Maybe it's a bit early in the season to be giving off about all the foreigners coming in to shoot our birds. Many of them may be migratory, of Russian, Icelandic or Scandinavian origin in winter, but while they're here they're definitely OUR birds. Anyway, this newspaper carried an item on Tuesday saying that Mr Des Crofton of the National Regional Games Council (NRGC) is taking a High Court case to prevent the State issuing further licenses to tourists under the present licensing system.
One of the points he makes, is that traditional patterns of shooting here take place once or twice a week during the season, but tourist shooters expect to go out every day. And our stocks of game, apparently, won't be able to bear that. The other side of the case is eloquently made by people who organise, or take in, foreign shooting people. One considers that the market is being under sold. "We should be shooting less and charging more for good shooting holidays," he says.
You'd wonder why the French, for example, find this country so attractive. Take mallard. According to the invaluable David Cabot we have 23,000 breeding pairs, and large numbers come from Britain in the autumn, with lesser drafts from the continent. The French, on the other hand, seem to be well served in their own country. Given that their human population is about ten times ours, they have, according to a sporting magazine up to 300,000 duck in a hard winter and they rear "hundreds of thousands" more, by hand, so to speak, like pheasants - or poultry. (Not so good for the future, some say - too much cross breeding.)
Of course, its the woodcock that lures many French shooters. Their game shooting magazines are full of articles about the because, books are published and videos made of this star attraction, and the pursuit of them carries something of the prestige given to tiger hunting in the old Raj. Cabot says we have only about 4,500 breeding pairs. But there's a "massive" winter immigration from as far away as the east of the Urals.
A much talked about bird and argued about. Eric Craigie confirmed their habit of carrying the young between their legs, either to find more acceptable feeding terrain, or to bring them to safety. Other writers, too. There was a suggestion in France that no more than four woodcock per year should be shot by anyone.