Not intending to give it a go, but need to try and settle some office debate!!!

Some current work activities are close to grouse moors and the keepers don’t want any disturbance – which is fair enough. However, some of the figures we’ve heard about the cost of a day’s shooting range from stupidly expensive to just plain stupid…

Any thoughts from the STW hive?

for the ‘best’ moors well into the thousands per gun for a driven day, low hundreds per gun for a walked up day

http://www.rottalestates.com/grouse-shooting/

£150 + VAT (so £180) per brace for expected bag of 50-60 brace, so £9k to £10,800 for the day divided by 10 guns.

£900 to £1,080 each.

Anywhere between £500 and £5000 a peg. But on average I’d expect between £900 and £1200

Look up Chris packham grouse video on Google and watch the video, then add that to the cost…
I walk on grouse moors and see the sterile managed land and the gin traps.

OP the estate has to recover a seasons costs in a very short window. As above a few hundred to many thousands. My shooting was never good enough to justify grouse but I did look into it. Given the cost of getting up the a venue and probably 2 nights accommodation it was certainly an expensive excersize, which does show the money it puts into the local economy.

http://www.chrispackham.co.uk/news/the-real-price-of-grouse-traps

Depends whether driven or walked. Driven varies dramatically and the best estates can cost up to 100k for 10 guns (with accommodation etc). Cost example at different estates linked below.

Availability

I have shot walked grouse for £30 a brace but on average its about £100.

Out of interest the National Trust have just terminated the Grouse shooting licence in Hope and Park Hall Hayfield due to miss management on the moors mainly due to the Hen Harrier.

Out of interest the National Trust have just terminated the Grouse shooting licence in Hope and Park Hall Hayfield due to miss management on the moors mainly due to the Hen Harrier.

Mainly due to the Hen Harrier doing what? Being there?

Or not, as the implication seems to be.

National Trust pulls grouse shooting lease in Peak District National Park

The lease isn’t pulled yet: the NT have said it will stop at the half-way review point in April next year. Their tenants are expected to understand this (a big read)…

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/kinder-edale-and-the-dark-peak/documents/the-high-peak-moors-vision.pdf

OP the estate has to recover a seasons costs in a very short window. As above a few hundred to many thousands. My shooting was never good enough to justify grouse but I did look into it. Given the cost of getting up the a venue and probably 2 nights accommodation it was certainly an expensive excersize, which does show the money it puts into the local economy.

Local economy benefits have been proved to be minimal at best. If anyone is interested, I’d suggest reading inglorious by Mark Avery.

+1 to Inglorious – worth a read.

Chris Packham.. ?

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TXtL2ezwUM[/video]

Grouse moors are subsidised by the state at about (I think) £56 /ha. Nice Mr Osborne increased it a couple of years ago. This goes to the landlord, and the benefits to the local economy are minimal.
Maintenance of moorland for grouse, in particular drainage, is shown to greatly increase downstream flooding, so poor old us pay a second time. Thanks, guys.

My position was neither for or against…

I do shoot, but too tight to pay 😉

I can immediately see the cause of our office argument – price per shoot vs price per gun

Duck shoot?

A lot of the moors would have been given over to grazing long ago if it weren’t for the shoots. So flooding would have been significantly worse and the peat lost forever.

I’m not against shooting as the Grouse, Pheasants, Partridge etc all get used/consumed while providing sport & income to some but what boils my water to the extreme is when raptors like your Hen Harriers/Buzzards etc are persecuted by landowners & gamekeepers,
I’m also a sea angler & have caught many a mackerels head due to Sammy the bloody seal nicking the rest, but do I think I should be persecuting seals? No.

Twenty years ago it was £2500 for a days shoot with a brace over The Duke of Devonshire’s land surrounding Bolton Abbey. Or, if you may, buy the barman at The Devonshire Arms a couple of pints, find out when the next shoot is and sit on the other side of the wall adjoining his land as none of them would hit a barn door at ten yards 🙂

It’s a toffs sport, subsidised by the taxpaying plebs, causes more ecological damage than any benefits. All too often those involved in running the estates get away with murder. Selfish scumbags really.

I’d suggest reading inglorious by Mark Avery.

You mean long term class war warrior, League Against Cruel Sports member Mark Avery?

Yeah, theres an impartial source of information if ever there was one 🙄

I walk on grouse moors and see the sterile managed land and the gin traps.

Which side of this road do you think has greatest biodiversity? The grouse moor or the grazing?

as for you having found Gin traps? Chinny reckon 😉

Maintenance of moorland for grouse, in particular drainage, is shown to greatly increase downstream flooding,

The drainage was put in because from the 1950’s to the 1980’s the government were giving moorland owners grants to do it, primarily to improve grazing, back in the days when the CAP was throwing money at farmers to produce as much as possible.

You mean long term class war warrior, League Against Cruel Sports member Mark Avery?

