UKC

You won't find any mention of it on the Peak District National Park website, or on Natural Englands website but the Moor above Edale and bordering the Pennine Way is closed for grouse shooting on Fridays 6th Sept - 4th October.
The Public Rights of Way remain open (pretty much just the Pennine Way I think.

I can't remember all the details, and I can't find any further info to link too, but it would have been nice to know before I got there - thanks Mr National Park!!

I thought the mass trespass and the formation of the National Parks was to stop all this sort of nonsense?!

There is very little info on the ground about the closures and certainly no advance warning. It seems very easy for people to wander into the prohibited area without being aware. I believe a D of E group did this on 6th Sept because they set off from Edale before a sign was put up on the path. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen to me.

In reply to Coop: It's about time grouse shooting went the way legally of fox hunting as a sport.

In reply to Al Evans: What , continues unabated , and legally ,despite what Labour tried to do ? Do you know anything about Grouse shooting ? Or fox hunting ? Or do you just want to stop others traditions , because you don't like the sound of them , or you think the wrong sort of people participate ?

In reply to Al Evans: Also though, grouse moorlands bring money in.. although I dislike the sport.. take away the shooting and why would you own 1000s of acres of land for no money income.. so you'd eother put more sheep on or forest.

In reply to IainRUK: Well of course they were all forest once, is that a bad thing? More fun for the people wanting to slaughter deer I would have thought.
In the deep groughs on Kinder and Bleaklow you often come across the rotted boles of serious trees. I though that the common guilty party of this was the English kings around the Henrys depleting the forests to make warships for their navies etc.
What I have against grouse shooting and fox hunting is that they are a blood sport, like we are all supposed to be civilised out of now. Still I guess savages can continue to exist among the richest as well as the poorest of our civilisation.

In reply to Al Evans: I think deforestation happened way before that, think its 1000+ years... but English nature (Doug and Toad can correct this) now look to preserve the sub climax vegetation on the moors as its a balanced historic ecosystem.

In reply to IainRUK: Except that's not true on Kinder, there are areas fenced off from sheep grazing on the still non boggy edges that are to see how natural flora and fauna will recover without the attention of sheep and game wardens providing grouse murderers with fodder.

In reply to Al Evans: I thought that was too allow a certain regeneration, but not return to full climax, it was why they graze cattle on totley moor.

In reply to Al Evans:

I don't really see the problem. They get eaten. Is it worse than buying a farmed steak. I expect the grouse have better lives on the whole...

In reply to Coop: thanks for the pointers COOP, there is hundreds of places to debate tradition vs blood sports. the same with violent sports vs non-competitive activities. But I'd rather just say thankyou for letting us know that we should avoid the area until shooting ends.

In reply to Coop: I ended up in the middle of a shoot at West Nab bouldering last year. No notices on the access points and worse still they kept shooting even though they knew we were there (we kept our heads well down). The only positive point was when the main keeper discovered us and we apologised for inadvertantly being there as we had no idea there was a shoot and certainly were not going to move out of our well covered spot he was pretty pissed off with the shooters and immediately stopped the shoot.

In reply to Coop: It's a pain in the backside, but the shoots tend not to advertise their specific dates in advance to anyone - I occasionally got them when I was up there more regularly, but getting the dates is like pulling teeth. I don't have a problem with shooting per se, but I do find it frustrating that they close such big areas (for all sorts of practical shoot reasons) when they are actually shooting in a relatively small area.

A bigger debate from an ecological point of view is the sustainability of moor management for grouse which benefits relatively few (but rare/ important) bird species at the expense of a more diverse habitat, but that is a whole other thread

In reply to SARS:

I'm not that sure about the philosophical argument here. But we are unfortunately omnivores, and healthier if we eat meat as well as vegetables (what did vegetables ever do to deserve us eating them as a matter of course) so my humanistic inclination is that animals farmed for eating in a good healthy life is the way to go. What I hate about bloodsports is that it is the killing that is the attraction, not the necessity to eat it to live.

In reply to Al Evans: I mean how many fox hunters (or even grouse shooters for that matter) actually eat their prey, it is the sheer pleasure of hunting and killing that is the attraction,I find this a lot more disturbing than, for instance, a pig farm or a trout farm.

In reply to Al Evans:
I'm quite happy that most game doesn't get eaten by the people that shoot it. It means that I can buy it cheap from my local butcher.

In reply to Toreador: But that doesn't address the question of what if your local butcher got great pleasure from just the hunting and killing of it, does it? Do you see my point, eating and enjoying killing are two separate issues.

