Taking the lead over lead

The RSPB may be wrong about many things, but its assertion that shooters continue to flout the law when it comes to the use of lead when shooting wildfowl is, alas, correct. The evidence is irrefutable. Based upon the random purchase of duck and goose from game dealers, tests carried out more than ten years apart have shown that as many as seven in every ten birds are still being killed by leadshot and that there has been virtually no change in this number over that period. Both shooting organisations and the industry body, the Gun Trade Association, are remiss in not putting this matter at the top of their respective agendas.

Finding ways of exposing wrongdoers, who are rarely if ever to be found among the nation’s wildfowling community, and where shaming does not work ensuring their prosecution, is not only the right thing to do, but it would severely undermine the stance of anti-shooting organisations such as the RSPB and RSPCA, who use those rare situations where they are actually in the right, to bolster all kinds of positions where they are not.