Don't bid in ego auction

We all like to think we can bring down the odd towering bird but how many of us can really judge distance accurately, asks Simon Reinhold

Most mammalian predators have two forward-facing eyes, which gives them binocular vision. This ability to focus on an object with both eyes and produce in the brain a single image from two independent light sources — the eyes — allows such predators to make a judgement.

For a cheetah stalking through the savannah into a herd of gazelle, it is a judgement of timing and distance. Launch too soon and the hunt will be unsuccessful. Too many poorly judged hunts in a row and the tipping point on the graph of survival is passed; weakness and death will surely follow.

Game shooters face the same dilemma but for us the judgement is an ethical one. Is the bird we are about to shoot a sporting shot or is the shot unethical?

Moral code

For many of us the answer is found in a moral code we were taught as youngsters but we should never lose sight of the fact that we are the lucky ones. We are fortunate to have had a family mentor to bring us into the sport. If that is the case, a New Year’s resolution worth considering would be to bring someone into the sport who has not had that chance.

One of the first things we learn is that a shot too close is unsporting because it spoils the meat for the table. How many of us actively consider whether a shot out of range is also unsporting because the risk of wounding becomes too great for it to be an ethical choice? Should both my children wish to progress from air rifles to live quarry shooting — and I make no assumptions — I will know they will have graduated into ethical sportsmen when they pass up a shot because it is out of their effective range. To do so will take practice, an accurate judgement of distance, and a conscience. But how do we achieve that and how do we know if we are accurate in our judging of distance?