In reply to Al Evans:
I'd rather he enjoyed it than not. Do you only eat meat that has been slaughtered by people who hate their jobs?

In reply to Toreador: OoooooH Toreador, that is seriously missing the point in whether we should enjoy the killing or just the eating of animals/birds. Firstly we do not need to enjoy the killing, that is a psychopathic trait, but secondly we need to eat meat, so let us separate the two. How many people actually work in an abbatoir because they enjoy the killing, some probably, but even those deviants would not choose to go and slaughter the equivalent of puppies or kittens if that is what we had to eat. It's a whole world of difference killing for pleasure and killing to eat.

In reply to toad: I have to admit I had no idea it was possible to close a large area of a National Park bounding, arguably, the most famous footpath in the country.

I'm not against the shooting so much as the folly of choosing that busy area and not providing advance publicity.

I also question the risk assessment by the organisers re accidentally shooting members of the public.

Now I think about it - if its possible to get areas closed for shooting, then why not MTB, zorbing, green laneing, BBQ's, hen nights etc etc?

In reply to Al Evans:

Or it's actually a very natural hunter-killer response honed through tens of thousands of years of physical and cultural evolution.

In reply to James Jackson: Except that we are supposed to be evolving out of our primal roots.

In reply to Al Evans: We don't need to eat meat, don't be so stupid. You like meat so you eat it, but you don't need it.

In reply to Sir Chasm: But we are omnivores, and being vegetarian requires careful management to be healthy, but I don't deny it can be if you are careful. Actually I don't eat a lot of meat, I'm more concerned about keeping my veggie intake healthy, however that doesn't take away my argument that liking to kill for sport is not a healthy pastime mentally.

In reply to Al Evans: So not many animals are killed for your enjoyment, but you, yes you, get enjoyment from animals dying. Psycho.

In reply to Al Evans:

The people who affect what a massive percentage of the countryside that we climb in looks like are gamekeepers and farmers.

These people, and others involved in "blood sports", would almost certainly tell you that the joy they get is not from the actual act of "killing animals".

You may not understand this if you have only ever seen the countryside from the point of view of a climber, walker, etc, and I can understand that. It doesn't mean that they are saveges just because you may not understand them.

If you were to remove all "blood sports" from the UK countryside, it would have a lot less people looking after it with passion and true understanding, and would probably end up getting built on, who knows?!

Wouldn't be so great if you had to walk through a housing estate to get to the crag....I'd rather walk through a well managed grouse moor personally.

In reply to Sir Chasm: Boll*x, are you a complete nutter? Or are you just pissed at the moment?

In reply to MattJ753: Matt, I lived in the countryside for many years, a footpath went through my garden, I am not a 'townie'.

In reply to Al Evans: Quite sober, ta. It's not me claiming I need to eat meat. But you're happy to eat meat knowing that the animal is going to die so that you can have a wholly unnecessary pleasure.

In reply to Sir Chasm: That absolutely is not the point, are you stupid? The point is not do you need to eat meat or enjoy meat but if you enjoy hunting down and killing innocent creatures, I find it incomprehensible that you can't understand the difference.
Al

In reply to Al Evans: Do you sob silently to yourself as each morsel of that poor innocent creature passes your lips?

In reply to Al Evans: And I find it incomprehensible that you think you need to eat meat. I also find it incomprehensible that you can't see the connection between your pleasure and the death of the animals you eat. Do you buy your meat wrapped in plastic from a supermarket? You know it comes from a dead animal don't you?

In reply to Sir Chasm:

We certainly thrive when we eat meat. Much of the land that hosts pastoral farming (and for that matter grouse), is also able to sustain diverse wildlife.

Arable farming pushes the killing to where it can't be seen but it is there all the same, and simply competes with life at the base of the food chain. A cropped field is an industrial landscape - largely devoid of wildlife, monocropped, and chemically managed to keep it that way.

In reply to Sir Chasm: Are you really so stupid? Of course we need to eat, whether it's cows, pigs, cockroaches, bluebottles , carrots or onions, but what I am saying is that need can be completely diversified from the pleasure of hunting and killing in the modern world.
We can nurture our carrots and our cows and chickens for our own selfish needs, but only if we nurture them too. What I am against is the need to get pleasure out of hunting and killing as in fox hunting and grouse shooting for the glory of THE KILL..

In reply to Al Evans: Are you so stupid you can't remember that upthread you say we need to eat meat? Justify it to yourself if you like, but all the animals you've eaten have died for your pleasure.

