We live in a part of the country where game of all kinds – deer, wild boar, pheasant, partridge etc. – is readily available through butchers and game dealers, especially at this time of year.
A topic that is growing in weight in the media is the use of toxic lead shot to bag game. In July, Waitrose announced that from the 2020-21 season it will ban the sale in its stores of birds shot with lead ammunition. This follows from recommendations by the government’s expert group in 2015 which concluded that there were no ways to reduce the risk to human health and wildlife from lead shot other than using non-toxic ammunition instead.