I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard that gamebird shooting, whether it be Red Grouse, Pheasant or Red-legged Partridge shooting, and all its associated ‘management’ is vital for rural community cohesion and it’s only so-called ‘Townies’ that don’t understand and want to protest about it.
As with most things claimed by the gamebird shooting industry, it’s not true.
Over recent years a number of local rural communities in England (particularly across Yorkshire) and Scotland have rejected this fictional romanticism of their lives and have found the courage, often in the face of intimidation from dark powerful forces, to voice their dissent.
Now it’s happening in Wales, too.
The following article was published by The Telegraph last week:
A village is locked in dispute with wealthy tourists who pay more than £3,000 for a day’s pheasant shooting.
Residents in Pennal, a community of 404 in Snowdonia, North Wales, claim the shoots have set “neighbour against neighbour”, and led to claims of intimidation and harassment.
Some villagers have even complained of dead foxes dumped in their gardens.
But others, who support shooting, said “incomers” to the village were behind the complaints, and told them to “move back to where they came from” if they don’t like it.
The shoots, run by Cambrian Birds on the Pennal Estate, are marketed as “the most talked-about in the UK” for their “high-quality driven pheasants and partridges along with top class hospitality”.
Guests are promised at least four drives a day, and a two-course meal or afternoon tea.
But an anonymous survey in the village uncovered anger at what some locals see as a “takeover” by “large commercial shoots”.
One resident said: “Disharmony and division within our once peaceful village. Most people I speak to in the village hate what’s happening but are afraid to publicly voice their concerns for fear of retribution or escalating the division further.
“These fears are evident in that a local lady in her seventies living alone has now had two healthy looking but dead foxes put in her garden with loud bangs on her windows in the night. Police were informed, but little action.”
Another villager said there had been “no consultation with village residents” before it was “taken over”.
The same resident complained of “acts of intimidation towards people who speak up”, alleging there had been “shooting across gardens late at night” and even “dead foxes dumped on one person’s land”.
It is not known who is behind these alleged “acts of intimidation”.
Other residents said they felt pressured to take sides.
“Several residents asked me to declare whether I was with or against the shooting,” complained one, adding: “One person even told me who I should talk to and who not.”
They claimed that some villagers were now considering “moving away” as a result of the disputes.
But supporters argued the shoots bring vital income to the rural economy, and accused critics of being “incomers”, and part of the “anti-shooting brigade”.
A lifelong resident, who described themselves as “Pennal born and bred”, said: “Cambrian Birds pays a decent rent to the hill farmers of Pennal, helping in many cases, young families to stay and work the land. Young families move into the area, helping the local school.”
The resident said that if the “anti-shooting brigade” didn’t like it they should “move back to where they came from”.
They likened it to “buying a house next door to a pub and then complaining about the noise of throwing-out time”.
Cambrian Birds has been approached for comment.
ENDS
The Telegraph article was likely inspired by an article in Cambrian News on 23 July 2025 about a village protest held against the Cambrian Birds shoot at Pennal.
This isn’t the villagers’ first protest against Cambrian Bird’s game-rearing and shooting business. In January this year they featured in an article in the Powys County Times about how they’d erected banners and sprayed ‘crime-scene’-type silhouettes of Pheasants on village roads as part of their protest:
Some of you may recognise the name ‘Cambrian Birds’. Its associated business, ‘Cambrian Shooting’, hit the headlines in January 2022 when the League Against Cruel Sports published covert video footage showing someone from the shoot at Dyfi Falls (one of six shoots managed by Cambrian Sporting) chucking at least 45 shot Pheasant and Red-legged Partridge carcasses down a mineshaft (here).
A statement from the company later confirmed that the person filmed was one of their gamekeepers. They said he had been ‘severely reprimanded‘ and that ‘he no longer works for the company‘ (here).
Natural Resources Wales launched an investigation into the possible pollution and contamination of the river close to the site where the mass gamebird dumping took place but as far as I can tell, nothing ever came of it.
To read more about the Dyfi Falls shoot, this blog by Jeremy Moore, a leading Welsh environmental photographer, is fascinating.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Just to correct you on one point, Ruth, the pheasant carcasses were thrown down a mineshaft.
And just to remind readers what xxxxx xxxxx get up to, back in November 2020, a protest against the “Dyfi Falls ” shoot was organised in the Llyfnant Valley, and I went along to photograph it. When I returned to my van, parked at the end of the public road, I found two of my tyres had been slashed.
[Ed: Thanks, Jeremy, will amend the blog]
I simply don’t understand why Starmer & Co won’t get a bill banning driven shooting into Parliament. No sane Tory would die in that ditch.
It’s a thoroughly archaic and environmentally destructive “sport”. Anyone who has seen gormless pheasant poults waddling through the countryside in late summer, completely devoid of any innate fear of humans, knows that the activity is about as sporting as Real Madrid playing a team of amputees
We always said that beaters were employed to drive the birds away from the guns because the birds, seeing humans, ran towards them, expecting to be fed
How appalling that the villagers are subject to abhorrent treatment but these driven grouse shooters are vermin and it should be banned all your comments hit the nail on the head.
Total sympathy wirh this village.Needs to be documented/collated as this is happening all over the country.Our village has been subjected to a similar ‘enterprise’.Thousands of pheasants and hundreds of ducks introduced into a small valley. No consultation with residents who live very close to the shooting and no consideration to the ecological impact.It has changed the whole life of our hamlet and indeed, some have moved away because of the impact on their lives.We have been pursuing every avenue and will continue to do so.It may be legal but it is morally wrong and intolerable.