More shot pheasants and red-legged partridges have been dumped by the side of the road, this time shoved inside three large plastic sacks and thrown in a hedge next to a lay-by on the road between Egremont and Cockermouth in West Cumbria. They were found on Thursday 22 January 2024.
Many thanks to blog reader Catherine who sent in these photos. She emptied the sacks and counted 19 pheasant carcasses and 14 red-legged partridge carcasses. She said all had had their breast meat removed.
Regular blog readers will know that this is a common and widespread illegal practice. The disposal of animal by-products (including shot gamebirds) is regulated and the dumping of these carcasses is an offence, whether they’ve had the breast meat removed or not.
Previous reports include dumped birds found in Cheshire (here), Scottish borders (here), Norfolk (here), Perthshire (here), Berkshire (here), North York Moors National Park (here) and some more in North York Moors National Park (here) and even more in North Yorkshire (here), Co. Derry (here), West Yorkshire (here), and again in West Yorkshire (here), N Wales (here), mid-Wales (here), Leicestershire (here), Lincolnshire (here), Somerset (here), Derbyshire’s Peak District National Park (here), Suffolk (here), Leicestershire again (here), Somerset again (here), Liverpool (here), even more in North Wales (here) even more in Wales, again (here), in Wiltshire (here) in Angus (here), in Somerset again (here), once again in North Yorkshire (here), yet again in West Yorkshire (here), yet again in mid-Wales (here), even more in mid-Wales (here), more in Derbyshire (here), Gloucestershire (here) and more in Cheshire (here).
Unless someone was seen dumping these shot gamebirds, there’s no way of knowing who did it or from which gamebird shoot they originated. There’s no requirement for shoot managers to fit identifying markers to their livestock, which would make them traceable, because gamebird ‘livestock’ absurdly changes legal status to ‘wildlife’ as soon as the birds are released from the rearing pens for shooting (see Wild Justice’s blog on Schrodinger’s Pheasant for details).
Raptor Persecution UK 
My husband found a a lot in a Ditch not far from Beccles Suffolk 3 years,ago, but he wouldn’t let me look.I didn’t realise this was common practice.There is a lot of pheasant breeding in Suffolk.I am back in Wales now.
It is’nt common practice, thankfully.
But neither is it uncommon. Without some sort of statutory regulatory system to oversee what happens to all these millions of mostly low value and often poor quality (too badly shot and roughly handled) carcasses, we will never know.
I wrote about this a long time ago, when the shooting industry tried denying this was happening. It’s very simple, a huge proportion of people that go game bird shooting now, are well paid people, who’ve never prepared a game bird in their life, and couldn’t stomach eating them if they did. They’re too embarrassed to admit this in front of their shooting mates, and throw them away. Probably, a lot of these shoots get left with piles of dead pheasants no one wants. I know about this because in the past I’ve had panicked people come and ask me if I’d prepare some pheasants so they were oven ready, as one of their shooting mates was coming around and expecting some of those yummy pheasants they’d supposedly taken away to eat. Obviously, this was never a problem for the upper class twits who started driven shooting, as they never cooked anything themselves. But even city types now, often don’t have domestic servants.
Very good livestock / wildlife parody Ruth 😆
[Ed: the credit for that lies with Wild Justice]
The fact that it is so true (Schrodinger’s pheasant), makes it even more ridiculous to read. The image is genius though!
Perhaps there may have been fingerprints on the bags? That’s if the police could be persuaded to be interested?
Hi Rachel,
Fingerprints on the bags wouldn’t prove who dumped them in the lay-by. It’s likely that the bags were handled, legitimately, before being used to stuff full of rotting shot gamebirds.
The police won’t even come out to a burglary if the value of items stolen don’t reach a threshold.
Last week a part time gamekeeper who tends a pheasant shoot close to my home walked down a Right of way adjacant to the shoot. He had a large white bag slung over his shoulders. On the east side of the path a strip of trees follows the Right of Way as it heads towards the shoot.
He was observed taking things out of his bag and discarding them in the strip of woods.
