Tag: shooting

An odd thread appeared on Twitter over the weekend, which was started by Scottish campaigner Andy Paton but soon derailed by – well, it was hard to tell really…Andy had quite rightly pointed out that shooters were being asked not to go out killing endangered hard-weather movement birds like Woodcock and Common Snipe, because of – er, the hard-weather. Which makes huge sense if you’re actually interested in the conservation and protection of wild birds, but of course not so much if you’re a shooter and all that matters is the opportunity to blast a few half-starving birds out of the sky that have had the misfortune to arrive in the UK from regions to the north and to the east where the ground has frozen over meaning they can’t feed. The ‘odd’ part of the thread was the ‘contribution’ (which is being kind) from Phil ‘Beware the Woke’ Woods, who rashly decided he was the right person to teach Andy a lesson in ornithology, declaring in sneering terms that “Woodcock and snipe are the same bird and it is not endangered”. They’re not, and they are…Anyone can make a mistake, but why leap in like this…?

Now, we’re always aware at The War on Wildlife Project that we don’t have the authority to speak for any particular pro-wildlife side or group other than our own (though we have been around a lot of pro-wildlife folks for a very long time), but, ‘Xander’, you’re really missing the point. In our eyes, so-called ‘country sports’ is nothing more than killing birds and mammals that a great many of us cherish and love, and there is no difference at all between so-called ‘country sports’ and the ‘sportsmen’ who take part in it. You don’t get one without the other, do you? There is no separation here, ‘Xander’, so-called ‘country sports’ IS the people who shoot and hunt and maim and harm and kill. You are one and the same. We don’t know you, ‘Xander’, but you identify yourself as a shooter and we have seen statements like yours a thousand times, been ‘huntsplained’ to a thousand times, given that peculiarly patronising, supercilious down-the-nose look that says ‘Oh, poor you, you’ve never been shooting, have you’ a thousand times. We know what’s behind your question, ‘Xander’, and you don’t get to imply that we’re dishonest or insincere when we have been nothing but honest and sincere about our love of wildlife…

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) recently announced that Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, a well-known shooter, would become its Patron (taking over from his grandfather the Duke of Edinburgh, a man who’s total kill or ‘bag’ was described in The Indpendent as long ago as 1996 as “stretching over continents” and running into “mind-boggling numbers”). It seems an odd match. On the one hand we have the BTO, a transparent “organisation founded in 1932 for the study of birds in the British Isles”.On the other we have the opaque shooting industry which badmouths birdwatchers as ‘animal extremists’ and exists to turn a profit from killing wildlife.