What is shooting worth? Of course, this question cannot be answered definitively. How can you place a value on a day out with your friends; on a child learning to climb a barbed-wire fence; on serving your friends food you have hunted yourself; on the feeling of the wind in your hair; on watching a red-listed wader getting a brood away? There’s more to value than money.
But once we have acknowledged all of that, let’s ask the question again. What is the value of shooting, in pounds and pennies? If the numbers were neatly written out in columns and totalled at the bottom, what would an economist conclude shooting is worth?
Of all the many forms of shooting, grouse shooting is the most intensively studied, though
