Is Chris Packham finally facing facts on shooting?

Chris Packham is widely seen as the most extreme of well-known animal rights activists. His obsessions against hunting and shooting forfeit the impartiality required of a television nature presenter. So it is bold of the excellent new magazine, Fieldsports Journal, to give Mr Packham lots of space in its issue designed for the start of the grouse season this week. Photographed in a butt, Mr Packham not only grants an interview, but also contributes his own article, which begins with his almost lyrical description of holding a rifle (‘I lift the fore-end and feel its weight on the bulb of my left thumb…’). Not strictly relevant, since grouse are dispatched by shotgun, but his tone sounds conciliatory. ‘Let’s rapidly find equal and honest terms for a truce,’ he says. ‘Let’s stop fighting and start co-operating, use each other’s skills and knowledge to make more progress more rapidly.’ He does believe in culling and admits the need to ‘educate’ the protestors he often leads. It is not walked-up grouse, but only driven birds (what he — misleadingly, since grouse are wild birds — calls ‘grouse farming’) which he opposes. He agrees that curlew are better protected on grouse moors than on farmland. Are these tactics to weaken shooting’s resistance to him and paint himself as a moderate, or a genuine reaching out? I do not know, but it is always interesting when young fanatics get older and improve their knowledge. Facing facts, the more intelligent ones often change their minds. Country life is made to pay a high price, however, for their initial ignorance and self-righteousness. Handle Mr Packham with care, but also with interest.

Gilbert White of Selborne was the proto-giant of natural history. But he was also a bachelor curate with susceptibilities. Noticing my remarks about the use of the ‘x’ in emails to signify a kiss (Notes, 25 July), Philip Geddes, trustee of the Gilbert White and Oates Collections, writes from Hampshire to claim that White (300 years old this year) was the first person to use this symbol in a letter.