The 2011 grouse season closed on Saturday. According to an article in the Shooting Times, it’s been a “bumper season“, and, “many moor owners, keepers and shooters around the UK will be reflecting on one of their best years in decades” (see here for article).
In another review, this time just of the Scottish grouse season, Robert Rattray, head of CKD Galbraith’s Sporting Letting Department, comments on the performance of some well-known grouse moors (including Glenogil, Millden and Invercauld) and he writes: “The 2011 grouse season will be looked upon as one of the best in recent living memory, and in many instances a distinct improvement on the 2010 season, in itself regarded as one of the best seasons for a decade or more” (see here for his report).
All very interesting. So much for the supposed ‘significant impact’ of raptors on gamebirds, repeatedly trotted out by the gamekeeper and landowner associations in their quest to legalise persecution. If, as they claim, they are not already killing everything with a hooky beak that dares to even look at their grouse moor, then it seems to me that they’re managing to [legally] kill a record number of red grouse without having to go after the raptors. So what’s the problem?
Of course, there are some who’ll read this blog and will have a different perspective – that is, the 2011 grouse season was a ‘bumper’ one precisely because anything with a hooky beak in the vicinity of the grouse moors had already been killed off.
Raptor Persecution UK 