King Charles expected to receive warm embrace from countryside community
King Charles III looks set to take his late mother’s place in the affections of shooting and country people across the UK.
The King has a long record of involvement with the British countryside and is a knowledgeable game shot.
While he was Prince of Wales, the new King was famously willing to walk a very fine line on issues which were dear to him and this included advocating for traditional fox hunting – a sport he is said to have loved. Moves by Tony Blair’s government to ban the sport lead to the Prince remarking that its opponents were “driven by agendas other than the welfare of the fox – namely their antipathy to the type of person who they think goes out hunting,” and that if it was banned he “might as well leave the country and spend the rest of my life skiing.”
While at Balmoral, he was keen to spend time fishing for salmon, grouse shooting and deer stalking and one of Kate Middleton’s first trips to the estate saw her stalking alongside her father-in-law.
The King is also very much expected to continue with the longstanding tradition of a boxing day shoot on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. The annual shoot day is one of the most important private royal family functions and in previous years frequently saw the late Queen, Prince Philip, the current King and his sons all shooting together. Sandringham was widely seen as a passion project of his late father. However recently the King has been progressively taking over the leadership of what is arguably the country’s most prestigious game shoot.
As well as shifting the estate to organic production, he has also made it a centre of curlew conservation. Launching a new curlew project earlier this year he said: “I have always cherished the evocative call of the curlew. But it is now dangerously close to being something that our grandchildren will never have the chance to enjoy. I am therefore particularly delighted that the Sandringham estate has been able to assist in a small way the recovery of this wonderful bird.”
It is a sentiment that is echoed by country people and fieldsports enthusiasts across the country.
