Inglorious 12th?

Subject: Inglorious 12th?
From: Fiolar
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 05:33 AM

Once more the time when hordes of characters with shotguns will start blasting away at innocent grouse has come around. This year as the "glorious 12th" fell on a Sunday, the slaughter begins today. As one Guardian correspondent puts it "slaughtering airborne innocents - bursting above the moorland butts like exploding pillows." The late George VI is credited together with five other "guns" at Sandringham with dispatching 10,000 bird in four days. The mind boggles. Songs which may be suitable for the occasion might be "Shoot 'Em Down"; "Shoot on Sight"; "Shoot to Kill"; "The Bird Up There"; "Gun Crazy" and "Gunsmoke."

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Cappuccino
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 06:33 AM

Something to grouse about, so to speak.

But I agree.

- ianB

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 07:10 AM

You are aware of course that if grouse and grouse moors were not maintained and managed for this purpose, the grouse would be an extinct species by now.

Murray

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 08:13 AM

Don't confuse them with facts Murray, their minds are made up. Lot of shooting 10,000 birds in four days; I wonder how long it took to heal the bruises? Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Fiolar
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 10:00 AM

Really Murray? News to me. I suppose that the same thing could be said about all the wild life that has been made extinct over the last hundred years. A good days shooting is all they needed to ensure that they did not become extinct. By the way killing 10,000 birds needs an awful lot of work. I reckon six guns over four days working say 8 hours a day with say two hours for meals (royalty after all) that's 24 hours. It works out about one bird every 7 seconds.That's some going. Still we must think of the cartridge makers who must have made a fortune.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: sledge
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 10:55 AM

It strikes me as a bit arse about face that we put so much effort into protecting a spiecies just so the well off can kill them en-masse later, or am I missing the point.

Sledge, who is not in favour of killing for fun, sport, whatever you want to call it.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 12:00 PM

It seems kind of silly to me but I don't want to get too embroiled neing a Yankee. I can see taking a grouse or two to feed the family (More so if you're stney broke) but 10,000 seems just a bit excessive. I'm not saying that you're position of the hunt saving the species is wrong, Murray I just wonder about it. It strikes me of the same logic used in Vietnam where one of our officers stated "We had to destroy the village to save it." Kindest reguards, Neil

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Stewart
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 12:40 PM

This brings to mind Zeke Hoskin's song, "Hunting the Duck." "This song makes fun of a whole generation of lets-go-out-and-kill-something hunting ballads." It's on his recording Life is Lethal
HUNTING THE DUCK - Zeke Hoskin

This cramped city life isn't right for a man
We're born to live free and to kill what we can
So it's off to the country, where the air's fresh and clear
With a carton of ciggies and twelve dozen beer

Chorus
So blow the horn loudly and rev up the truck
We're off to the boondocks to murder the duck

We climb in the truck about six-forty-five
And proceed to tank up for the long weary drive
When we get to the cabin, we're all brightly lit
Can't remember who drove and can't tell what we hit

It's up with the dawn, though the coffee's no good
And down to the lake through the dew-spangled wood
When we get to the blind, we're as happy as boys
Till we find out that Harry forgot the decoys

We crouch without moving from sunrise till three
Except every five minutes we stand up and pee
At last! There's a duck, and we fill it with lead
Can't figure who shot it, but the bugger's sure dead

Then it's back to the cabin for whisky and steak
And we talk about women till nearly daybreak
No one believes what the other guys say
But we've got to talk dirty to prove we're not gay

The next day the ducks have gone elsewhere in flocks
So we have to shoot tree trunks and beer cans and rocks
Tom dropped his gun when he fell in the lake
And Dick shot a full can of beer by mistake

Then it's back to the city, refreshed by our sport
Burning gas by the gallon and beer by the quart
We'll have to draw straws to see who has the luck
To pick two pounds of shot out of three pounds of duck.

