Tim Bonner: Should we be shooting woodcock?

There is nothing that separates the hunter from the uninitiated public quite as much as the idea of loving the thing you hunt. For the hunter there is no contradiction between having admiration, often bordering on obsession, with a quarry that he or she seeks to kill. For those who do not hunt however, that idea is laughable. The simple logic of public opinion is that if you like something you do not kill it.

In my 20 years of promoting and debating every type of hunting, this is probably the most consistent public response to any argument about it. Yet, I am also more than aware that this reaction is wrong and that the love that many of us who hunt have for our quarry is real, and that if we were not absolutely certain our hunting was beneficial to the quarry species we would not do it.

One of my (several) personal obsessions is with the woodcock. That wonderful migrant arrives from the frozen wastes of the East in winter and spends a few months in our rich and relatively warm countryside before returning to its breeding grounds in the spring. Somewhere around a million and a half birds arrive in this way every year and have been hunted from time immemorial.

I have been lucky enough to shoot them from Cornwall to Caithness and most places in between and there is no suggestion that the migrant population is anything other than buoyant. In fact, last winter I was on the Isle of Lewis in January (woodcock live in the best places), and the estate records show that over the last 12 years the number of woodcock flushed on the same 4 days shooting, on exactly the same ground, has more than doubled from less than 250 to over 500. This is obviously an estate that shoots a decent bag of woodcock every year and which must therefore meet the definition of a sustainable harvest: woodcock are shot yet the same number or more return every year. The situation on Lewis is mirrored by the experience of woodcock hunters I have been lucky enough to shoot with from West Wales to the West of Ireland.

Yet, prominent voices are calling for a ban on woodcock shooting, or at least restrictions. Why is this? There are several reasons, including the simple fact that woodcock are nocturnal creatures that hide in thick woodland during the day. Most people do not see them and therefore do not believe they are present.

The main source of concern however, is the small UK breeding population of around 50,000 pairs which has shrunk in recent years. This is the result of exactly the same issues that are affecting biodiversity as a whole across lowland Britain. In particular, it is the lack of suitable shrubby woodland understory that provides the ideal breeding environment for woodcock and many other woodland species. Lack of woodland management is part of the problem, but the biggest culprit is undoubtedly the vast and growing population of deer which strip bare the woodland floor.

Those who hate shooting ignore the real factors and call for a ban on hunting woodcock, using the decline of the breeding population as a stick to beat shooting with. Those who love woodcock, whether they hunt them or not, are attempting to deliver practical solutions through woodland management and deer culling. The worst possible result for woodcock would be a ban on hunting them, which would remove much of the motivation for this work. Even if it is a difficult concept to grasp, we do love the thing we hunt and that thing is better off for being hunted.