Grouse shooting season in the line of fire

Published on Sunday 10 August 2008 22:28

Wildlife is caught in the middle as opposing forces prepare for the 'Glorious 12th', writes SHÂN ROSS

ALASTAIR Lyon, head keeper on the Ralia and Milton Estate, strides across Drumochter Moor near Dalwhinnie, carrying his Beretta 12-bore shotgun as he makes his final inspection before the Glorious Twelfth, and the start of the red grouse shooting season.

But even before the first shot has been fired, animal-rights campaigners Advocates for Animals have attacked the sport as a "mass killing" exercise, portraying it as "shooting for dummies" – entertainment enjoyed by the wealthy few.

They have also voiced concern about what they say is the largely unpublicised suffering of other animals killed by gamekeepers to keep grouse numbers high.

But behind the scenes a more dramatic battle for survival is being fought, by almost 1,000 people who make their living in rural Scotland from the shooting season. The sport targets grouse, stags, partridges and pheasants over a number of months – and its associated spin-offs generate around 17 million for the Scottish economy.

Equally at risk are the grouse themselves – numbers are falling due to a combination of disease from ticks spread by sheep, deer, predators and the disappearance of their heather moorland due to forestation. Global warming may also be a factor. Shooting is either "walked up", where shooters walk across the moor to flush grouse and take a shot, or "driven", where grouse are flushed, often in large numbers by "beaters" towards the guns who are hiding behind a line of "butts".

Mr Lyon, 42, who started his working life aged 16 as a ghillie on the Cameron of Lochiel estate in Achnacarry near Fort William, said he wanted to put straight the perception some people have of his job.

He says: "I've heard people say, 'Oh, it's really cruel, the dogs get the grouse in the heather, the grouse don't stand a chance.' That's not what happens. There's no point in killing the lot. We target what we want out of each covey (clutch of grouse], we're not just slaughtering things.

"What are we supposed to do on a hot day (when] the animals are slower, and might just be easier to hit? Turn clients away, clients that might have booked from the US, and get slaughtered ourselves just because it's a hot day?"

A day's grouse shooting is expensive at around 140 per brace of grouse shot. It is not unusual for a group of eight "guns" to pay 6,000 between them for a day's shooting.

Alex Hogg, chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers' Association, who works on an estate in the Borders, says grouse are the "economic driver" of large parts of rural Scotland and without them large parts of the country would be at risk.

"Shooting is so important to the rural economy. In Hawick, for example, when the men are shooting, the wives are out buying a heap of knitwear. The whole infrastructure benefits from the influx – the hotels, the garages, those getting seasonal jobs as beaters, he explains.

"We need to keep grouse shooting alive. It went into a bit of decline over the past 30 years and the corporate shooting day was a thing of the Eighties.

"We have some traditional landowners, but what we tend to have now is a new niche of businessmen with a few dozen employees. Yes there are a few extremely wealthy individuals who have bought all the planes, yachts and houses they want and now want something real to leave to their children.

"These are the sort of people who have invested millions into grouse moors over the past five years."

Addressing criticisms from animal activists, Mr Hogg says: "We're like policemen trying to stop the baddies killing the defenceless ones, ones who can't escape. Our working year starts in March controlling the crows, then we move on to the foxes' dens in April where we try to kill the vixens. If we just leave it to the 'corporate and criminals' (otherwise known as the foxes and crows) there would be hardly any wildlife left."

But Ross Minett, campaigns director for Advocates for Animals, refutes these arguments. He says: "Proponents of shooting may attempt to justify its continued existence on financial grounds but we would like to see how the figures stack up between income to the economy generated by this outmoded industry and that brought in by modern-day tourism. Let's not kid ourselves that this is a 'glorious sport', quite the contrary. The reality is hundreds of thousands of birds will be driven towards waiting guns and blasted out of the sky in the name of 'entertainment'.

"Many people are also unaware of the further hidden cost that this 'sport' causes indirectly in unnecessary suffering and death to a wide range of animals, due to the rigorous 'predator control programmes' that are undertaken on shooting estates in order to create an environment where the target species can be kept at unnaturally high population levels until the shooters arrive to decimate them.

"Wild animals such as foxes, stoats and crows are systematically slaughtered by trapping, snaring and poisoning. Illegal poisoning of raptors has been repeatedly associated with shooting estates. The cruel, indiscriminate snare is the most-used weapon in the gamekeeper's lethal armoury."

But while the fierce debate continues, grouse numbers are falling due to factors other than the guns.

Ian McCall, director of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), estimates this year's grouse numbers at about 250,000, of which 10-20 per cent are shot. Figures are up on the last two seasons, but it is not a bumper number

Adam Smith, GWCT senior scientist for upland Scotland, says: "Red grouse have just moved from green to amber in the conservation traffic light system. These are wild birds and they face a number of threats – in the 1980s and 1990s the big killer was forestry plantations which destroyed a chunk of the heather moorland where they live.

"Similar concerns are creeping up now with the interest in carbon conservation and bio-fuels. But the grouse have an on-going threat from louping-ill, a viral disease transmitted by sheep tick and deer and from a worm which causes the disease strongylosis.

"On certain moors this is a huge problem which could wipe out the grouse if not managed properly. Ticks need warm weather and the climate in the past few years has got warmer and wetter."

The final threat to the grouse, but by no means the least, are predators – foxes, stoats, ravens and birds of prey.

Doubtless, the debate is going to continue, but regardless Nature remains red in tooth and claw.

A game bird with a perilous life

THE red grouse is a medium-sized game bird with the latin name of Lagopus lagopus.

It has a reddish-brown, plump body, a black tail, its legs are covered in pale-coloured feathers and it has a slightly hook-tipped bill.

Its natural habitat is heather moorland and it is mostly found in Scotland, with smaller numbers in the north of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Grouse are herbivorous and eat seeds, shoots, heather flowers, berries, insects and cereal crops.

The birds begin to form pairs during the autumn and males become increasingly territorial as winter progresses. The nest is a shallow scrape up to 20cm across which is lined with vegetation.

Six to nine eggs are laid, mainly during April and May. They are oval, glossy and pale yellow with dark brown blotches.

The eggs are incubated for 19 to 25 days, the chicks can fly 12 to 13 days after hatching, and are fully grown after 30 to 35 days.

Since the middle of the 1890s grouse shooting has become one of the major land uses of upland ground, providing valuable jobs for remote communities.

Many moors are intensively managed to increase the density of grouse.

Areas of heather are subjected to controlled burning, which allows fresh shoots to regenerate, which the grouse eat.