Killing fields of the Inglorious Twelfth tradition

Some birds are killed outright and others fall crippled and suffer till their necks are wrung.

Another 30 to 40 percent, we now know, are wounded and go off to die in the woods.

We know it because it was declared on oath by a former officer of the main shooting organisation.

Behind the scenes some landowners, through their gamekeepers, wage a war of annihilation on any animal or vegetable life that competes with the grouse.

They use snares, traps, guns and poison.

To encourage new heather for the grouse to eat they burn off the old heather, which sends enormous clouds of smoke - including carbon, of course - into the atmosphere.

Then the guns come and scatter lead over the countryside.

Wounding, killing, pollution. They call themselves conservationists.

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