This is on the River Cam near Bridge Street in Cambridge – near where the punts are moored up and the people sit and drink and talk and look at the scene. The person with the pole is not an employed punter – employed by the punting companies. How do I know that – I don’t know; he looks too young and not agile and muscular enough (no offence) – and the clothing. Just something says he is part of the party that are in the punt.

For anyone who happens along, the trick of punting is to drop the pole vertically right by the side of the punt where the person is standing, and push out behind as the punt moves. Drop the pole directly behind or too far out, and the chances are that the punt will start to describe the beginning of a circle. Apart from that the other thing to watch is yourself, because the pole is wet and you will get wet.

In October last year, Bloomberg reported the China had loosened the restrictions on imports to tackle its power crisis and that Indonesia supplies about two-thirds of China’s total imports and is China’s biggest overseas supplier, supplying 17 million tons of coal in August, and 21 million tons in September.

And now as the new year of 2022 comes in, Reuters reported that Indonesia, whose biggest customers for its coal are China, India, Japan and South Korea, has banned coal exports until it has evaluated whether it has enough for its own needs.

Indonesia has a population of over 275 million, so its own needs are not insignificant. The USA has a population of 332 million, to give you a comparison.

And compare that to The Russian Federation that has a population of 146 million.

The Photo At The Top Of This Article

It’s the stairs leading up to the seating at the bullring at Ronda in Spain, a venue that is no longer used for bullfights. I happened to have processed the photo a day or two ago and it is sitting on my desktop. It has no relevance to this article other than that the sky is blue and not covered in the grit and grime from burning coal.

How many pheasants and partridges do you think are shot in the UK every year? If you want, take a moment to think how many that might be. The actual number might surprise you.

Animal Aid says that every year, around sixty million pheasants and partridges are bred to be shot. It doesn’t say there are all shot. The fact is that some might die before growing old enough to be driven into the air. Or they might escape the guns and live out their lives. Or at least they might live until the next shooting season.

WildJustice says that 43 million Pheasants and 9 million Red-legged Partridges are raised and released to be shot.

The pheasant shooting season in Great Britain runs from the 1st October – 1st February, and the partridge shooting season runs from the 1st September – 1st February.

The Pheasant Shooting season in Northern Ireland runs from the 1st October – 31st January and the partridge shooting season runs from the 1st September – 31st January.

Let’s approximate and say there are equal numbers shot in Britain and Ireland. The numbers are probably not the same, but let’s split the difference and say the season overall runs from 15 September to 31 January – that’s 138 days.

Let’s say that all the birds raised are shot and that an equal number are shot each day during the season – so that’s 430,000 per day. Is that credible?

It doesn’t seem credible, does it? So let’s see if we can approach it from another direction, starting with how many people shoot pheasants.

The Game Shooting Census and Shoot Owner Census is run by GunsOnPegs and Strutt & Parker. For their report in 2018 they surveyed 652 shoot across the UK. From that they extrapolated to the total number of shoots and arrived at 9,000 shoots and 1,724 birds shot per shoot. So they did it for us and it’s an easy calculation: 15.5M birds shot each year by the shooters’ own calculation. Let’s go with that, while accepting the figure may actually be much higher

15.5M Birds Shot Each Year

Isn’t that an incredible number? People paying to line up and have pheasants and partridges herded towards them, and then shooting them when the birds take the air. I mean, if you could hear all the shoots over the UK, the sound of guns must be almost continual. It has to be, in fact.

Let’s say there are ten daylight hours in a day over the shooting days, and the guns are shooting half the daylight hours. That’s about two-and-a-half-million seconds.

So there are six guns somewhere in the UK firing non-stop for 138 days.

Lead Shot

Moving on from the shooting, let’s look at the amount of lead shot that is used.

Let’s suppose that every shot bags a bird. It’s unlikely, but let’s go with that.

GunsOnPegs quotes the recommendations from ElyHawk cartridge maker. For a 12 bore shotgun they recommend the 30g No.6 and the 32g No.5.

A pellet of No.6 weighs 1.6 g. So in 30g there are 18 or 19 pellets. Let’s say 18. A pellet of No.7 weighs 1.28g. So in 32g there are 25 pellets.

Let’s assume that the shooters use 30g No. 6 and 32g No. 7 equally, and split the difference between 18.5 and 25, and say 22.

So with 15,500,000 birds, that’s 341 million pellets of lead, some of which land up in the pheasants and partridges and a lot of it that ends up on the ground.

When lead comes in contact with moist air it becomes reactive. And especially so when the soil is acidic, as most farmland soil is. And even a moment’s thought will show the danger, because lead is forbidden to be used in water pipes.

Each year, more lead lies on the ground and be absorbed into the ground and the groundwater, to be absorbed by birds, animals, and humans.

Lead is a cumulative poison that affects the neurological system. Children absorb a larger amount of lead per unit body weight and are more susceptible to lead poisoning than adults. Lead causes a lower IQ, behavioural changes and concentration disorders.