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 01:35 PM

Do they eat the grouse kill? If so I think it is ok. I have no problem with anyone killing animals for food, (I have worked in a few abbatoirs, including one of the biggest ones in the UK, we used to kill about 5 thousand a day). If they kill just for fun then that is bad, there are plenty of clay pigeon shooting grounds around.john

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 02:03 PM

Every grouse shot gets eaten John. It is mostly served in upmarket restaurants.

Having spent my childhood in grouse moor country, I have eaten grouse in my time, and as a delicacy it is way overrated.

Stewart, I LOVE that song !

Murray

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 02:07 PM

Thanks for the info Murray, In that case I can't see what the fuss is about.john

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 03:18 PM

What the fuss is about is basically a class issue. Unlike campaigns to save whales and elephants, and other endangered species, where the welfare and continued survival of the species is the prime motivating force, opposition to foxhunting and grouse shooting is fuelled largely by the intense dislike many of the British working class harbour against the English upper class.

Since these "sports" are the exclusive preserve of the "nobs" then they provide a useful target to home in on in order to vent ones spleen.

I don't have any particular objection to field sports, nor do I have any antagonism towards those who are anti-field sports. I know how infuriating the behaviour of some "Hooray Henry's" can be, and can empathise with those who dislike the upper classes.

However I think it is important to be honest about one's true motivation concerning this issue.

Murray

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: GUEST,Charlie
Date: 13 Aug 01 - 09:34 PM

And what about the poor fish then? How would you like to be dragged up into the air by a bloody great hook through your lip? Sport? I don't think so !! At least you can eat the grouse, but who eats the fish that anglers catch? No-one. They're damned unedible for the most part anyway.
Charlie

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 01:26 AM

As I said earlier I have worked in a few abbatoirs, at the time I used to get so much hassle about this ("How can you do that job? You are cruel etc etc") that I stopped telling people what I did for a living.I tried to explain that I am not cruel, I am just trying to earn a living, and that I like animals, it was pointless so I just gave up, and started telling people I was a dustman (garbage collector).john

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: catspaw49
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 01:41 AM

15 hours of hunting per day for six guys in four days comes out to about one bird every two minutes per man (round figure).

Screw the morality and all of those issues.......That's just ridiculous! Can anyone spell gluttony? How about wretched excess? How about deep shoulder bruising?

Some serious dumbass shit.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: DougR
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 01:54 AM

John: what the hell is an abbatoir? Is that like a slaughter house in the U. S.?

DougR

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 02:10 AM

Yes abbatoir=slaughterhouse.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 06:30 AM

I agree, Spaw, 10.00 birds is excessive. But, the point I am trying to make is that the British upper classes, love 'em or hate'em, do not hunt their domestic game to the point of extinction.

Not like some other countries I could mention .....

Murray

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Fiolar
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 07:05 AM

I think that given a choice (if I was grouse) between extinction and being blown out of the sky with a load of buckshot up my fundament, I think I'd prefer extinction. As for the 10,000 birds being killed, I do not for one minute suppose that they were eaten. Killing for food as already mentioned is a bit different from killing for sport. In the same Guardian article of yesterday, the present queen mother on a visit to Kenya in 1924 for one outing logged "a rhinocerous, buffalo, water buck, oryx, Grant Gazelle, dikdik, hartebeast, steinbock, water-hog and jackal." She has presented her rifle to Prince Charles who still uses it for stag hunting. Those were the days, guys. No wishy-washy, namby-pamby environmentalists to spoil your day's massacres of the world's wild life.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 07:18 AM

Fiolar, I am equally certain that all the birds shot in that infamous day's sport WERE in fact eaten. Doled out to the deserving poor of Norfolk, I shouldn't wonder.These birds were pheasants, not grouse, btw, not that that is really relevant.

Given the logistics of the affair, if there were in fact only six guns, I doubt very much that the figure was anything like 10,000. I mean, who was counting? Of such stuff are urban myths made.

