I feel much the same way about hunting in general, but pheasant and grouse shooting seems especially pointless as it's so artificial and tangled up in fanciful

I feel much the same way about hunting in general, but pheasant and grouse shooting seems especially pointless as it's so artificial and tangled up in fanciful class identities. The body which represents the industry put together a campaign to push the story that grouse shooting is good for the environment [1]. There's an interesting infographic with some disingenuous facts like "heather moorland is rarer than rainforest" (because it's a man-made landscape favoured by gentry in Britain), "reduced risk of wildfires by controlled burning" (removing all the tress and then burning heather that replaces it [2] tends to have that effect) and "up to 5 times more threatened wading birds" (sounds better than killing raptors with conservation status to keep the grouse population high). The strong rumour that the Conservative Prime Minister put in a special exemption to the coronavirus restrictions to allow Lord Bamford, one of his primary donors, to carry on shooting[2], (after his company declared 950 jobs at risk [4]) sums it up. [1] https://basc.org.uk/grouse/ https://basc.org.uk/grouse/ [2] https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/things-to-do/peak-district-grouse-moor-burning-season-6522112 https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/things-to-do/peak-distric... [3] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-rule-of-six-hunting-shooting-exemption_uk_5f5f4ad0c5b6b4850803110f https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-rule-of... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/15/nearly-1500-jcb-jobs-at-risk-as-demand-for-machines-halves https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/15/nearly-1500...