WHY DECLARE YOUR KILLINGS?
(It relates to my own blog of Saturday 29th May)
The Newsletter 67 of 2nd July from Legal Justice carries the comment;
“ The very strange world of a shooting fantasist”
It is an update of their Newsletter 62 and posted by RaptorPersecutionUK
Near the end of May we sent out newsletter 62 which decribed what we believed was a breach of the general licences (we also published an account on our blog). The events which we reported to DEFRA were published in the Shooting Times on 10 February in an article which purported to describe a day's shooting where a regular columnist describes going out into the countryside in late January to see how many species of mammal and bird he could shoot. He was delighted to shoot 10 species in the day including a Carrion Crow and a Jay (see image above from the article). Those species are only lawfully killed under certain circumstances and with certain conditions. We believed that the shooting of those two birds was potentially unlawful. Today we can provide an update on that matter in this newsletter and on our blog
At DEFRA's request, we sent the legal and biological dossiers that we had sent to them to Essex Police who investigated. Essex Police have recently told us that they cannot take the case any further as the Shooting Times columnist denies having shot either a Jay or a Carrion Crow despite having described the shots that led to the deaths of these two birds in some detail in his published article.
Essex Police tell us that 'With regards to the Carrion Crow and Jay he has stated that, he did not shoot these birds on this day and has a number of frozen/prop birds that he uses in his articles, if he needs to and bases the events on previous incidents or other incidents which have similarities.'.
So, assuming, as we will, that this statement is true, the article was not true. If it had been true then perhaps the court would have been asked to rule on the legality of the action - an action that we would state is unlawful (but since it did not happen in this particular case that is the end of this matter).
We intend to ask DEFRA for their view on these matters in general, in case such circumstances arise in future. We have also written to the Shooting Times stating that we regard their publication of a false and misleading article as a breach of the IPSO Editors' Code and seeking a retraction and clarification.
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