Been to work this afternoon and pub and no one posted later since 1.00pm or his my tablet playing up!! Anyway hope you have a good day as I am off to bed.
There is a small contingent of malicious juveniles who spoil this site with their hateful bile by posting threads encouraging their AB chums to denounce anyone they don't like and then praising each other up for being "one of the nice ones on here" (I know, you couldn't make it up). It's a type of back-slapping jocularity with an underlying malevolence that is truly nauseating to read.
Many a valued member has been chased away over the years for this very reason, sadly.
Couldn't agree more, NoM. I got some stick from the usual suspects earlier for daring to speak in favour of grouse shooting. Water off a duck's back to me but I see some people get upset when the clique are in full cry.
I haven't signed the petition yet. As I understand it, some of the issue is not the fact that people shoot birds for the pot but that wildlife is killed to protect the farmed grouse. I know also that there has been an issue with the way pheasants are raised for the shoot...that they are reared in pens and only released just before the shoot happens. They don't live in the wild or have the same self preservation or flight skills as wild birds and are driven towards the guns to be massacred. Sometimes as I understand it, they don't even fly and are shot on the ground. No skill required and not the noble and historic activity that many imagine.
not here woofgang, they are bred in overgrown hedges and go pecking freely and doing what pheasants do. Our fields are flayed once a year before the season and then it's shooting in the air with beaters in the fields - and apart from getting the fields flayed for free a number of pheasants end up in my stomach, fresh or via the freezer. I'm rather partial to a bit of breast....as long as it isn't overcooked.
I assume that the thread has been removed because of some of the needless bile against a contrarian view. What's happened to I respect your view, You respect my view, I respect yours. It seems that AB and society at large are moving to verbal and action aggression to counter things they don't like or aren't getting their own way. Wit the grouse debate, wit vegans against meat etc etc.
DTC its the big commercial drives I was talking about and, I think, what the petition was originally about. Sadly its the unintended consequences thing which is why I haven't signed the petition yet.