Attitudes change as time advances, and much behaviour that was taken for granted and even lauded in 1924 would be seen as indefensible nowadays, (probably even by the perpetrator, if she is still capable of coherent thought)

Murray

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Ringer
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 09:27 AM

Where did this figure of 10,000 birds in 4 days come from, anyway? Contemporary accounts would (I think) have recorded 5,000 brace if the number is correct, so has this figure been told and re-told, copied and re-copied, possibly collecting an extra zero or two on its way?

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Grab
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 11:59 AM

Like Murray says, I'm not sure if the argument is over whether birds should be shot, or if ppl are just upset that it's only the rich doing it. For the record, every deer and every grouse shot gets eaten (assuming the trackers/dogs can find it, of course!). No hunting just for a set of antlers over the mantlepiece! Corn is a crop, and sheep are a crop, and deer are a crop, and grouse are a crop, and farmers do the best they can with the land they have - if they can get more money from the rich by letting them do the culling for them, then fine. I'll agree that class is an issue on the "sport" side, but the end result is that the deer or grouse is dead and ends up cooked on a table.

As far as preferring extinction to shooting animals goes, do you eat any meat Fiolar? I'm sure the individual cows, sheep, chickens, etc would prefer not to be killed, but that's what they were raised for!

Comparisons to previous generations are invalid. We know enough now not to hunt animals to extinction, and various environmental groups are trying to bring this message to the rest of the world. The killer now is not the person who goes out and shoots grouse but the person who buys cod fillets or tins of tuna from the supermarket, thereby supporting the fishermen which are bringing species to extinction to support their individual wages. There is no closed-season on cod, and like the passenger pigeon in the US, everyone just thinks that they're so numerous, it isn't possible to catch them _all_... Meanwhile the Irish-owned "Atlantic Dawn" strip-mines the African coast...

Graham.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Jim Cheydi
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 12:36 PM

Bald Eagle

I believe that a 'brace' has to be made up of one male and one female, so 10,000 birds wouldn't necessarily be 5,000 brace.

JC

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Fiolar
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 12:46 PM

"Irony my dear Watson,irony." In regard to the number killed, it is a fair assumption that the folk who bred the birds for the shooting had to keep detailed records and I am sure that they would have know exactly how many survived the day. In regard to sheep, cows and chickens, I was naive enough to assume that som of them were raised to provide wool, milk and eggs and that not all of them finished up under the knife. I disagree that comparisons with the past are invalid. If we had nothing to compare with, there would be no such thing as making sure things are better now. As for eating the killed birds, I used to work at a psychiatric hospital and every year, some of our long stay patients used to go to the local lord of the manor's estate to take part in "beating." The job was to go in front of the guns and disturb the birds so that they took to the air. Many times they came tired and soaking wet and as I recall not once did one of them ever bring a bird (the feathered variety) back. Most of them refused after the first time but there was always new recruits every year. Thank God that practise has long ceased. As for sport, clay pigeon shooting doesn't hurt anyone.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Ringer
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 05:17 PM

I disagree that comparisons with the past are invalid. If we had nothing to compare with, there would be no such thing as making sure things are better now. Are they better now? "Better" implies a standard of good and bad. What you, with your twenty-first century outlook, regard as good might be the very thing regarded as bad by your great-grandfather.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 05:50 PM

Jim, a "brace" in this context simply means two dead birds irrespective of sex, so 10,000 birds is in fact 5000 brace, whatever their gender.

I imagine this (slightly archaic sounding) usage originated from the fact that most shotguns were twin barrelled and that the object was to bring down two birds with consecutive shots.

Murray

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Gareth
Date: 14 Aug 01 - 06:50 PM

Hmmm ! Guest Charlie obviously has not seen fishing South Wales Style.

2 ounces of Coal Board Shot (Blasting explosives) and a fused detenator in a Jam (Jelly) Jar. With a bit of sand to make it sink.

