FISHING & SHOOTING
To Moy – the best little annual field sports fair in the Highlands – where I lunch off whisky and Taste of Game crisps in two flavours – Smoked Pheasant and Wild Mushroom and Grouse and Whinberry – a brilliant wheeze (the crisps not the whisky) dreamed up by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation to turn a bob and spread the word. It’s hard to understand why no one has produced game crisps before.
I try to flog local MSP and tourism minister Fergus Ewing a copy of Robertson’s Guide to Field Sports in Scotland only to discover I fleeced him for a tenner last year.
It transpires there was to have been the official announcement at the show of a new initiative designed to encourage hotels and B&BS to be a little more field sports friendly. Apparently, accommodation providers are losing out by not being flexible on meal times for shooters and fishers, or providing space to store and dry clobber. Catering for all year round roe deer stalkers has to be one way of extending the tourist
I had grouse and whinberry crisps
season. But the announcement has been deferred thanks to the long shadow of Cecil the lion. I suppose that was sensible, even though Cecil was shot with a bow and arrow in Africa by an American. But Visitscotland is feeling fragile after a kicking from the antis for putting blameless Scottish big game hunter Peter Swales on their website. Interestingly the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has so far resisted letting the bow-hunting fraternity take a stand at the annual Scone Game Fair. It’s a tricky one. Once you accept the legitimacy of killing an animal, the method, unless particularly unpleasant, becomes a bit academic. And I am assured modern hunting arrows will bring down anything (apart from Cecil) but I can’t say I feel any happier about it.
My favourite stand of the day turned out to be the Scottish Wildcat Action Plan, complete with stuffed wildcat. Cats and keepers don’t really mix, especially when skulking around pheasant or partridge pens. But now keepers and rural types are keeping an eye out for animals with wildcat markings which can be trapped, checked for wildcat DNA and if they pass, translocated to one of half a dozen wildcat hot spots around Scotland. There they have a better chance of meeting a member of the opposite sex (in contrast to the RSPB which disapproves of translocating threatened baby birds of prey, lest it looks as if they have given up the fight against illegal killing. Can’t they do both?)
On the cat front it seems bonkers to be talking about reintroducing lynx before we have saved the rare native cats we already have. But there you go. I am off to buy a webcam.
www.scottishwildcats.co.uk