Last week Prince William (38) and his family spent a couple of days in Scotland to visit his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, at her castle in Balmoral. The Queen (94) owns vast lands there and traditionally spends her summer holidays in Balmoral. Most of her relatives and friends are being regularly invited to stay and spent a few days there. One of the favorite pastimes of the British royal family is to engage in hunting shoots. The hunting season usually starts on August 12 and ends on December 10.
This year Prince William took his eldest on Prince George (7) with him for a grouse shoot. It is not believed that George actively shot a grouse. He was part of a hunting party that consisted of his parents, William’s aunt Princess Anne together with her husband Tim Laurence and Anne’ son Peter Philips. Prince Edward, the Queen’s youngest son, was also believed to be part of that group together with his son James (12).
Hunting has a long tradition in the British royal family with the Queen’s father, King George VI. having shot 90 pheasants, 17 rabbits, two pigeons and three mallards in Sandringham on one of his last shoots before he died in 1952. Also the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip (99,) used to be an avid hunter boasting to have shot 10,000 pheasants while the had spent seven weeks in Sandringham in 1993.
The royal family has often been heavily criticized for taking part in bloodsports and shooting parties. Especially Prince William came under fire who took part in a boar hunt in 2014 only to a few days later to publicly condemn poaching and illegal wildlife trade. Prince Philip, who used to be the president of the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) in Britain, took part in tiger shoots in India and Nepal in 1961. He shot two tigers and was massively criticized for that by animal rights groups.
With Prince George (7) now taking part in grouse shoots on his great-grandmother’s Balmoral estates it can safely be assumed that the bloodsport tradition is to be kept alive in the royal family. George, who is third in line to the throne, will be raised to follow his family’s tradition. Even his mother Cathrine, the Duchess of Cambridge, and her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, actively took part in the Balmoral shoots with Catherine’s parents been taught how to stalk deer.
It is believed that the royal family these days tries to make sure not to have any pictures taken of them while hunting. They know that those shoots don’t resonate well with the public and that they contrast with the clean image that especially William and his family have tried to establish over the years. Prince Harry (35) has taken less part in hunting parties ever since he married Meghan Markle (39) in 2018. Although Harry used to like shoots and also took part in the Sandringham boxing day shoot in 2018 he scaled down hunting because his wife – like the majority of the British people – deems this sport as cruel and utterly unfair.