It brings the Salmon out in best style. sweep the river with your net and run for it before the keeper has you.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Grab
Date: 15 Aug 01 - 10:12 AM

Or it's a good way of distributing one or both of your arms across the scenery, Gareth! :-)

Murray, IIRC game birds (and rabbits) are tied together in pairs for bringing them back, since it's easier to carry them by the string.

Yes Fiolar, things are "better" now, for our generation's standard of "better". Back in 1924 though there was no such concept, so criticising ppl of that time for not behaving as we think they should have, with our 20/20 hindsight, is invalid; the most we can say is that going on safari and shooting anything that moved was not the right thing to do, but they didn't know. And since no-one goes out to shoot endangered species any more (or not without the prospect of being arrested, anyway!), what happened in 1924 is simply no longer relevant - it's like using the air crash statistics of the 1920s to justify not flying on a 747!

Some sheep, cows and chickens are kept for their wool, milk and eggs. Others are kept solely for their meat. IIRC, most sheep are kept for both (ie. they get their wool nicked all year, and then they get killed). Of animals bred for meat, only a few survive to allow next year's batch of animals to be bred.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Gervase
Date: 20 Aug 01 - 08:28 AM

I've been beating many times, and it's not unusual not to get a brace of birds. You do usually get a tenner (at least), a great day out and a darned good lunch.
For those reasons - and because they are passionate about field sports, most beaters, pickers up and other ancilliary bods on shoots do it for the love of it.
And as for 10,000 bird battues, those went out with the Marquis of Ripon and his ilk. Even on an intensively-shot commercial estate today, 800 birds shot in a day by 10 guns would be considered a large bag. On most syndicate, family and co-operative shoots (the majority), you'd be lucky to shoot that many birds in a season. Those figures apply to pheasant and partidge, by the way, not grouse. Most moors in northern England and Scotland post returns in the hundreds rather than the thousands.
As for the ethics of shooting - in my view the birds are another crop. I can respect a vegan's objections to shooting, but anyone who wears any wool or leather or eats any meat can hardly object to the killing of another species with has been allowed to live most of its life in its natural surroundings rather than being reared on some "birdy Belsen" before being eaten. As for milk, wool and eggs - cows 'give' us their milk because we take away their calves - where do they go; when was the last time you saw a shorn sheep being given a funeral; and what happens to chucks when their egg-production declines? The answer to all of those lies on your plate.
To cap it all, unlike your cows, sheep or chickens, the average pheasant has a six out of ten chance of avoiding death at the hands of humans anyway. Most 'keepers will tell you that a 40 per cent bag return on poults is considered average to good, with the rest either living on through the season (and anyone who's been beating will know of the wily buggers that don't fly headlong onto the pegs but prefer to scuttle off on foot or lie low) or falling prey to predators.
Then there's the other wildlife that has the shooting industry to thank for the non-destruction of headlands and the conservation of habitats. The fact is that most land-owners, being greedy buggers, would have uprooted most of their coverts, copses and hedges long ago if it wasn't for the fact that shooting requires them. For that reason, land that is used for sport has a far greater biodiversity than land that isn't. Ask the botanist David Bellamy; he's an enthusiastic advocate for the benefits of properly-managed shooting.
Next time you take a walk through idyllic lowland countryside, remember that it's not nature that has shaped the land thus, it's human beings, and usually those with an eye on the hunting and shooting potential of the land.
Sorry, end of rant, but it does get my goat when people get irate and upset through not knowing the facts.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 20 Aug 01 - 10:27 AM

Murray, Who are you kidding, I noticed a neighbour up the road with a bag of Mallards he had shot that morning on Lough Neagh, he was stuffing them into the Bin. On their unguarded moments I have listened to these morons boast about shooting anything that moves and they are members of the local wildfowl club. I told this bloodthirsty geek "roll on the day when the birds shoot back". sLAN aRD mHACHA.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Gervase
Date: 20 Aug 01 - 12:05 PM

ard mhacha - you should report tossers like your local fowler to the wildfowling club and, if you get no joy from them, to the BASC, the umbrella group for shoowing in the UK and NI. They're here and take a dim view of such irresponsible behaviour.
As a fowler myself, I find that sort of behaviour disgusting.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 20 Aug 01 - 01:10 PM

