It’s another gamebird shooting season and that means shot Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges being illegally dumped (fly-tipped) by the side of a road.
Thanks to the blog reader who alerted me to the latest incident, posted a few days ago on Facebook – a pile of shot Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges found dumped just off Bellwood Road in Penicuik, south Scotland.
It’s likely these birds were given to a shoot participant to take home and he/she decided to dump them instead because they couldn’t be arsed to prepare them for cooking and besides, they’d already served their purpose as live targets shot for entertainment.
Regular blog readers will know that the dumping of shot gamebirds is a common and widespread illegal practice that has been going on for years, despite the repeated denials by the shooting industry. Who else do they think is doing this if not the people involved in gamebird shooting?! 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), some in Cumbria (here), some more in the Scottish Borders (here) and again in Lincolnshire (here), in Nottinghamshire (here) and even more in Lincolnshire (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).
Obviously, it’s irresponsible (and illegal) to dump shot gamebirds at any time but especially so when the UK Government (and the Scottish and Welsh Governments) has declared a nationwide Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (AIPZ) due to the heightened risk of the spread of highly pathogenic Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) amongst captive and wild birds.
These declarations make it a legal requirement for all bird keepers to follow strict and enhanced biosecurity measures to help protect their flocks from the threat of Avian Influenza. In some areas, the risk is considered so severe that mandatory housing measures have also been declared.
I’m sure this won’t be the last example of the thoughtless, feckless and unaccountable actions of the gamebird shooting industry this season, who yet again do what they like, when they like and to hell with the consequences because there aren’t any.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Well what a surprise not. Hateful people, hateful practice. Sooner it’s outlawed and these people are left jobless and I hope destitute the better.
All these people care about is the momentary thrill of slaughtering birds, whose one wish was simply to stay alive. The indignity they display for life shows precisely who they are, sadly without identifying them personally. Were I religious I’d state that they are all going straight to hell, but in any case I hope whoever regards living creatures as entertainment fit only to kill then to dump post slaughter, has an unpleasant existence and an equally horrific end. Sorry about that.!
The perpetuation of these horrible stories, fifteen months into the lifetime of a Labour government that promised us “change”, does make me wonder if the UK is really incorrigible and destined to remain a quaint semi feudal relic for all time.
i know that sounds a bit ferocious, but there’s so much wrong with all of this. Animal cruelty, environmental waste disposal abuses, potential road hazards from excessive pheasant releases…you name it, driven shooting produces it
Keir Starmer, we know that you don’t give a damn about wildlife. But please humour us. Just ban driven shooting. It can’t possibly lose you any votes, and it might just save some for you.
Simple. If you don’t eat it don’t kill it. As a hunter (who refuses to shoot driven game) I take pride in eating everything I kill, with certain exceptions; I find rats not to my taste!
Your comments as usual saying what all the site users feel it’s upsetting and unnecessary and unacceptable like said cruel environment issues not to mention bird flu on the rise FFS just ban this awful outdated goings on including hunting not acceptable.
If you follow some of the YT shooting channels that film actual shoot days, you will often see the star of the show and the keeper(s) and/or the shoot owner/manager standing around – sometimes next to the game cart – doing a little chat-piece for the camera. And sometimes you will hear this said in one form or another “we eat what we shoot and that is why we can justify it”. Well, perhaps they are referring only to the particular shoot that they are videoing that day. They must be – because otherwise they would be talking total undeniable bullshit.
ps how many more – pelleted by arseholes who think that filling the sky with lead is good enough because some birds come down every few shots – are making their own way to the backs of hedges and are settling down there in deep cover to quietly die overnight? At this point in the season having had a few weekends of action, there are always a few hop-alongs (limping pheasants), that you see looking forlorn at the feeders or if you are a beater limping away (rather than flying) in a (blackly) comic fashion ahead of the beating line. No experienced beater can honestly say that this isn’t so on a commercial shoot of any fair size.
Studies are rightly done on the humaneness or not of traps and snares on their catches of “pest & predator” species But there aren’t many studies that spring to mind done on the ratios of killing to wounding (and on the aggregate of suffering) of the tens of millions of birds that are shot at with shotguns. Funny, that.
The monarchy bears responsibility as the ones who created this horrendous activity in the first place. They should be the ones to bring it to an end, which if by their disapproval it would no longer be fashionable.