Over 100 Hunt Saboteurs Disrupt Inglorious 12th

Hunt Saboteurs Association News Release 13^th August 2017

Over 100 hunt saboteurs from around the country descended on the moors of Yorkshire and the Peak District yesterday to disrupt the first day of the grouse shooting season.

They first stopped a shoot on the Notorious Saddleworth Moor before moving South to the Fitzwilliam estate in the heart of the Peak District and preventing an afternoon of shooting. The police attended both incidents but appeared to have little interest in enabling the shooters to continue.

The Glorious 12^th is the highlight of the shooting calendar and shooters pay thousands of pounds each for the privilege of blasting birds out of the sky. The shooting estates claim they maintain the grouse moors but the reality is that, although picturesque, they are a barren wasteland. Natural predators such as foxes, stoats and birds of prey are shot and trapped in large numbers, mountain hares are killed as they carry tics that may affect the grouse and the grouse themselves are heavily medicated as their unnaturally high levels allows disease to spread. By the end of the grouse shooting season in December over 500,000 birds will have been shot.

Lee Moon, spokesperson for the Hunt Saboteurs Association, stated: “ Well done to the hunt saboteurs who stood between the guns and the grouse yesterday. There is currently a groundswell of protest against the shooting industry in the UK. For years they have hidden behind their flimsy claims of conservation but this mask has now slipped and the reality of this cruel sport has been exposed. Not only are hundreds of thousands of grouse killed each year but any potential predator is wiped out by armed gamekeepers who shoot, trap and poison all the other species on the grouse moors. Yesterday on the moors we didn’t see a single bird, apart from grouse, all day. Their beauty disguises the grim reality of these barren killing fields.”