Following yesterday’s blog about pesticide legs bands being attached to female red grouse to deter ticks (see here), Countryman’s Weekly has been in touch:
“We’d like to point out that we printed a correction to the article above in our edition of April 20 (we are a weekly title), which stated that the shoot “does not use pesticides in their dosing process“”.
Ah, so it’s just the chemotherapy drug Levamisole hydrochloride that they’re using then? What a huge relief that will be to everyone considering eating red grouse from this estate.
However, just because Cabrach Estate isn’t using pesticides to dose their red grouse (if you believe Countryman’s Weekly), that doesn’t mean that other grouse moors are not using them. The author of the original article (Linda Mellor) clearly believes pesticide leg bands are commonly used as a grouse moor management technique, otherwise she wouldn’t have written:
‘There has been a marked increase in grouse survival rates through this type of tick prevention‘.
As we pointed out yesterday, Linda is a professional freelance writer specialising in the game-shooting industry – if anyone should know, it would be her.
And if pesticide leg bands are not commonly used, why would the GWCT include specific advice on their website about how to use them (even though they’re unlicensed for use), as recently as last month?!
The thing is, just like this industry’s use of super-strength medicated grit with added de-wormer drugs, their use of toxic & poisonous lead shot, and their use of chemotherapy drugs, who is monitoring their use of pesticides to dose red grouse?
Er, that’d be nobody.
To say the grouse shooting industry is unregulated would be the understatement of the century.
Sign the petition to ban driven grouse shooting HERE
Raptor Persecution UK 
RPUK does it again. Brilliant stuff.
And the media is …..
I guess they must pay some poor wee apprentice to cut the leg bands of the birds before they go into the game dealers van…… a least the poor boy wont be troubled by worms….
What if the birds too damaged to sell are thrown straight into the stink pit…. SEPA should be interested in the leachate oozing out the pit…. somebody should ask SEPA if they have looked into this?
Still, if anyone ever markets a grouse as organic, we can sue… if they dont advertise grouse as organic then we know its really not safe.
in my own wee campaign to protect the world against lead shot, I am going to visit some butts over the summer. I am going to check the soil around the butts to see if they are peatlands. When I find the peat, I intend to let the estate know that they wont be able to use lead shot from these butts and copy the letter to the Police Scotland WCO and gun licence section….
Have just read that ‘Copper in the environment has potential to trigger an allergic reaction from sources such as …. pesticides ….’ (http://www.livestrong.com/article/276340-copper-allergies/.Intere)sting to note, then, that the DIY pesticide leg-band shown in the photo appears to be secured to the bird’s leg by the use of a crimped copper plumbing olive.