In reply to Coop:


Because none of the activities you mention are likely to kill other people. Unless the BBQ sets fire to the bracken...

Why the blanket closure? Here if you encounter a grouse shoot, you only have to wait for the drive to finish and then go, or negotiate a different route where they are not shooting. Grouse shoots are never a problem and easily negotiated. Learn to share.

Mind I was hit by shot last weekend on the Fife Coast Path.

In reply to Al Evans:

Jesus Al,

Give it a rest will you, nobody wants to listen to completely one sided biased drivel.

In reply to Shani: We can choose to grow organically and market garden. Eating meat consumes a lot more land than eating veg. More small holding type farming is what we need. Farming on an industrial scale is pretty unpleasant whatever.

In reply to MattJ753: The trouble with grouse moors as I see it, is that there are far too many of them. Claiming that they may get built on if they were not grouse moors is scaremongering.

In reply to Al Evans:

Al, your ideas are warped. I honestly cannot understand how you can say hunting for food is less preferable than mass farm production!?

In reply to Phil1919:

I'm not making a serious claim that that is what will happen, am I, I'm just trying to highlight that a vast majority of the beautiful rolling landscapes that we drive, walk, run, cycle through look the way they do because of farmers, gamekeepers, forestry commission etc. The same people who also participate in these much hated "blood sports", "animal murder" etc....for good reason.

People who wander into the countryside every now and then for their past-times don't necessarily understand how the above mentioned countyrside works, and it's from this category that you get a lot of the anti blood sport talk.

You gotta see it from all angles....how can people have such one sided 'my way or no way' opinions on stuff.

In reply to Coop: So many people seem to try and tell us how to run the countryside when they have no idea about agriculture or shooting. People don't seem to realise that all these sports stem from a need to do things. We need to kill foxes as they eat our animals, we need to shoot deer as there will be too many for the land to support. And if it weren't for shooting farming wouldn't be as mature friendly because we wouldn't have conservation headlands and stuff like that. Get a grip you people!

In reply to Coop: This idea that moors can only be paid for with game shooting is a bit of a simplistic way of looking at things.

Shooting plays a part, but healthy well vegetated moors are massively important for providing clean drinking water. Unitied Utilities have contributed millions into regenerating them, so they don't have to filter loads of peat/crap from the water they pump to folk in Manchester.

In reply to SARS:


Isnt the subject Grouse and other driven shooting. So pretty much mass farm production.

In reply to Henrycuillin:

The relevance of this to grouse shooting is?

In reply to Coop:

I agree with Al here, there is a difference between how an animal dies. For example deriving pleasure from getting your own meal by stalking your prey and killing it then preparing it but not enjoying the actual killing is different from blasting at stupid birds with clipped wings who can't get away. Totally different mentality, I understand the former but not the latter. Just like I think it's OK to fish if you eat what you catch, but fishing for sports sake is wrong, even if fish can't feel pain (no idea if that is true or not) you wouldn't like it if someone gave you a local anaesthetic in the face, stuck a hook in and pulled you about. It's the mentality of getting enjoyment from violence towards an animal that, as Al says, is wrong, not the act of killing an animal for food even if that food brings you pleasure.

In reply to Fat Bumbly2: there are no blanket closures under CRoW. Public rights of way are normally not affected and closures are by arrangement (just not always well advertised). Not that this thread cares as iit seems more interested in a good grouse.

In reply to Henrycuillin: I think there is a difference between hunting a troublesome fox down and maintaining large areas of moorland, breeding and then shooting grouse.

In reply to Phil1919:

The grouse ends up in somebody's pot, even if not the gun's. What's the problem with being born and bred on the moor, and then getting shot? Hardly intensive farming a la boxed pigs and chickens (there's a reason I either shoot what I eat, or get it from my local butcher).

In reply to Sir Chasm:

What about all the vegetables lives you ended you sick bastard. What about all those animals who die from the farming and incesticides? The massive land use and end to whole eco systems? Can't you see the link between that and your pleasure of eating vegetables?

In reply to Phil1919:

But 'eating meat' can be premised on lands which sustain MUCH, MUCH more wildlife than 'veg' crops, and without the use of chemical fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides (all of which leach off in to the watercourse and cause death to wildlife).

In reply to SARS:

I never said that, I said hunting for pleasure, the sheer blood lust, is less humanitarian than well cared for and farmed animals.

In reply to Offwidth:

There are however blanket closures on land that had access agreements in place before CRoW - those prior agreements take priority. I've no idea if that is the case in Edale, but it certainly is on Barden Moor.