Has bird flu done our sport a favour?

We all know that in recent years there has been increasing scrutiny from our opponents about the number of pheasants and partridges released for shooting in the UK. Justifying the release of 50 or even 60 million birds is close to impossible when there is little or no market for the birds that are shot. Perhaps bird flu has done us a big favour, as it will certainly lead to a huge reduction in the number of birds released, which will inevitably lead to

surely a cause for real concern. The thought that part of this is down to misuse of rat bait by an irresponsible or reckless minority is very worrying too, and we should all be prepared to challenge bad practice if we see it. As we start to feed our game away from the pens over the next few weeks, now is the time to think hard about our feeding practices, and how we can minimise the support we inadvertently give to rats.

Making sure that food scattered on the ground is cleared up before dark, using rat-proof hoppers and regularly moving them, and choosing smaller bags, possibly even restoring the market for game (though, of course, shot with non-lead cartridges). It might also lead to more people discovering the satisfaction of small days, where the enjoyment of the sport is measured in the quality of the shooting, not the quantity. Looking back on a lifetime of shooting, my most enjoyable days were spent hedgerow hunting for pheasants with a couple of companions and several spaniels. I shudder whenever I hear mention of the shooting industry. The industrialisation of our sport has not done it any favours. Tom Howard, Suffolk maize varieties that fail to ripen cobs are all ways to minimise the way we support rats, and therefore the amount of poison that we need to use.

Gamekeepers and shoot managers have come a long way over this in the past decade, but we must get better.

Mike Swan, by email

fisherman and a visit to see him at Sheringham was one of the highlights of the school holidays in the 1980s. We’d always come home laden with a few jars of honey and pickled samphire, all produced by uncle Arthur and his wife Connie. (Few coastal farms failed to have a ‘pickled samphire for sale’ sign on their gate posts.) The honey would often be dark, apparently due to the bees feeding on bracken while the pickled samphire gave uncle something to glean during the summer

months while his magnum 12-bore was redundant.

Unfortunately the supply of samphire came to an abrupt end in the mid-1980s, about the same time as Con and Arthur regretfully sold their shrimping gear. The overflow pipe that could be seen dribbling ‘waste water’ into the sea caused a lot of unsavoury sanitary items to be littering the shallows and creeks where my greatuncle had previously gathered samphire and caught shrimps. According to recent local news

Shooting should be about quality not quantity