The Red Grouse shooting season begins in August each year on what the shooters call the Glorious 12th; of course, there is nothing glorious in the mass slaughter of wild birds.
Wildlife Matters has long opposed Grouse shoots and has previously detailed why we oppose driven grouse shooting. In addition to the mindless slaughter of the birds and the inaccuracy of some shooters, meaning long, painful deaths, we have revealed how our government is subsidising the shooting industry with funding that should be used to maintain the upland moors and the environmental damage of the release of stored carbon whilst burning the peat and how rainfall can no longer soak into the peat bogs but instead now runs off the uplands hills and floods nearby towns and villages. We could go on, but let’s focus on why Wildlife Matters has travelled to the North Yorkshire moors.
It’s mid-August, and Wildlife Matters has arrived in a remote layby deep in the upland moors of North Yorkshire. It is a bright and warm morning, but dark clouds are approaching. From this point, we can see its big skies and vast open landscape for a hundred miles or more.
For those that may not know, RedGrouse are physically smaller than pheasant but larger than partridge, which they resemble.
Grouse are naturally found in groups known as coveys, which can contain as many as twenty birds living together; coveys can be smaller but rarely are larger.
Grouse are hardy birds living in the exposed moorlands in cold and windy conditions. They feed primarily on heather shoots, occupying bleak moorland and can fly within a week of hatching. Despite endemic disease on most moors, they are one of the most robust flying birds.
Technically, the Grouse are not artificially reared. Their populations are kept deliberately high by the keepers who actively trap, poison and kill any predator or potential predator of grouse whilst the heather is regularly burned to encourage new growth and the heather tips or shoots that provide the food to grouse that live on the moor. At these population levels, disease amongst the grouse is endemic, and the keepers will put tons of medicated grit in small containers in many locations across the moor.
It’s the keeper’s work to maintain the artificially high populations of Grouse and remove the predators that naturally call the moors home; the estate owners are interested not only in the money that they get from the shooting parties but also from the UK government in the form of grants and subsidies that are meant to be for maintaining the natural habitat of the upland moors and not to create a heather-based monoculture for grouse alone with a landscape full of lead shot and the dead and decaying bodies of shot grouse that were not collected.
Wildlife Matters Investigates is here to observe how Grouse shoots work and, most importantly, how the Hunt Sabs effectively stop the shoots daily.
Grouse shoots operate on two different methods of shooting, known as Walking-up and Driven Shoots.
Driven shooting is a uniquely British method where a long line of beaters, often coming from several miles away, will drive vast flocks of grouse towards the waiting guns. The guns are stationed in shooting butts that are shoulder-high brick or timber walls that run in a line across the moor. There can be multiple lines of butts across a moor, and the birds will be driven towards specific lines of shooters throughout the day.
The Walking-up shooting method is different in that the guns or shooters form a line across the moor, and with their many and various dogs to disturb the birds, they will walk into the wind and shoot anything they have flushed from cover. The Walking-up method is mainly done later in the season when the numbers have been depleted by driven shooting or on moors where grouse are in short supply.
If you don’t belong to a shooting club, how do you learn about the grouse shoots? If you live locally to a shooting moor, you will know they place adverts on the footpaths that access the moors. These are often A4 laminated sheets pinned to notice boards or footpath signs and essentially tell you the Moor is CLOSED for shooting.
You can contact National Parks, who will supply on request a list of dates when the moors are closed for shoots. The shoots must notify the National Parks to close the moors on the allocated days. Councils can also supply a list of footpaths or moors that will be closed for shooting, again on request.
Of course, things are not that straightforward in reality as most shooting estates are privately owned, and they have no obligation to inform the public of shooting days as they take place on private land.
Having arrived three hours in advance of the start of the shooting day, it was clear that the shooters were not very keen to walk along footpaths and rough, muddy tracks the keepers (and Sabs) use, but instead gather in groups, clad in tweed outfits with gun cases slung over their backs – that is not inconspicuous – waiting for a Land Rover to deliver them to the shooting bucks, with their tailored tweed outfits, caps and hunter boots still immaculately clean!
As with many things in life, planning is vital to a successful outcome, and I am very fortunate to be working with someone today who knows the moor and its multiple entrances and line of shooting butts very well.
