CSM EDITORIAL
A member of the Great British Public recently wrote to us with copies of a series of extraordinary email exchanges they had with the campaign group Wild Justice, which is run by Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay. The (redacted) exchanges published below will boil your blood.
We have given the author of the emails a random pseudonym, Mr Constantine Beavertail. We have checked the email headers to make sure these emails are genuinely from Wild Justice as they looked like something taken from the script of the political satire, The Death of Stalin. They are genuine.
We have published these emails in the public interest – just look at the court time and legal costs that taxpayer-funded bodies have had to cough up to face down Wild Justice’s lawfare over recent years.
The responses from Wild Justice are signed ‘Chris, Ruth & Mark’ yet display the same patronising tone of the inaccurate and propagandist blog ‘Raptor Persecution’, which Tingay authors.
The rudeness is shocking. Wild Justice do not know the author of the emails. Indeed the author is not someone who publicly identifies as either a shooter, hunter, farmer – or an anti for that matter. His enquiry is innocent enough, about shot woodcock numbers. The enquiry is neither rude nor condescending. Indeed, the author’s response is self-deprecating.
While it seems fair to assume that Wild Justice are under real pressure – fighting for their lives these days – the way that Wild Justice’s emails have been worded is not befitting of an organisation that wishes to be taken seriously in public, let alone by government agencies. While its founders have some (limited) knowledge in their fields, they have been proven repeatedly to be trumped by real experts, while those who actually operate in the industries they try to affect – farming and grouse moor management, for example – are forever pointing out their fatal lack of real-world experience. As one eminent agriculturalist commented,
‘They are twitchers masquerading as experts’.
Look how Wild Justice fail to respond to Mr Beavertail’s (extensive) list of facts. Instead, in the most puerile ways, they go after the messenger himself:
‘Why do you write to two blokes and a woman and call us ‘Sirs’? It’s not an impressive level of accuracy, is it?’
‘You aren’t subscribed to our newsletter – you’d be better informed if you were’
‘Wrong again’
‘So, we were right, weren’t we?’
‘We’re sorry that we have to demonstrate that we seem to know more about Woodcock shooting than you do, but there you go…’
‘No need to reply to this email, you will probably feel too embarrassed.’
Imagine if the help desk of a bank or insurance company responded to requests from the public using this tone and language. They’d go bust in a second.
Considering these answers from Wild Justice, one must ask the questions:
- Why do organisations like Natural England not simply ignore Wild Justice like they ignore other student protest groups? Or sue them to oblivion? Wild Justice have already publicly admitted that they use lawfare to cause fear (see Avery’s quote in The Guardian underlined above).
- Why do any serious bodies deal with Wild Justice when they respond to innocent members of the public – taxpayers – in this vile way?
- Why do the court systems across the UK allow Wild Justice to clog their courts with their lawfare?
- Why does the Government not come up with a way of penalising campaign groups like Wild Justice – or Jolyon Maugham’s risible Good Law Project for example – for repeatedly using slim chance lawfare in courts?
We asked Wild Justice for comment.
Not a peep.
If you suffer from elevated blood pressure, please refrain from reading on….
Constantine’s First Email:
Sirs,
I read with interest your blogs and how you wrote to The Field to clarify a few points, so I am doing the same.
I note your article and petition on banning the shooting of woodcock before December 1st, claiming there is 160,000 shot each year. On my research prior to this email you have support from Raptor Persecution who claim 140,000 are shot.
So if you can explain where the figure of 160,000 woodcock that you claim are shot for “fun”. Another word that’s misleading as many years ago when woodcock were shot there was always more people wanting them for the table.
I look forward to your reply
Constantine Beavertail
Wild Justice’s First Reply:
Constantine,
Why do you write to two blokes and a woman and call us ‘Sirs’? It’s not an impressive level of accuracy, is it?
You aren’t subscribed to our newsletter (at least with the email address you’ve used here) – you’d be better informed if you were, so please consider it, details below.
