Burn Baby Burn!

The debate that refuses to be extinguished: should game shooting be allowed or should it be banned? It’s another platform for impolite society’s handwringing, self-knot tying and moral grandstanding, while polite society couldn’t give a (s)hoot.

Before I make ptarmigan mince of the actual issues, which will prompt the Impolites to quail at my superior intellect, grouse at their inability to match my logic and call fowl at my arrogance (and offensive insults), let’s take a gander at the personalities at either extreme. In the pro-shoot corner, we have the down-to-earth shooting industry who, in my experience is peopled by pleasant, intelligent, live-and-let-live kinda chaps. There’s also the wealthy, who pay an eye-popping amount to participate in a weekend jolly, supporting rural economies and local employment as they go. Celebrity adherents include Jeremy Clarkson, Ian Botham, Vinnie Jones and Nigel Farage. Saints they are not. Always in their corner I am not. But they’re alpha males with a sense of humour and good old-fashioned misogyny, often self-deprecating. I like that.

Contrast these gentlemen with obsessive-compulsive celebrity finger-waggers, such as Chris Packham, George Monbiot and Richard Benwell and their nodding-dog regurgitators. They’re beta-males gagging on alpha sanctimony and epsilon humour. I don’t like that.

Looks like I’m already in the pro-shoot camp before I start. Being drawn on an issue because of who’s already declared their hand is a very unscientific methodology, but the proof is in the pudding, and I prefer full-bodied chocolate torte to insipid crème caramel.

I suppose I’d better go through the motions. Firstly, arguments in favour of game shooting: it puts food on tables; it creates jobs and contributes to GDP; it’s a healthy and sociable activity for humans; the land is managed and maintained to keep the activity and the wider countryside sustainable. Arguments against include: it benefits the rich more than the less well off; game birds are killed; ‘unwanted’ predators are eliminated; the ecosystem is unnatural and biodiversity stymied. 

Rather than prove that game-shooting is ‘good’, I’m going to show that it can’t be established to be ‘bad’, inspired by Karl Popper and his epistemological philosophy of falsificationism.

Game-shooting benefits the rich more than the less well off:
This is social-stereotyping on steroids. Not everyone who wears tweed breeches has a Coutts bank account. But then from my experience, the same people who think shooting is a rich-man’s sport want to cull voices outside their own echo chamber. Let’s humour them for an instant (you'd have to laugh or you'd cry). Even if ‘the rich’ were to benefit more than others, there’s nothing wrong with that. As long as the non-rich benefit from game shooting more than they would without it, what does it matter that the rich benefit more? It matters to socialists and their tiresome politics of envy and spite; they’re happy to penalise the less well off if that will also penalise the rich. How sad / immoral is that?

Game birds are killed:
Well, yes, that’s the whole point. Shooting game for food is no different from farming or fishing. Humans are meat/fish-eaters and therefore natural predators. If any game birds are reared inhumanely then that aspect should be improved rather than banning the activity in toto. After all, British farm-welfare standards were improved as opposed to livestock farming stopped. And the vegans want their revenge by banning game shoots.

‘Unwanted’ predators are eliminated / biodiversity is stymied, blah blah:
I’ve lumped the final two (or is it three) arguments against game shooting under one heading because they’re dealt with better-than-adequately by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust . The Trust aims for a “thriving countryside rich in game and other wildlife. It uses “science to promote game and wildlife management as an essential part of nature conservation … develop scientifically researched game and wildlife management techniques … support best practice for field sports that contribute to improving the biodiversity of the countryside.” It believes that “humane and targeted predator control is an essential part of effective game and wildlife conservation [and they] utterly oppose those who engage in wildlife crime.”

In other words, you can only argue against the GWCT and game shooting if you can evidence your claims with actual science, not socialist-sycophancy or vegan-veneration. Just because a minority might engage in wildlife crime is no reason to penalise the majority who follow best practice.

What actually prompted this blog so early before (or long after) The Glorious Twelfth was the recent headlines about the plethora of wildfires during this dry spring, and the pros and cons of controlled burning. My eye was particularly drawn to a bad-tempered commentary where all recent wildfires were blamed on centuries-old poor land management (e.g. upland farming) and rich landowners maximising profits from game shooting. All forms of contemporary controlled burns were frowned upon as being bad for wildlife, biodiversity, climate change, sustainability, bunions, inflation, and diversity, equity and inclusion. Happy to burn books (and blogs!) but not grassland, eh?

One particular argument about one specific wild fire was so ridiculous I kept thinking I must have misread it. It went something like this. Centuries of over-grazing and controlled burns had decimated nature’s flora, which was now being rewilded, but what was growing back was unbalanced and unnatural because of centuries of over-grazing and controlled burns, so the wildfires readily took hold, therefore we need to rewild more. Pardon?

Surely the wildfire-culprit was rewilding, or at least an ineptly strategized and poorly managed rewilding, and the solution to minimising wildfires is in truth a return to centuries-old practices and/or a more intelligent approach to rewilding. Another thing to note is that there are uplands and lowlands, woodlands, scrublands, grasslands and heather, and blanket bogs and generic peat, all hosting different ecosystems, that require different management techniques. What works for grass won’t necessarily work for heather. What’s good for curlews might not be good for hen harriers. Is that so difficult to understand. Apparently, for the knuckleheaded, yes!

The thing about this planet, and especially this country, is there are too many people that need to be fed. To avoid starvation, we must farm and we must hunt and gather. Both strategies require us to interfere with Mother Nature’s original intentions. We could import more food, but that means we have no control over animal and ecological welfare, nor carbon emissions. Logically, if you want to rewild farmland and limit hunting, you’re advocating population control and, to avoid upsetting J.D. Vance, that means immigration control. Music to my ears, but I guess sticking that solution to the ne’er do wells sticks in their craws.

Ultimately I support game hunting because the produce is delish and nutrish and, as our Nana used to say: “Most people eat to live, but we live to eat.”