One that didn't get away

Yesterday was the final shoot across the farm and woodland that borders our nature reserve. Today when I was working at the reserve, coppicing some hazel bushes, I came across a dead pheasant that must have glided into the reserve after being shot. It looked perfect and I took a lot of photographs of the beautiful feathers. I even thought I might have come across my surprise supper...until I turned the bird over and saw that various scavengers and small mammals had already been dining. I decided to take the beautiful images away and leave the carcass to feed many of our reserve inhabitants.

I don't like shooting like this and don't really understand the urge to do it. However, I am a meat eater and I am much happier eating venison or game from animals that have lived in the sorts of beautiful places I love and have been shot, suddenly, out of the blue, than animals that have been factory farmed in appalling conditions. I just wish the guys from the shoot were better shots as there are now far too many pheasants surviving in the wild from artificial release projects and they must have a significant impact on the insects we are desperately trying to conserve. Yet another countryside dilemma!