Next day it was found that 7 dead pheasants and 2 red legs had been discarded short distances apart.
The storms of the past 18 months has felled the majority of trees in the Pheasant shoot, meaning that they have difficulties getting a clear shot at the foxes. They are reluctant to place traps as they know I frequent the area and the gentleman with the bag was caught killing a red deer out of season a few years back. Although caught red handed by a gamekeeper who is employed by the organisation that used to be called “The Forestry Commission” he was no charged and remains in situ today. This is the man with the white bag.
Last spring the gorse bushes which sit nearbye had a few dead black lambs tied to them just above head level to attract foxes, We were told that nothing could be done. A few hundred yards away the Pheasant Shoot had planted a strip of wild flowers, ostensibly to feed the song birds. However during the period where the foxes would be feeding their litter three carcasses appeared in the middle of the strip, two musgovy ducks and a large goose. They had been brought to the area already dead and placed in the strip as carrion to attract anf foxes of vixens that might be attracted by their smell.
it seems that there is nothing I can do about it.
I’ve known similar – keepers favourite “foxing” hillsides baited with shot rabbits in multiple heaps of 5s or 6s spread over a half acre, at a perfect distance to attract and hold foxes to shoot with a rifle from the vehicle at night. Also dead sheep dragged out of the ditch they died in onto a more prominent place on the hillside for same reason. I believe it is all technically illegal under some public health laws or other (not wildlife laws) – the same as with stinkpits/ middens, i.e. legally the corpses should have a covering of soil or be in tubs with lids. I’m unclear on the interpretation of the law in courts as I’ve not read of any cases, I reckon complaints are likely dealt with by the good old “quiet word” from Estate friendly police, despite some pretty horrendous piles of corpses open to the elements, close to paths and on areas of public access / CRoW land.
There are, unfortunately, a small percentage of people who have no shame, very little empathy for other wild creatures (or even other people,) and whose behaviour therefore is repugnant to the rest of us. I find these reports rather depressing but we must do our best to pester politicians, the police and others and try and highlight to others that these things are going on under our noses.
Hi Ruth, this is not for the Blog. I sent you [Ed: thanks for your message – the email hasn’t arrived and not in junk folder]
[Ed: I don’t use either of those two email addresses. Please send to dimlylit100[at]hotmail.com and I’ll see it. Many thanks!]
Aside from the major issues, whoever dumped them knows that the Local Authority would have to clear the plastic bags at a cost paid by the public, in the same way as rubble tipped by a jerry-builder. Someone would have to remove the rotting bodies.
Do landowners who host shoots ever complain about litter?
On Sunday 31 December 2023, I was out walking along Top Wath Lane in Nidderdale which is just above Pateley Bridge. At approx 11:45 am, a white Fiat Panda passed me and went over the brow of a hill. As I got up to the brow of the hill I noticed that the car had stopped and an older looking man was carrying a plastic bag to the side of the road where he shook the bag over a dry stone wall. He then got in the car and drove off. I was quite a distance from the car but when I got to the spot where I thought the man had dumped something, I looked over the dry stone wall and sure enough there were three dead pheasants.
This is not in the league of 100+ Pheasants but nevertheless it is an incident of Pheasants having been dumped. I have thought about this incident and I suppose it is possible that someone gave these birds to someone else who did not want them or, it could be that a shoot asked a number of its ‘followers’ to each dump just a few birds far and wide. We will never know.
From my experience it will probably not be the latter. It would be a significant faux pas for anyone – be it Guns, keepers or beaters to even float the idea after a shoot that there is potentially a problem with what to do with shot birds. Admitting outwardly (or inwardly) that this is an activity generating an unwanted surplus of often questionable quality/ damaged meat, would knock out one of the key pillars of the whole shooting world belief system – that everything done is for the best, is traditional, is sustainable, is defensible on the grounds that good food is produced, is “good for the countryside”, etc, etc. Small numbers of birds as you describe are often “generously” offered / thrust upon beaters and helpers, many of whom may feel it is bad manners to refuse but really don’t want them.