Do you, or anyone you know, shoot living things for sport?

alyth

To the OP are these oganised shoots or randoms killing the animals - I have a vague idea where you live and from memory that are no estates in your locality.

I live on a hunting/shooting estate - I frequently open my cottage door to find men strutting about outside with guns. It's a massive income to the estate, the deer that are killed are sent off to Highland Game to be processed into the food supply, and grown men get to play at being rambo.

Deer management is very important - around 600 deer are culled on my estate each year. They cause use amounts of damage, I can't grow anything outside other than potatoes and onions, last year they even ate my marigolds and sunflowers. The deer also suffered dreadfully in last year's snow conditions, unable to forage for their food, and it was more humane to kill them than let them suffer.

to the OP - don't you come from up north - do you know the damage that is caused by deer straying onto the A9?

In a previous life I used to arrange deer shoots and my employer was part of the deer management programme that all estates around here sign up to. It's the way of the countryside - unfortunately.

And for deer you can also insert pheasant. Here they are bred specifically for shooting parties - but they are a nuisance - and having hit one at around 30 mph when it flew into my car windscreen, I'm well aware of the damage they can cause!

In fact you can add rabbits to the list....... On this estate there are also around 1200 cows bred specifically for slaughter. I don't like seeing them go past in the transporters to the slaughterhouse, there's always one that sticks it's head out as if to say "save me"! I have 35 cows right outside my window at the moment - I know where they are going to end up, I'm just glad that they have freedom and are fed well.

Spirit_2

Had pheasant casserole for dinner this evening.

Mr Spirit shoots. We are not in the least bit posh. He has a half gun on a shoot which raises it's own birds with the assistance of a part-time gamekeeper and takes their welfare and conservation of the ground seriously.

Given the opportunity he also fly fishes, and in the unlikely event that he catches something we eat that too.

We keep our own chickens for eggs and only buy free range poultry and meat from our local farm shop.

Of all the above the pheasant seems at least as ethical to me. The birds have had a free range well looked after life, quick despatch, no abbatoir and no food miles.

I know it takes all sorts. I could not see the sense in fox hunting, just seemed cruel and unusual.

meritaten

my son likes to go 'lamping' he shoots for sport - but he always leaves the rabbits with the landowner by arrangement. I understand the landowner either eats them or sells them to a local butcher. to me - that is acceptable. JUST! at least someone gets to eats them!

Lotus-eater

cavework wrote: »

Most people who live in the country have a huge respect for the animals around them.

gemlcoleman wrote: »

Words cannot express!!!!

What? The truthfulness of it? The reality of it?

We work and live with the animals around us, we kill, we eat and use them, we manage them, so we understand them.
Of course we respect them, which is probably a whole lot more than the chicken you got from Tescos had.

We respect them enough to be the one that kills them, to ensure it's a pain free death as much as possible, to encourage the remaining animals to have a good life as much is possible, to adapt their environment to their benefit and for our usage as much as is possible.

Honestly, it does my head in when people who know nothing about what they speak, say generalisations like this. Then they go and have a KFC...........

alyth

meritaten wrote: »

my son likes to go 'lamping' he shoots for sport - but he always leaves the rabbits with the landowner by arrangement. I understand the landowner either eats them or sells them to a local butcher. to me - that is acceptable. JUST! at least someone gets to eats them!

I get lamping up here quite a lot - always freaks me out when I see the torches! It's just the nature of the land, I have to admit I get a bit upset when the gammies go out at night, shoot the deer right outside my cottage, and I don't like seeing the dead deer on the back of the quads, but it's conservation - certainly with regards to the deer, if they weren't shot they would over-run the countryside.

Lotus-eater

meritaten wrote: »

my son likes to go 'lamping' he shoots for sport - but he always leaves the rabbits with the landowner by arrangement. I understand the landowner either eats them or sells them to a local butcher. to me - that is acceptable. JUST! at least someone gets to eats them!

In this country and the way we live in it, some animals have to be controlled.
Foxes, deer and rabbits are just some of those, either he does it, or the farmer has to do it.


I don't agree with fox hunting with hounds, it should be done as it is now, by shooting, there should be no sport with it IMO, but as the history of hunting with dogs goes way back to the Celts in our fair land, it should be no surprise that we still want to do it.

artichoke

Whilst i think everyone should eat LESS meat i believe that if you do eat meat you need to eat meat responsibly and by that i mean eating less meat but also ensuring that the meat you do eat is ethically reared and killed and locally sourced. That means buying from an organic / local farmer and probably means paying more for your meat that cheap unethical supermarket meat - and therefore having to eat less meat overall but better quality meat...

but that also means in my view that if you eat meat you need to value that animal by eating the whole of the animal - not just the "best" or "easiest" cuts that are provided in the supermarket. If an animal is going to live and die then we need to get the most meals possible out of that animal ie eating the less popular / forgotten cut of the fifth quarter - the offal and other unmentionable bits.

So given my above views i have no problem with shooting pheasants, rabbits as long as that is done in safe environments on managed land and the kill is collected and eaten later. I actually organise the selling of the shoot to ensure the animals are eaten. I don't live in deer countryside so have no experience of that - but i know deer numbers have to be managed and have no qualms about it.

I am against fox hunting and against the badger cull. I campaign against animal cruelty but shooting for food in the countryside is an activity that is both necessary to control the landscape and is a most welcome food source and income for farmers.

Art

Lotus-eater

artichoke wrote: »

I am against fox hunting and against the badger cull.

Do you not think that badger numbers have to be controlled?

artichoke

hum - this is a whole separate discussion thread :eek: i dont support the cull in the way it has been proposed.

I work on an organic farm - we have both heritage breed cows and lots of badgers....but try to manage both responsibly and ethically..

- i keep tongue in cheek suggesting developing a whole new product range of burgers and sausages and steaks ...

Art

Lotus-eater

artichoke wrote: »

hum - this is a whole separate discussion thread :eek: i dont support the cull in the way it has been proposed.

I work on an organic farm - we have both heritage breed cows and lots of badgers....but try to manage both responsibly and ethically..

- i keep tongue in cheek suggesting developing a whole new product range of burgers and sausages and steaks ...

Art

The tb question is a whole other debate, but the fact that badgers are still a protected species is well out of date.

We have badgers running riot here, nobody can touch them, I have heard stories of farmers killing them, then them ending up as roadkill somehow.

It is out of control, we've a rogue male who likes to kill chickens, many people have said that they would kill him for me, but I don't want that in the present way our laws are.

I like badgers, in fact I really like badgers, many is the night I've gone badger watching with my DD, but this needs to be sorted, otherwise you are just going to get people taking the law into their own hands.