‘I know they are after me'

Gamekeepers run a daily gauntlet of abuse and there appears little that can be done to stop it. Matt Cross investigates

- Matt Cross

The moderators were quick to pull the comment down, but I doubt they managed to do it before at least one of the many gamekeepers in the group had read it. It had been posted on a thread discussing grouse shooting on one of the large rewilding groups on Facebook. The commenter asked “Why don’t we stop hunting grouse and just hunt gamekeepers and their Tory bosses instead?”

The cyber abuse of gamekeepers has reached shocking proportions. Join an online rewilding group or scrutinise the comments section of one of the big anti-shooting blogs and you will find endless abuse of gamekeepers and gamekeeping.

The abuse is not limited to anonymous internet trolls. Celebrities have thrown their weight behind it. Before a new BBC director-general pushed him towards moderation, one of shooting’s leading opponents told a protest in London: “We’ve had it with snares, lead shot, illegal persecution; we’ve had it with a lack of scientifically informed decisions and animals being ripped to pieces with dogs; we’ve had it with our dwindling wildlife being wasted by psychopaths.”

Of course, the polished and media-savvy faces of the anti-shooting movement know they can’t call for harassment and abuse. But it is their rhetoric that creates the environment in which more extreme voices feel safe to speak out.

On the ground this has turned into real action that affects people’s lives.

Endless