The Glorious Twelfth

The Glorious Twelfth is the name given to the day that marks the start of the grouse shooting season. To reach this point our uplands have been emptied of wildlife through illegal persecution.

The Red Grouse are then forced from the ground by beaters, talking off in a blind panic and blasted out of the sky for sport by paid shooters.

So much killing and cruelty goes on in the British countryside in readiness for 12th August when the shooting season starts. This pastime is changing the very fabric of our uplands making them playgrounds for the rich and well connected. I’ve spent the last 30 years walking the moors and uplands of the Peak District National Park from a young boy.

Its changed so much in that time that it barely deserves the title of a national park due to such high levels of killing and cruelty.

We often demonise poachers who target creatures in distant lands, yet when the wildlife that exist right on our doorstep is being persecuted, we descend into silence.

Driven Grouse Shooting is a blight on our nation. It is destroying our national heritage leaving our moorlands and uplands devoid of so many beautiful species of animals and birds. Land owners, gamekeepers and their proxies are cleansing our uplands and moorlands of so much precious wildlife.

They call it “Tradition” something passed down from generation to generation from a world most of us will never be invited too or get chance to stand alongside these people to be able to understand them.

It costs alot of money to shoot grouse, roughly around £7,000 per person per day. The owners of grouse moors, who are often very rich themselves, justify the costs by making sure that there are lots of red grouse to shoot.

Many grouse moors are often like the many monoculture landscapes I’ve seen in Sumatra, Indonesia with the vile and lifeless palm oil plantations they have there.

Producing as many grouse as possible also means burning and draining the land, which creates those monoculture’s. By ridding these moors of the heather, foliage or other vegetation it releases the carbon in the soil, pollutes rivers and helps to flood the towns downstream.

Alot of wildlife on these moorland habitats are shot, trapped and poisoned by the gamekeepers employed by those rich landowners to maximise grouse numbers, which then allows them to charge those rates to shoot grouse and make the landowners even richer.

Grouse moors are places where most if not all the birds of prey vanish and nobody or know one is prosecuted.

Cruelty has no class, its voiceless, its impacts are far reaching and entangled into our daily life. How we treat those creatures entrusted into our care through our evolutionary past is very important. Without nature there is nothing, and the systemic, brutal sterilising of our national heritage cant carry on.

If you see anything while out in the countryside take photos like I did of this gamekeeper. He had driven right to the top of Derwent edge and was there from before dawn onward’s with his dogs. He drove past me and got out to ask what I was doing, after a few choice words from myself he left.

Report them and their actions and dont ever be scared, the Peak District is a national park and so everyone that lives, works and visits this place has to behave in a responsibly way.

The destructive nature of driven grouse shooting on the lead up to, during and after is killing so many creatures and has to be more accountable and regulated now.

The countryside is for all and not just an exclusive playground for the rich.

Its a circle of control and nobody wants to give an inch or any ground. I have witnessed all parties sitting around the table from my time in the British Army. Those that wanted to kill each other laid down their weapons and signed for peace in the end.

They didn’t insult or point score on social media, which seems the most popular form of attack for so many that call themselves activists.

One day we will look back in horror at how we let a select few in society do as they wish with our beautiful wildlife.  Time for change and a different approach.