Another week, and yet another example of shot gamebirds being dumped and discarded in the countryside, this time in the Scottish Borders.
According to this BBC article, on Tuesday morning dog walkers and ramblers found the corpses of ‘about 20 pheasants and a number of ducks’ that had been dumped in a moorland car park above Lauder.
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.
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) more in Cheshire (here) and some in Cumbria (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 
Maybe Rachael Hamilton’s pub could use them in the kitchen? It’s only a few miles away.
have these birds been contaminated with poison?
[Ed: Unlikely, Andrew. This isn’t the usual MO of the raptor poisoner, which these days is typically (although not always!) discreet and well away from the eyes of high volume public traffic]
“have these birds been contaminated with poison?”
Lead is a poison. Would you eat them?
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poisoning-and-health
Why do some people automatically assume that they have been laced with poison? Also why is a a raptor persecution group getting involved with this,
Because it emphasises the mentality of the shooting fraternity.
Aye, what a cheek – people who are interested in one shitty thing that the shooting industry does (raptor persecution), also being interested in other shitty things that the shooting industry does (such as over-producing farmed game to be shot, a significant amount of which is not wanted and is dumped).
If only there were many, many, many posts on a blog such as this which highlight the linkages between the shooting industry and industrial scale persecution of raptors…
If only there were many, many, many posts on a blog such as this highlighting the widespread use of poisoned bait in killing raptors, often using illegally held chemicals being used outside the scope of what they were ever intended for, again often associated with shooting estates…
If only someone like Guy Shrubsole had a website which allows one to found locations of shooting estates, so one can spot geographical patterns of raptor deaths and how close they might be to a shooting estate…
If only such things existed and one could readily find such information…If only…
What was the point in shooting them , these idiots have no intention of consuming them.They must get a kick out of killing wildlife for fun.
Should’ve thrown them straight out on the A68, nobody would have noticed them among the roadkill. First mile heading north out of Lauder is littered with scores of run over pheasant and partridge at certain times of year.