doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Bird shoots in Britain - a thing of the past?

Well, I cleared 16ga Bismuth space again. When I leave others will be able to buy some too. It made me sad to see that video clip. I enjoyed Texans performance in movies like Toomstone, Red Dawn and Attila. He has passed not long ago. Glad Clint Eastwood is still with us.

I will miss my Colt rail gun as HD piece. It will be replaced by dusted off P-38 with Czechoslovak 9x19mm ammunition.

As for driven game shooting and its origins. It grew along with SXS design in a mutually influencing spiral. It was not always so. A look at muzzle loading period paintings shows British folk hunting, as opposed to shooting, over dogs, equipped with game bags to carry their game themselves, with no help from servants. It is hard to condemn someone who hunts alone and bags reasonable numbers of game for the pot. Also hard to depict him as a "class enemy".

I wish Americans wouldn't post slanted and embellished articles written by ignorant city dwellers, as explanation of estate life.
Re-read it, take out the inflammatory adjectives, and then decide if the story still makes sense.

It's an ignorant hatchet piece.

The birds are grown as a crop, they are sold into the food chain, and we as guns pay dearly to preserve the system. A red grouse was only about 5?lbs from the keeper.

The economic opportunities for average country folk are just as abysmal in the UK as here. The driven game system provides tremendous employment, as well as preserves a way of life, decimated, and nearly lost after the Great War.

It is pageantry when done well.
The shooting is as challenging as YOU decide to make it.
The hospitality side of the event is as fine as anywhere in the world.
Privately crafted Gins, elegant food, and gentility extending across all borders and class distinctions.

There are two types of people in the world. One sees gracious living and aspires to it. Another sees beauty and wants to tear it down.

A lot of people in the South would tell you that we lost that war a long time ago.

I shouldn't get all worked up about a news article.

I am NOT a member of the Tally-Ho set.

I work in the Automation industry, working long hours making things go round and round in modern factories.
I, like many others making the wheels of commerce turn, enjoy driven game shooting for what it is. And understand what it isn't.

CZ, The article makes the point of village employment. It states the efforts to preserve the Moors by the owners. The fact that it reports what the antis have done and are doing doesn't make it a "hatchet" piece. The way I read it, the Post is reporting a hatchet job by the antis. I would rather read about the reports of the efforts for and against than to read in a vacuum later that it's over. Stripping it of adjectives, adverbs, nouns or verbs doesn't change a thing. Would it be better to stick our heads in the sand? Forewarned is forearmed. Have a great trip Tuesday and let us know how it turned out. Gil
PS: Who says fox hunting has ended in Britain?
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/world...the-sniper.html

Gil, Read the Title, then the first paragraph, and then tell me the article doesn't carry an unfavorable bias forward from there.

If a person wants to shoot driven grouse, get out your wallet, and make the call. It's that simple. There's no secret society among the commercial shoots. They are just trying to keep the estate doors open.

If you want to do it for free, well, you better be royal, or have great friends. It's not inexpensive.


And I mean "You" in the plural way. Not anyone here particularly.

CZ, I agree that using the word "paranoid" is a bit too much as "paranoia" is an unreasonable fear. Using names and locations would send the PETA group in waves to the locations, so I understand what point you make there. It is not an unreasonable fear that disruption would ensue. (There are laws on our books here that criminalize interference with hunting.) But both sides are presented afterwards which if it were a dedicated "hatchet job", it wouldn't have been presenting both sides. I'm sure the antis would have preferred otherwise. Gil

Good conversation, a real treat. I'd broaden it by replacing Peta with the peculiar circularity of the rural-urban divide: what the majority antis are doing to us. The biggest migration in the world is from the countryside to the city, for the warmth and shelter and opportunities they couldn't find in the countryside. A nearby county here had an 11.4 per cent loss of residents over the last six years. The city separates them from Nature. They'll develop a cultural amnesia over time, as the refugees have before them.They develop a romanticized notion of Nature as they take in each other's wash in cities.The only answer is finding something along the lines of Michael Ignatieff's �code of tacit mutual acceptance� within �an intimate sociology and anthropology of ethics.�

City populations are already the majority in most developed countries and are growing. A UN study forecasts that over 90 per cent of the planet population will be city dwellers in a generation. That means they will have city values and and an urban view of things with all that this implies for country pursuits. Maybe when unmanaged wildlife starts to make its presence felt, as when wolves take a poodle from the leash in a park, then things might start to change.