Mother Natures Stewards

A woodpigeon frozen at roost

I picked up a frozen pigeon the other morning. Stiff as a board. The mercury had plummeted to about -4C overnight but it was the cutting Easterly wind that would have beaten the bird, sending its body temperature well below survival level. 


Mother Nature can be ruthless

Being out there in the fields and woods amid the wild creatures I watch, protect and, where necessary, cull opens my mind to the occasional casual cruelty of Mother Nature herself. It is a world, to me, devoid of ambition or politics or petty conflict. It is a pure, raw world where the only clock is the rising or the setting of the sun. Each days agenda is dictated by the need to feed, to breed, to raise young, to survive. Mother Natures jurisdiction is unquestionable. Under her rule, sometimes severe yet equally kind, each living thing thrives or fails .. us humans included. Don’t ever doubt that. A few years ago I recall a similar morning when I was picking woodpigeons from the floor that had literally frozen to death at roost, in the grand scheme of things a mere ‘flick’ of Mother Natures right hand. I returned home to hear that she had swept her left arm across the other side of the world and raised a tsunami that had killed many thousands of her ‘higher order’ subjects.



Are we a 'higher order'?

Are we ‘higher order’? Is that such an arrogant statement? I don’t believe it is. I reflect on this in the opening chapter of my second book, Airgun Fieldcraft. There are many people (usually with no connection to the countryside) who think we humans have a duty to protect all other creatures from harm. Sorry, but I disagree. Our evolution has placed us at the top of a food chain. We are, across most of the planet, Mother Natures stewards. We have been hunting for food since we learned how to stand on two feet. The fact that we learned how to herd and farm livestock was a credit to our intelligence but then we had to learn how to protect that stock .. “While shepherds watched their flock by night“. That stewardship has grown into more than just farming or fishing for food, it has extended into species conservation, wild herd management and game-keeping. The vermin control that I and my colleagues carry out is an extension of that.





A chapter from my book

Yet .. and I cover this subject at length in my books .. I would never advocate senseless or, worse still, insensitive slaughter of any wild creature. What we do enjoy (and why I believe we are the higher order) is the intelligence and power of reasoning to discriminate. We have it within our power to help control wildlife numbers, to protect our own economic needs, to defend vulnerable species. We also have .. and many forget this .. the wisdom and governance to stop our activities sometimes and take stock. Certainly, modern humanity has worked hard to do this and correct the sins of its ancestors through the use of international protection laws and exclusion lists.


All ceanly despatched

I used a very powerful and oft mis-understood word in the text above. Cruelty. The Wikpedia definition is superb and should be learned by all .. “indifference to suffering, and even pleasure in inflicting it”. Is Mother Nature indifferent? Does she take pleasure in causing the death of her minions? We will never know. We do, though, know our own minds and if we hunters can satisfy ourselves that neither of the above criteria apply, we can dismiss accusations (from those who don’t understand our role) that we are cruel.

Hunters, shooters, keepers and trappers have a moral duty under Mother Natures simple laws to respect the demise of their charges. For ‘charges’ they are. Once they appear in our sights, nets or contraptions we have an unerring duty to ensure a quick, clean despatch. For most wild creatures, taken unawares by a skilled and efficient hunter, there is no time to endure pain or distress. Certainly less so than freezing to death slowly clinging to a stark, bare branch in an English winter wood?

 

We have a duty of care to our charges

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c.Ian Barnett