You say that the GWCT website doesn’t say that 160,000 Woodcock are shot – wrong again. Go to our blog here We ask for changes to the Woodcock shooting season. – Wild Justice – read the letter to Defra and Daera, see in para 6 that the figure of 160,000 is mentioned and there is a superscript ‘2’ which leads you to a link, click on the link and you’ll find a GWCT factsheet saying that 160,000 Woodcock are shot. So we were right weren’t we?
Lest there be any doubt, there is a scientific paper Aebischer, N.J. (2019). Fifty-year trends in UK hunting bags of birds and mammals, and calibrated estimation of national bag size, using GWCT’s National Gamebag Census. European Journal of Wildlife Research, 65: 64-76. doi: 10.1007/s10344-019-1299-x. which you can reach by clicking on the link and that indicates 180,000 Woodcock shot in 2004, 160,000 in 2012 and 140,000 in 2016. We chose the middle value as three points are too few to identify a trend. That paper is also available on the GWCT website.
We’re well aware that some Pheasant shoots have a no-Woodcock rule but you seem to be unaware that there are plenty of Woodcock shoots in southwest England, North Wales, the Hebrides and Western Isles and in Ireland. Again, if you go back to our letter to Defra and Daera and look at para 9 that will take you to footnotes 6-10 with their links and you can take your pick of dedicated Woodcock shoots which are being advertised commercially in plain view. We’re sorry that we have to demonstrate that we seem to know more about Woodcock shooting than you do, but there you go…
If you have any problems with GWCT not asking you your opinion please feel free to take it up with them.
No need to reply to this email, you will probably feel too embarrassed.
Kind Regards
Chris, Ruth and Mark
Constantine’s Second Email:
Dear Chris, Mark and Ruth
I must apologise for the way I started my last email, on your website you dont have a connection of a name to a person with an email, you only have a general email and as I wasn’t sure who the addressee is I used the word as a general way of politely starting my letter.
In your reply you have stated that I am wrong in my wording re GWCT mentioning that 160,000 woodcock are shot each year. You pointed me in the direction of a few links and as much as I tried to follow them, they didn’t work that way and I hope I ended up at the same place as you did where you got your information from as I had to rely on Google.
I did find a quote from the GWCT Knowledge where it says ” The only estimate we have is from the same survey in 2014 suggesting that 160,000 woodcock were shot in the 2012/12 season (12) This is for one year only and we do not know how reliable it is”
Now I may not be the most intelligent person but I can sort of read, the words used were “estimate” “suggesting” “reliable”. I’m sorry but my reading is not good but I’m not seeing the words – “confirmed, yearly, facts, etc, so that tells me that this is not a true account with any facts or evidence to back it up. Then there is the reference to where it came from, and it has a 12 by it and when I read a copy of the full text of the report 12 relates to their source as “PACEC (2014) The Value of Sporting Shooting”. So I dig deeper and download a copy of said document, but it turns out to be The Value of Shooting The economic, environmental, and social benefits of shooting sports in the UK not sporting.
One of my concerns from day 1 was where this information you have stated came from, I did ask you, I personally have not been asked how many I shoot neither has any of my 24k members, but I am interested to know who has, if you look at the 2006 version of the report PACEC did, they had 2,096 people respond to their questionnaire, the same report in 2014 they had 16,234. I was unable to confirm the exact number of shotgun holders in 2006 but saw one table that showed between 550,000 and 600,000 which was slightly lower than in 2014. So to put this in context in 2006 0.34933% and in 2014 – 2.70567% of the shotgun certificate holders in the whole UK responded and that tiny percentage of people is where they got the figures from, what did they do just work out the percentage based on replies and multiply it. The 2014 report refers back many times to the 2006 report, and when you compare figures they are all over the place. There is also no guarantee that these questionnaires were filled in by genuine shooting people, I know quite a few clay shooters who don’t shoot live quarry and don’t agree with it, and we know how good the anti brigade is with massaging the truth, so do we know that these forms were verified. I am a deer warden and get called out to wounded deer hit by cars, on every occasion me and others complete a form to state the type of deer, location, how it was put down etc, that information gathered would give an accurate account of deer hit on roads, no such form is there for general shooting, so no accurate number can be given its figures plucked from nowhere.
