Matt Cross, p66
For many people, shooting is a traditional part of rural life, but it has attracted much controversy in recent years. Matt Cross reveals his life-long passion for hunting, while calling for a more accountable shooting culture
“We have shot pests based on our own experience and personal judgement and not on the science of wildlife management.”
Every family has its stories that have become folklore. Mine has a tale from the mid-1980s, when my father was working as a shepherd in Northumberland. My brothers and I had been out hunting rats and, as we were walking home, my oldest brother was firing his spare catapult stones into the sky when suddenly a crow flopped dead in front of us. He had knocked it clean out of the sky.
We were pleased with ourselves; crows were rightly thought of as a threat to lambs and killing them was an act of merit. That killing crows could ever become illegal would have seemed absurd to us then.
My dad lost his shepherding job a few years later and we were herded into town, so for several years my opportunity to hunt was lost. That changed when a friend’s family bought a farm. At first, we prowled with an air rifle, hunting rabbits on breezy evenings. Then he got a ‘proper’ rifle, and we shot rabbits at night with a lamp and took long shots at canny crows. We ate a lot of rabbits and fed the skins to sheep dogs who devoured them with gruesome glee.
The progression to stalking deer came naturally. The deep appeal of stalking is that the stalker is not an observer of nature – he or she is a participant in it. Humans hunting and killing deer is an ancient and natural thing. We have evolved to hunt them, and they have evolved to avoid us. Their extraordinary senses of hearing and smell mean to stalk a deer that’s unaware of your presence requires every sense to be tuned to the task. The stalker is a living part of the forest.
Last October, I stalked into the roar of a rutting stag. Moving as silently as I could through a sodden spruce forest. Pausing to take a bearing on the sound. Stopping to feel the wind and fighting down the excitement when the stag’s mating reek filtered through the trees. That deer escaped me; I stalked too close for my rifle scope to focus and as I tried to resolve the brown mass, it saw me and disappeared into the trees. The next day, a four-hour dance with the wind brought a friend and I up on another deer. His crashing shot killed her where she stood and I dragged her to the roadside.
I love stalking but, in terms of hours spent hunting, I am a pest shooter. I still shoot rabbits and, when asked, I roll up a sheepskin, put crow decoys beside it and, if the crows come to investigate, I shoot them. Stalking and pest shooting are very different worlds. Deer stalking has been modernised, but kept its primeval appeal. All deer that are shot are now recorded, populations are assessed, professional deer managers conduct herbivore impact assessments to set their cull targets
“As a stalker, you are not an observer of nature. You are a participant in it”
and even recreational stalkers hold formal qualifications. Pest shooting has not kept up.
WHERE IS THE RESEARCH?
This spring’s withdrawal of the general licences [since reinstated; see box below] focused attention on pestshooting’s deficiencies. I live in livestock farming country in Scotland where crows are our main pest bird. I shoot them because they kill lambs and cut a swathe through groundnesting birds. I know this, but there is no science to prove it and it seems like a stretch to expect you to take my word for it.
Arable farmers know wood pigeons are significant pests, but since the 1980s no one has quantified the damage they do. There is also little science to prove that shooting pigeons helps reduce damage. We do not even know how many crows or pigeons are shot annually, by who, or why. We have shot pests based on our own experience and personal judgement, not on the science of wildlife management. If we can’t develop a more professional and accountable way of managing the nation’s wildlife, I wonder how much longer the public will let us do it.
While the revocation of the general licences shone a light on pest shooting, driven shooting has long been a source of controversy. On driven shoots, beaters flush birds – normally partridges, pheasants or grouse – from under cover and over a line of ‘guns’ who do the shooting. For all its flaws, I love driven shooting. I only shoot driven birds a couple of times a year, but I do a lot of beating. The joys of beating are rough ones: clattering around on the roof of an all-terrain vehicle, scaling steep slopes, getting tangled up in the brambles and, above all, working a keen dog on hard ground.
The joy of shooting is different. Whatever anyone may say, shooting erratic, fast-flying driven pheasants is difficult. There is something satisfying about success in any difficult task and shooting is no different, except that it has the additional joy of providing delicious food. A good shot, a good retrieve by a dog and a good meal form a perfect triangle.
A CALL FOR CHANGE
Driven shooting has brought problems on itself; a boom in ‘big bag’ days where hundreds of birds are shot, and a slide in demand for shot game has led to some shoots dumping dead birds. The immorality of killing birds and throwing them in holes is clear and the practice must end. But, like bird-ofprey persecution, which blights grouse shooting, these practices are far from universal. I have seen many occasions where those involved in the shoot have taken every bird shot for their own tables. More often, the birds go to game dealers for export to the continent. Driven shooting is also one of the very few land uses that makes certain wildlife-rich habitats, such as open scrub, bog and heather moorland, pay their way. The countryside is richer and more diverse for its presence.
What lies ahead for shooting is uncertain. The withdrawal of the general licences shocked many shooters; overnight, things we had done since childhood become illegal. For me, it was a sign that shooting culture needs to change. We need to expect to be held to account for how we manage the nation’s land and wildlife, and to justify our decisions with evidence. For better or worse, the days when we could casually knock crows out of the sky with catapult stones are ending. CF
• In next month’s issue, we look at the impact of pheasant rearing and shooting on native wildlife.
“Driven shooting makes the countryside richer and more diverse”