A Season of Shame: The ‘Inglorious Twelfth’

Traditionally, the Glorious Twelfth – or the “Inglorious Twelfth”, as it should rightly be named – marks the start of the red grouse shooting season. But this year, many estates have been forced to delay or even cancel it after human-induced climate change saw unseasonably hard sleet and cold rain, resulting in fewer birds for hunters to blast out of the sky.

The Glorious Twelfth Is Bad for the Environment

Climate change is having an effect on this year’s vile events, and moor management companies are themselves partly to blame. To stimulate the growth of heather shoots for young grouse to eat, landowners set fire to the moors – causing some 260,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change, to be emitted each year.

Senseless Massacre

About 700,000 red grouse will be killed between now and December. According to a report by the League Against Cruel Sports, 40% of birds shot are wounded rather than being killed outright, causing intense and prolonged suffering. Grouse are low-flying and difficult to shoot cleanly, and hunters need no formal training or competence with a gun to go on a shoot – it’s a free-for-all. These are just a couple of reasons why this barbaric “sport” should be banned.

Grouse are charming, sensitive birds who are devoted parents to their chicks. They deserve better than being killed in cold blood for someone’s twisted idea of entertainment. And it’s not just the grouse who suffer at the hands of the hunters. To preserve the interests of their own sick pleasure, hunters remove the grouse’s natural predators, meaning foxes, stoats, weasels, squirrels, and birds like hawks, falcons, owls, hen harriers, and eagles are trapped, poisoned, or shot or their nests are destroyed.

All this cruelty and destruction so that a tiny minority of bloodthirsty people can wander through the British countryside gunning down sentient animals – it’s a senseless massacre, not a hobby.

Help Stop Cruel Grouse Shooting

Reducing sentient beings to targets for the perverted pleasure of gunning them down is unacceptable in a civilised society. Hunting has no place in the UK. Please contact your MP and call for action! Ask them to write to Environment Secretary George Eustice and urge him to ban grouse shooting.