In my research I looked through what I had access too and your email refers to Aebischer, N.J. (2019). Fifty-year trends in UK hunting bags of birds and mammals, unfortunately I was not able to access the whole document so I ask you for a snippet of reference to woodcock, I did look through or searched a 14 page document Monitoring gamebird abundance and productivity in the UK: The GWCT long-term datasets Nicholas J. Aebischer & David Baines and when I searched Woodcock nothing came up, also the game conservancy trust 2004 and 2006 and nothing came up.
The link you inserted does not work so I was unable to find what info you used but it’s interesting you say “180,000 Woodcock shot in 2004, 160,000 in 2012 and 140,000 in 2016. We chose the middle value as three points are too few to identify a trend. That paper is also available on the GWCT website”
Again I found on the NGO and GWCT Survey:
It says However, the percentage of respondents in 2019 that reported shooting woodcock (37% in 2019 versus 66% in 2011, so if 37% of shoots surveyed shot woodcock in 2019 yet in 2011 it was 66% of shoots there is clearly a decline in woodcock shooting, and according to your maths it also shows a decline in shooting of Woodcock. The figures 140,000 and 180,000 have come from where is this another report or guess and strange how it’s just random years 2004,2012,2016.
This table comes from the two reports 2006 and 2014 and tells you a few differences in what was shot according to those few people in different years.
| Species | 2006 | 2014 |
| Deer | 120,000 | 184,000 |
| Pigeon | 3,600,000 | 1,100,000 |
| Rabbit | 590,000 | 520,000 |
| Hare | 47,000 | 73,000 |
| Pheasant | 15m | 13m |
| Partridge | 2.6m | 4.4m |
| Goose | 47,000 | 110,000 |
| Woodcock/snipe | 250,000 | 270,000 |
Deer numbers are on the increase and the figure stated is not correct as there are 100,000 a year shot in Scotland alone.
Why is there such a difference in numbers of pigeons?
Rabbits have been on the decline in the UK for the past 10 years in some areas there are very few rabbits.
Pheasant shooting has grown in popularity with more shoots in 2019 than every before, shoots take a few years to establish and expensive to setup, so over the past 5 years prior to 2019 pheasant shoots grew and yet according to their figures the number of birds shot dropped, according to RSPB in 2016 47m pheasants were released, shoots work on 30% min shot rate which is 14,100,000, however some shoots do a higher percentage, so it could be 20% higher but according to the figures the report is 1m pheasants out. Likewise partridge is 1.4m out.
Foxes – since the hunt ban came in 2005 more foxes are shot however the report was carried out in 2004 a year before the ban and stated 120,000 foxes shot compared to 66,000 in 2014 after the ban was in force, so in reality those figures should be the other way round. There are more foxes around now due to the hunts not catching them, therefore more shot.
I could carry on with this…
I also looked about on other reports you gave and could not find a link to accurate figures
Can you help me out here please as your petition clearly says ” 160,000 Woodcock are shot for fun” that’s a harsh word (fun) but it’s what you do to get the public on side, had you put back in 2012/13 there were x shot but we don’t know how many since – you would not get the support you need to fund these campaigns so I refer to my previous email and ask and maybe you can insert links or snippets to help me out because the document I refer to above Value of shooting contradicts your “for fun” quote saying “Providers said that 99% of gamebirds and wildfowl shot in 2004 were consumed by the shooting provider or taken home by participants for themselves or their friends.” That’s not shot for fun that’s shot for food.