I have previous experience stopping fox hunts and badger cull shooters, but grouse shoots are different. Firstly, there are a lot more boots on the ground needed. There are many footpaths and access ways to the moor, and this moor has six lines of shooting butts to be watched. These cover an area of around 50 square miles.
I’m in the back of the van with two coordinators who have OS maps open. The maps show the location of the six separate lines of shooting butts, and the monitors are in place across the moor watching the entrance paths to the moors and looking out for the beating party or where a disparate range of vehicles are all converging on a remote lay by location at the same time.
My experienced colleagues, now friends, have radio comms with a range of people I have yet to meet but who I know have travelled from all around the north and midlands to be here today.
I have been tasked with radio comms and am busier, giving coordinates and instructions, when the call comes in from one of our scout groups who have spotted what they believe, is the beating party. They watch from a distance and are soon able to confirm that they are the beaters, and now our coordinators know which line of shooting butts will be in use today.
I was told to contact the Moor-based groups and give them the location, and they all acknowledged and headed for the grid reference I had given them.
Within minutes, a small army of around 80 Sabs was in place, and a thin line began spreading across the moor. The Sabs were forming a pre-beating line, well in advance of the shoot’s beaters and began to drive the birds away from the shooting butts.
It is so impressive to see a line of Sabs, arrow straight and waving white flags and making a racket, sending clouds of grouse and other birds high into the air and onto another part of the moor where they would be safe. They carried out two passes before the shoot-beaters even arrived! I was impressed and in total awe of these guys and gals and their fantastic work to save wildlife and stop persecution.
The shooter’s beating party was forming around 1.5 miles from the shooting butts and began to assemble themselves into some wiggly-wobbly line that should have been straight.
What I saw next reminded me more of sabbing a hare hunt; the Sabs were counter-beating and forming into two groups flanking the shoot-beaters. Think of a simple line drawing of an arrowhead, with the shoots beaters being the bottom line and the two groups of sabs working towards them from each side.
Our driver moves the Landy into a new place where we can see the shoot’s beaters being escorted by the two lines of Sab beaters.
I become aware of the grouse that are being disturbed, and as they fly into the air, the Sabs blow their horns and shake football rattles. That sound drives the grouse down their lines and behind the shoots beaters into relative safety. I am deeply impressed by the example that these volunteer wildlife lovers have a plan and how they carry it through. But they just continue their ongoing march in the direction of the shooters in their shooting butts.
As the shoot and Sab beaters get closer to the guns, we can see that they are in place. I can see a change in the Sab beaters’ lines as they seemed to allow the shooter’s beaters to come through. To reuse my earlier visual pictogram of an arrowhead being turned around so, now the shoot beaters were the top line, and these sabs were peeking off the front of and forming a line in front of the shooting butts.
This well-coordinated manoeuvre with Sabs lined up in front of the shooting butts, perhaps 50 metres or so away and waving their white flags and making a lot of noise whilst risky for the individual Sabs will make any grouse driven by the shoots beaters fly higher into the air and above the line of guns and again, to the relative safety of the far side of the shooting butt.
It was now I could see that some of the Sabs had got to both sides of the walls of the shooting butts, stopping the guns from turning round to shoot towards the escaping grouse and unable to shoot towards the grouse driven by their beaters as they had a line of Sabs on the moor driving the birds high into the air and another line now standing on the front wall of the shooting butts.
We watched the shoot manager call his beaters in as two Land Rovers came out onto the moor to take the paying shooters away; the shoot had been stopped for the day.
Tempers were frayed, and emotions were high amongst the shooters who may have paid up to £1000 for today’s shoot that never happened.
As I approached, two women, both in their tweed attire, started to shout at me, calling me a range of names and among the barrage of the prominent swear words was a stream of racist, homophobic, classism, ableism, and ageism. Wow! Where the hell have these foul-mouthed bitches spent their lives! Presumably locked up in the country estate!
It may have been the end of their day, but not for us. Having packed this shoot up much earlier than anyone had expected, we were already in contact with another group of Sabs working another moor around twenty miles away.
I joined the line of vehicles, with its diverse range of vintage defenders, a range of older 4x4s and more than a few Ford Fiesta-type everyday cars full of wonderful folk who have travelled to North Yorkshire from Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull and a few Brummies from near Walsall!
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Further Information
End Shooting Animals – League Against Cruel Sports
Game Bird Shooting Laws and Impact RSPB
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