interest in conservation, protection of species etc.
This is an interesting topic. Hunting as a sport is not attractive to me. Hunting to eat what has been taken seems more acceptable. Proactively managing wildlife as DF (above) describes is very interesting and important. More education to the public is needed. We have a huge deer over population problem. Coyote and bobcats are not able to keep the herds moderated. Townspeople reject deer hunting.
I like your reply Pat and of course we're talking about different habitats and farming methods, north and south.
Here, around where I live, the two shooting interests are game shooting (annually introduced pheasants and French partridges, on the farmland, and wildfowl shooting along the foreshore) Surprisingly,the majority of the predator controls take place on a 3000 acre marshland National Nature Reserve, that does well to maintain one of the best Lapwing breeding successes in the South East.
Unfortunately, much of the conservation work, that involves bird counts, etc., around here, is done by us over 60's types, who still have memories of how it always used to be.
I feel critical of anyone who wants to spend their spare time shooting guns for so-called sport, even clay pigeons. Why? What kind of self-image do they have. How does it make them feel? I can't imagine anything enjoyable about it at all.
Interesting post, Pat, and I appreciate the glimpse into a world I never experienced. None of my family growing up or married were hunters.
Hugs!
I can understand a person shooting birds or rabbits to fee a family, but killing for sport is repulsive to me. During the war an uncle of mine would shoot rabbits and pigeons to supplement the meagre meat rations. As you say, there is nothing glorious about the 12th.
I am a farmers daughter and as a young girl was constantly appalled by the trapping methods of our village estate game keeper. I remember my mum and I releasing a beautiful owl caught by its leg in a trap set on top of a fence and regularly destroying horrible and cruel snickle traps that were a danger to village pets. All intended to ensure a good shoot for the paying public, my father and other family never took part.
Pat, you said you had eaten grouse once and it tasted like heather.Just curious, what does heather taste like? Gigi
I too find sport shooting stupid, counter productive. Shooting for clay pigeons leaves pounds and pounds of lead in the soil. It must be remediated before any structure can be built there.
Quite a while ago I had to deal with two animals that needed my help. First was a Badger that had been caught in a snare on the side of a steep bank. I returned home to fetch my handgun, and put the poor thing out of its misery. Another time I found a Roe Deer screaming in pain having been shot in the leg. I did the same and ended its suffering. I'm not against shooting, but it has to be properly controlled. Wildlife has to be managed; not slaughtered.
My father was also a true countryman who was against so called blood "sports" - not for any sentimental reason but because he thought they ought to have something more productive to do.
Gigi - you have given me a laugh early in the morning!!! I suppose what I should have said it tastes like what heather smells like - a sort of green vegetable taste.
Such interesting comments - thank you. It is good to read your differing takes on the subject but it is obvious that you are all of one mind broadly speaking.
Where I like pheasants are bred to be shot. They are viewed as a crop. Many (I was going to say the majority but can’t be sure of that) don’t even get eaten.
I do not understand the pleasure in killing something.
I couldn't help thinking, as I read through your post, that the word 'grouse' can always send me time travelling back to the days when BBC Radio had a 'Children's Hour', when Larry the Lamb and a certain Mr Grouser kept our imaginations working...
As for taking pot-shots as birds, I guess it's better than using humans as targets, the way border guards chose to slaughter migrants attempting to cross into Saudi Arabia, according to a news item I saw earlier. Destroying life is never easy to witness, and certainly hard to understand.
Thanks for yet another interesting read, Weaver! ♥ Jinksy
My husband is a hunter, and venison is our main red meat. But hunting for sport, neither of us understand that. I have eaten many wild meats, including grouse, and liked most of it, but we are not big meat-eaters, often going days without meat in our meals. Living where we do, we struggle to keep wildlife out of our gardens and fruits, as we try to grow most of what we eat. With forest pretty much surrounding us, we often have to deal with rodents like raccoons and possums, and these days coyotes are a real concern.
Ugh. I thought that I had commented here yesterday!
As you know, my husband hunts, and venison is our main meat through out the year. That being siad, it is necessary. Car/deer collisions are daily here. They are giving out license that permit taking 'extra' deer to bring the population back down. If the population is not brought down, one bad winter will mean starvation and illness spreading through the population. It is a real thing, and it has happened here within the last 15 years.
That being said, there are also deer farms, which raise deer, feed them to encourage maximum antler growth and then people pay money to come in and shoot their trophy in a fenced in huge fenced area. That is not sporting in my opinion.
We do have coyote and fox here as Granny Sue does. Since we do not have chickens, we have no reason to control them, and we feel that they help keep the crop eating rodents down. We may feel differently later.
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