Bearing in mind the wide variety of categories open to the 600,000 people who own a shotgun in the UK, most are clay pigeon shooters, but some just do vermin control, or crop protection and that will be the highest number of people with rough shooting in that category as well. Most shotgun holders won’t be able to spend the minimum of £1,000 per day to go on a driven shoot, then you have the game shooters and some of those will also be in the rough shoot category, then you have the rich man who turns up and shoots on a driven shoot be it pheasant, partridge or grouse. My point of this paragraph is that out of those who did fill in the questionnaire shot woodcock then that’s fine, but it doesn’t reflect the other 98% who didn’t fill it in. if you asked a shooter who mainly shoots wildfowl how many pigeons he has shot, the reply would probably be none, if you asked a pigeon shooter the same about geese, he would say the same zero answer as they tend to stick to their own specialised form of shooting. Someone who lives and shoots in Kent is probably a wildfowler unlike someone from Birmingham who won’t be. It’s hard to take a few people out of the 600,000-gun holders and get a true account as there are so many options.
Your letter to DEFRA has some interesting points and I’m pleased that Leigh Day did not twist the truth as he has said in section 6 “While there is no official or adequate monitoring of bag numbers, the GWCT estimates that some 160,000 Woodcock may now be shot annually in the UK. “he has used the word annually, and point 9 you mention about “clear evidence” of noncompliance giving a link to 5 dedicated shoots, in fact all those shoots are the same company offering woodcock shooting in different areas, these adverts offer it with no proof anyone takes them up on it or do you have photos of them actually shooting?? With confirmed bag numbers. So out of all the shoots out there 1 just one goes against recommendations, that’s not actually bad odds, is it? This is another example to base a very weak argument on to law change on.
I must have it wrong surely? so I am interested to see documented evidence from you to back up this wording you’ve used annually, yearly, every season. as so far I have not found anyone but you who say 160,000 or so woodcock are shot yearly, they just refer to two survey done in the past 20 years. In reality there are no figures, so one doesn’t really know how truthfully how many Woodcock are shot.
It would be good moving on if there could be a bit more cooperation between us as in the shooting world and yourselves and debate the issues correctly, the pigeon issue you raised a couple of years ago did so much damage to farmers and prevented crops from being protected but that’s another argument for another day. I see myself as I live opposite a field that has oil seed rape and around March time, I was seeing 300 to 400 pigeons hitting it daily. They put gas guns up and as the gun went off the pigeons took off but just landed again, then some guys were shooting them and they didn’t hang around long, so it works, and you stopped it. Bearing in mind pigeons can nest more than once think how many pigeons there would be if you got it stopped for a few years, how would farmers protect their crops?
There are a number of ways things could be improved or tightened up within the shooting industry but it’s not my place to tell you about them, but I would engage with you if you ever had any questions for me.
I look forward to your reply because I really hope you have not written to a Government Department for a change in the law based on an estimate from one season 9 and 18 years ago, or you based it on what GWCT mentioned and confirmed they didn’t know how reliable it was. maybe Leigh Day should have a copy of this email as clearly you have not told them the truth either, you cannot base a law change on 2 reports based on a few people.
Fortunately, I wasn’t too embarrassed to reply.
Kind regards,
Constantine Beavertail
Wild Justice’s Second Reply:
Constantine,
You are still not subscribed to our regular newsletter. That is the best way to find out what Wild Justice is doing and what we think.
Your original email said that there was no figure similar to ours on GWCT website – there was and is, as you have now discovered.
We also sent you a link to a publicly available scientific paper, authored by GWCT, that sets out the three most recent estimates of woodcock bags. If you want further information you should pay for access to the paper or seek a copy of it from GWCT – it is not ours to distribute to you, but we have read it and understand it. We suggest you attempt to do the same.
All of the data we have used comes from the shooting community. If you don’t like those data then address your comments to the shooting industry.
You started this email string by questioning the figure of 160,000 Woodcock shot because your experience was that Woodcock are rarely shot. We can’t help you with that, we are going by the published data.
We don’t think we can help you any further.
Kind Regards
Chris, Ruth and Mark
