Shooting and Fishing: The SNP was discovered to be really rather grown up about shooting and fishing

Now the dust has settled on the SNP's election victory, it will be interesting to see whether the government's stance on countryside sporting matters changes to any great degree.

The SNP was discovered to be really rather grown up about shooting and fishing after the often blindingly ignorant bias of Central Belt Labour politicians who held sway in the early days of the Scottish Parliament.

As the political make-up changed and the SNP became the most numerous party in Parliament, it also found it represented more rural constituencies than any other party.

This did not mean it suddenly started sprouting heather. But many of the MSPs acquired, if they had not already, a deeper understanding of how shooting, fishing and stalking fitted into the economy.

They might not personally want to shoot a pheasant but they could see such activities made a contribution to the landscape and employment.

Matters even appeared to improve when Mike Russell was put in charge of rural affairs after publicly voicing a conviction that the government was inclined to rely too heavily on the opinion of its own experts, often the quangos and conservation bodies that sat on each others' boards and issued press releases "welcoming" one anothers' "initiatives".

Russell was succeeded, to a frisson of horror among shoot and river owners, by Roseanna Cunningham, "Red Rose", who turned out to be hard but fair, demonstrating her understanding and independence of mind by refusing to back a ban on the use of snares. That could have been an easy sop to the usual suspects.

But now the SNP has the opportunity to do pretty well what it likes. The social and economic spectrum the party now represents is as broad and as long as Scotland itself – left and right, townspeople and country people, field sports enthusiasts and animal rights activists. The worry is that the pragmatism so far displayed will be ditched as and when required to appease the party's various awkward squads or single-issue conservation groups.

Few would care – indeed, most of the population would applaud – if, for instance, the temporary ban on the docking of working dog tails was to be approved by Parliament, flying in the face of all practical experience and advice. But it is the sort of thing that can fall victim to political horse trading – a bone thrown to the political fringe with the strongest whinge. Bashing country pursuits usually goes down well with the urban rank and file. But we may yet be surprised.

• This article was first published in The Scotsman on May 21, 2011