You missed the 25 years at the RSPB as head of Science Dept and 13 years as Conservation Director. Are RSPB renowned for class war?

Don’t be posting facts Dave it’s not fair on the hard of thinking.

http://markavery.info/2015/09/03/drop/

He’s been a member of LACS for less than a year.

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/crime/video-these-barbaric-pole-traps-banned-for-over-a-century-were-discovered-on-dales-grouse-shooting-estate-1-7943979

Not so chinny reckon

If it was anyone else I’d engage, but it’s ninfan….

None of it is natural, and draining moors into valleys causing the occasional flood so some rich people can shoot what are essentially chickens, is not helping the issue.

Just buy a chicken and a shot gun and shoot it, if that’s what you get off on.

Strange eh Dave, All those years wearing a mask of supposed impartiality due to your Job, (RSPB are officially neutral on the issue) then shortly after you leave admitting you support LACS and trying to ban things…

Not so chinny reckon

Thats not a Gin trap 🙄

@ essel – I’ve reeled in the head of a barracuda a few times. I blamed the sharks.

Thats not a Gin trap

Cool so you’re hung up on trap ID, rather than that trapping happens on grouse moors.

RSPB are officially neutral on the issue

“growing evidence of the environmental impact of ever intensive driven grouse shooting led us in 2012 to conclude that self-regulation of this industry had failed and so we would advocate a licensing system designed to reduce the negative impacts.”

“We focus our efforts on the environmental damage caused by grouse shooting: the peatlands that are damaged by burning, the water that is polluted, the predators that are illegal killed. We believe that a licensing system, a reformed approach to consenting burning on peatlands, restoration of these special sites coupled with better enforcement and tougher penalties for wildlife crime can address these issues.”

http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/ourwork/b/martinharper/archive/2016/05/02/the-rspb-and-grouse-shooting.aspx

@ essel – I’ve reeled in the head of a barracuda a few times. I blamed the sharks.

I feel your pain! (even though I often get 4-6 Macky at a time) Never had the pleasure of a Baccaruda though!

I have rarely met someone from the countryside who is against field sports. The vast majority of anti’s I have met are either townies or “class warriors” or usually both. The countryside doesn’t look after itself, there has to be a reason to manage it.

RSPB Charter:

The Society shall take no part in the question of the killing of game birds and legitimate sport of that character except when such practices have an impact on the Objects.

Or, as Martin Harper wrote on the very same blog you quoted, (but decided not to cut and paste this bit)

We are also neutral on the ethics of shooting but we do care about the environmental consequences of that activity.

So, yes, RSPB are officially neutral on the issue

Want to dig any more holes for yourself, Dave, because so far, you’ve not actually tried to debate any of the issues or discuss any of the points made 😕

Maybe you’ll come back with something intelligent and discuss whether moorland drainage grants were a good thing or a bad thing? or what the pattern of sheep stocking densities has been over the years? or maybe you’ll ask questions over the huge project of grip blocking that most grouse moor owners have been doing for years (not least because the resultant bog flushes provide tots of tasty snacks for grouse)

Maybe you’ll even look at that photo above and tell me which side of the road you think has the greatest biodiversity? Go on Dave, if you want to debate the issues, I’m more than happy to do that.

The RSPB recently pulled out of Defra’s Hen Harrier Plan…

http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/ourwork/b/martinharper/archive/2016/07/25/withdrawal-from-the-hhap.aspx

One para, to get you interested – Some will argue that the weather or vole population is to blame, however, early returns from the national hen harrier survey suggest numbers away from intensively managed grouse moors in north and west Scotland have done ok. We remain convinced that the primary reason for the hen harrier‘s continuing scarcity remains illegal killing.

Chinny reckon

Are you 12? I used to say that when I was 12.

Do you slap your chin when you say it? I used to when I was a child.

As for the Grouse… Round here the Bolton Abbey estate seems to charge loads and take plenty of subsidies to not provide an awful lot to the local communities. Oh, and they get sniffy if you take your dog on the moors.

Fenn traps, not gin traps; quite right there ninfan, for a change…

I have rarely met someone from the countryside who is against field sports. The vast majority of anti’s I have met are either townies or “class warriors” or usually both. The countryside doesn’t look after itself, there has to be a reason to manage it.

I’m a countryman at heart & the only field ‘sport’ I’m against is foxhunting, but that’s another subject. The persecution of raptors in the Grouse & Pheasant business (as that’s all it is) really pisses me off. Proper. 👿

Round here the Bolton Abbey estate seems to charge loads and take plenty of subsidies to not provide an awful lot to the local communities. Oh, and they get sniffy if you take your dog on the moors.

They get arsey if you try to ride a bike up over Simons Seat as well. 😉

They’d be taking subsidy whether there was shooting on the moors or not. Most are SSSI and hence funded via environmental stewardship scheme, whether they’re achieving the objectives of the schemes fully is up for debate