Gervase,Believe me he IS not on his own and as for reporting him or the rest of his henchemen, no way, you see the word informer in this neck of the woods still bears the Judas scar. What I asm telling you is true, a few years ago one of these punks shot a Yellow Bittern, this bird is now pratically eliminated from this distict. My loathing of these people stems from some of the sights I have seen around Lough Neagh, is it ok to shoot Bewick Swans?, three years ago I came across a Bewick not quite dead on the shores of the Lough, it was a pitiful sight, well at least I thought it was, maybe some of the shooters [Wildfowlers sounds so respectable] may have had different thoughts. It requires some weird mentality to shoot birds. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Aug 01 - 01:54 PM

I'm not weighing in pro or con on the hunting thing here, but I don't hunt, myself. I let other people murder my meat for me. I'm just tossing in this anecdote:--

A friend of mine owns a cabin up near the mountains, in an area where "the deer and the antelope play." One year he made the mistake of being up in his cabin on the day that deer season opened. Legally, deer season doesn't start until official sunrise on the day in question. He said that about half an hour before legal sunrise he heard the first shots, and by actual legal sunrise, he said, "It sounded like the Battle of the Bulge out there!" He went on to say, "It may have been legal sunrise, but my cabin is on the west side of the Cascade Mountains, and it was still black as pitch out there. Also, the deer know when deer season starts, and three days ahead of time they're long gone! They disappear up into the mountains."

"What puzzles me," he said, "is--what in the hell were all these people shooting at?"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From:
Date: 20 Aug 01 - 06:10 PM

One of my other incarnations spins and knits and does other basic stuff like keep poultry.

A fellow spinner who kept sheep was very distressed at having a group of hunters after bears come over her fences on motorised sledge things and blast all her pets because they were on four legs and happened to be brown, grey or moorit.

I think the answer to the question 'what do hunters shoot?' has to be 'anything'

Anne

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Gervase
Date: 21 Aug 01 - 06:58 AM

I guess there are areseholes in every field of endeavour, and hunting and shooting attracts them just as much as anything else.
Ard mhacha, I'm totally with you on the sort of wankers who shoot wild birds just for the hell of it - and all swans are protected, so anyone who shoots one is a criminal as well as a tosser.
On the other hand, I do enjoy my shooting - there's something elemental about being out on the marsh at dawn or dusk, watching the light change and hearing the eerie cry of the waders and the sound of the wind in the reeds, not to mention the splashes of the bass in the channels and the heart-stopping whistle of the teal as they drum across the mud flats.
Yes, I know I could be there with a pair of binoculars simply watching the birds (as another mad-keen fowler, Peter Scott, eventually came round to doing), but taking a dog and gun out onto the foreshore and maybe (just maybe) coming back with dinner as well as exhaustion and sometimes near frostbite is one of those atavistic things that helps me connect.
I guess I'm just an unrepentent, unreconstructed redneck with an English accent!

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Ringer
Date: 21 Aug 01 - 09:24 AM

Do you pronounce your name as "Jerve-iss", Gervase?

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Gervase
Date: 21 Aug 01 - 09:34 AM

It's been pronounced all sorts of ways. My grandparents called me Jervis (which is one of the older English ways of pronouncing the name), but I tend to answer to JerVAYSE these days.

Subject: RE: Inglorious 12th?
From: Ringer
Date: 21 Aug 01 - 11:24 AM

Thanks. I ask because, as a child, I knew an old farm-hand who was always known as Jerve. I always assumed that that was his name until once I heard his brother call him "Jerve-iss". Only when he died did I discover that he was actually christened Gervase.

In the same village lived an Agnes, who was always called "Annis".