Cold game: a hot topic

Using dead game for training and competitions is bad PR for the sport, says David Tomlinson, who’s pleased it’s falling out of favour

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I STARTED MY shooting career as a rough-shooting pot hunter, an apprenticeship that affected my attitude to game for the rest of my life. Woodpigeons were my staple quarry. None were wasted: I used to pluck and dress surplus birds to sell to friends, the revenue raised paying for more cartridges. Pheasants and woodcock rarely featured in the bag; if they did they were never sold but were always cooked with some ceremony.

In later years I became involved with working and training my spaniels, but using dead game as training dummies never felt right. There was something intrinsically wrong with using a pheasant, partridge or duck that I had shot for retrieving practice. Game was something to be both respected and valued, so chucking it about like a canvas dummy didn’t fit well with this ethos. I did use the occasional dead bird for a training retrieve, but I was always careful to avoid damaging it, and it would still end up being plucked and eaten.

I was less than impressed when I came across serious gundog trainers who had dedicated freezers full of feathered or furred game to be used for out-of-season training sessions. I was equally appalled at finding people who would shoot woodcock for no other reason than to use the birds for gundog training. It was, and most certainly still is, common practice, but it still seems to me an insult to a beautiful bird. Woodcock fly 1,000 or more miles to winter here. To shoot them for use as a training aid, and one that will eventually be thrown away, I find impossible to justify.