Surely these would be better provided to food banks?
If the accusations in the article are true, it is a very shameful and distasteful thing to do. I regularly game shoot and eat mainly game and the thought of it being thrown away for no good reason is repulsive and goes against the whole ethos of game shooting. One of the great joys of game shooting is taking home a couple of brace to enjoy at home or share with friends and family. Thankfully acts like this are a very rare occurrence, but even these rare occurrences are very damaging for the sport.
I would point out though that this article obviously has an anti-shooting agenda, and whilst there are clearly a number of dead pheasants in bin bags, I am not sure how that have come to the assumption that ‘*Undoubtedly this is driven by an over-supply of birds and little demand by consumers for purchasing game bird meat, especially when it’s contaminated with toxic lead shot.’* I am not defending who ever has done this, but I do not know how the author can tell from the photo that the were shoot (they look fairly decomposed), dumped because of an under demand of game birds, or that they were shot with lead shoot over steel.
On my shooting syndicate, we usually shoot 100 to 150 birds in a days shooting. These are then taken both by the guns, the beaters and the picker-uppers at the end of the day, and there is never anything left on the game wagon. During the shooting season, Pheasant and partridge are the main stay of my diet and I always hope to end the season with a full freezer to carry me through the year. This is common on normal syndicate days and farm shoots.
Larger and more commercial shoots use the game as an extra income stream. They will be loaded into a refrigerated game van and sold to a game dealers, who will then sell them to butchers, restaurants, hotels and so on. Large game dealers also have agents in Europe, and ship game birds to France, Holland, Belgium and so on were there is a strong demand for wild game.
It would be an interesting comparison to see the food waste statistics of game shooting to poultry farming or supper markets.
My only problem with pheasants round here is that they are bloody everywhere. We are outside the “grounds” by a long way but they have spread. They are slowly becoming a menace on the roads around here, broken windscreens, accidents due to people braking when they inexplicably decide to run / fly across the road, plus the mess of dead mashed up carcasses all over.
If they are being shot for food, fine but somehow they need to be controlled outside of the grounds.
3 comments
Surely these would be better provided to food banks?
If the accusations in the article are true, it is a very shameful and distasteful thing to do. I regularly game shoot and eat mainly game and the thought of it being thrown away for no good reason is repulsive and goes against the whole ethos of game shooting. One of the great joys of game shooting is taking home a couple of brace to enjoy at home or share with friends and family. Thankfully acts like this are a very rare occurrence, but even these rare occurrences are very damaging for the sport.
I would point out though that this article obviously has an anti-shooting agenda, and whilst there are clearly a number of dead pheasants in bin bags, I am not sure how that have come to the assumption that ‘*Undoubtedly this is driven by an over-supply of birds and little demand by consumers for purchasing game bird meat, especially when it’s contaminated with toxic lead shot.’* I am not defending who ever has done this, but I do not know how the author can tell from the photo that the were shoot (they look fairly decomposed), dumped because of an under demand of game birds, or that they were shot with lead shoot over steel.
On my shooting syndicate, we usually shoot 100 to 150 birds in a days shooting. These are then taken both by the guns, the beaters and the picker-uppers at the end of the day, and there is never anything left on the game wagon. During the shooting season, Pheasant and partridge are the main stay of my diet and I always hope to end the season with a full freezer to carry me through the year. This is common on normal syndicate days and farm shoots.
Larger and more commercial shoots use the game as an extra income stream. They will be loaded into a refrigerated game van and sold to a game dealers, who will then sell them to butchers, restaurants, hotels and so on. Large game dealers also have agents in Europe, and ship game birds to France, Holland, Belgium and so on were there is a strong demand for wild game.
It would be an interesting comparison to see the food waste statistics of game shooting to poultry farming or supper markets.
My only problem with pheasants round here is that they are bloody everywhere. We are outside the “grounds” by a long way but they have spread. They are slowly becoming a menace on the roads around here, broken windscreens, accidents due to people braking when they inexplicably decide to run / fly across the road, plus the mess of dead mashed up carcasses all over.
If they are being shot for food, fine but somehow they need to be controlled outside of the grounds.