There is a particular kind of look I’ve come to recognise. It’s not quite disapproval, not quite confusion – more a polite twitching of the moral compass. I tend to spot it when I mention that I shoot animals and then eat them.
The same person may have been nodding in agreement a few minutes earlier while I spoke about leading mountain safety courses, or about improving access to the countryside. But once firearms or fishhooks are introduced into the conversation, there’s a subtle closing of the shutters.
That’s the curious thing about the British outdoors in 2025: it’s not just a landscape, it’s a political landscape. And it turns out that some activities are more socially acceptable than others, even when they happen in the same field.
Which side are you on?
For reasons that are more historical than logical, we have come to code outdoor activities politically. Hiking, wild swimming, climbing, mountain biking – these are framed as progressive pursuits. Wholesome, photogenic, good for the soul. You might see them celebrated in Guardian supplements or in a National Trust campaign. They signal a kind of environmental virtue: leave no trace, tread lightly, take only photos.
Meanwhile, anything that involves deliberate impact – shooting, trapping, netting, fishing – tends to be cast as belonging to a different tribe. Older, rural, conservative. Red wall or red trousers. It doesn’t seem to matter that many of these people are harvesting food, restoring habitats, or managing populations. They still fall on the “wrong” side of the divide.
And then there’s farming, forestry, river keeping – people who live outdoors but don’t fit either narrative. They’re often excluded entirely, as though their presence spoils the view.
Framing the frame
The Overton Window is a political theory describing the range of ideas acceptable to public discourse at any given time. Push too far outside the window, and you’re dismissed as fringe or dangerous. Shift it slowly, and yesterday’s radical becomes today’s common sense.
We don’t often apply the theory to land use. But perhaps we should. Because there is very much an Overton Window in the British outdoors – one that defines which activities and values are considered normal. And like everything involving British land, it is shaped by class, ownership, and aesthetic preference.
Try this: shooting a rabbit for the pot is often more controversial than allowing your dog to run through nesting curlew. Using a legal trap to control grey squirrels might raise hackles, while releasing a TikTok-Reel-Short of drone footage over a red-listed bird colony gets praise for ‘raising awareness’.
The problem isn’t inconsistency – it’s incoherence. What counts as acceptable outdoors behaviour is increasingly judged by how it looks, not what it does.
Between basket and badge
This isn’t a theoretical musing. I’ve spent nearly two decades working in and around the outdoors – as a mountain leader, survival instructor, and latterly as a trainer for police, SAR, and military personnel in visual search and groundsign work (basically grown-up Hide and Seek).
I own all the right jackets. I can recite the Countryside Code and the Access Land boundaries by heart. I’m grateful for the freedoms granted under the CROW Act and the Scottish Land Reform legislation, and I use them often.
But I also shoot deer. I fish. I lay traps for invasive species and eat what I harvest (when edible and lawful). I’ve taught people how to gut rabbits, smoke squirrels, and safely extract a barbed hook from their thumb. I own the basket, the rod, and the rifle.
So where does that leave me?
Sometimes it feels like you have to choose. That having a foot in both camps – Paramo-clad leg in one stirrup, stalking boots in the other – invalidates your membership of either. That liking both lapwings and rifle zeroing makes you suspect.
It’s a false divide, of course. But we’re all living within it.
What lives outside the window?
At the safe end of the British outdoors, we find the things that look good on social media and fit neatly into an environmental narrative. Hillwalking. Wild camping (whether permitted or not). Paddleboarding with dogs in lifejackets. Plogging.
Then there’s the tolerated-but-awkward middle ground: deer stalking, corvid control, pheasant shoots, river management, trapping grey squirrels in native woodland. Activities that get invited to the table only when they’re dressed in their best biodiversity justification, but still largely dismissed as being done by some vaguely-awful people who might drive Range Rovers.
And outside the window? That’s where it gets uncomfortable. Wildfowling on coastal saltmarsh. Trying to outwit the local foxes to protect ground-nesting birds. Cutting a hedge down to the ground to allow new shoots to grow back in a way that will make it easier to lay in five years time. None of these things are illegal. Most are unglamorous. Many feed families, protect habitats, or preserve what’s left of the rural skills archive. But you won’t find them in a National Trust newsletter or on an eco-tourism leaflet. They don’t photograph well, and they don’t align with the polite fictions of ‘natural Britain’.
This isn’t about legality – it’s about cultural shorthand. About the way we subdivide even the most ordinary outdoor activities into imagined tribes. Is carp fishing left-wing because it’s accessible and working-class, or right-wing because it often happens on private syndicate lakes? Is fly fishing right-wing because of the cost of the rod licence and the tweed, or left-wing because of its quiet connection to insect life and river ecology? Are the people in the water – wild swimmers and paddleboarders – progressive, while those on the bank with a rod are reactionary? These distinctions fall apart the moment you press on them. But the wider culture rarely does. It prefers caricature. It prefers a tidy narrative where one group loves nature, and the other exploits it.
The Ragley–Kendal divide
At the end of July I spent three days at the Game Fair at Ragley Hall, recording episodes for the CountrySlide podcast. The footfall was impressive, and it’s no secret that most of those attending probably leaned to the right on most political questions. But what I found striking was just how many conversations I had – without prompting – about wildlife conservation, regenerative agriculture, hedge-laying, bird counts, predator control, and sward management.
People talked about woodland pasture, wader recovery, the relative merits of thermal optics for fox control. People argued, certainly, but they were arguing within a shared frame: how best to care for land, wildlife and livestock.
Contrast that with any of the days I have spent at a mountain film festival – say Kendal or similar. Brilliant storytelling, beautiful footage, and very often a compelling environmental message. But walk through the bars and stands and it’s rare – vanishingly so – to hear anyone talking about hedges, or game cover, or soil structure, or livestock integration. The relationship with land is recreational, emotional, photogenic. Rarely managerial.
And that, I think, is the real division. Not between Left and Right, but between those who experience the land as a place to look at, and those who experience it as a place to look after.
Across the water, a lesson in unity
Earlier this year, a U.S. Senate bill quietly included provisions for the sale of millions of acres of public land – BLM and Forest Service parcels used for hunting, hiking, fishing, conservation and much more. The backlash was immediate, and cross-ideological.
You had Republican elk hunters and progressive backpackers speaking with one voice. Public land, they said, must remain public. It wasn’t about politics this time – it was about place.
To a European eye, the idea of federally owned public land feels almost socialist. But to Americans, it’s a cornerstone of liberty. A shared inheritance, a marker that they are not repeating the history of their ancestors.
The measure was ultimately struck down. For now.
Could such a coalition happen here? Could the anglers and the ramblers, the beat keepers and the barefoot foragers find common cause? Or are we too fractured by class, history, and the long shadows of ownership?
At home, strange bedfellows
And yet… perhaps the cracks are starting to let some light in.
When the Sustainable Farming Incentive was abruptly suspended, it wasn’t just farmers who objected. Conservation NGOs, including the RSPB, reluctantly joined the chorus. Their objections weren’t political – they were practical. Poor communication, confused incentives, loss of momentum.
Likewise, the proposed ban on grouse shooting was quietly shelved, with opposition from MPs across party lines – largely because it threatened rural economies and conservation outcomes alike.
What these episodes show is that land use doesn’t always sit neatly along Left and Right. It cuts across place, class, and profession. And more often than not, it defies the assumptions of those watching from the outside.
On access and impact
One of the most emotionally charged debates in recent years has been over Right to Roam. The campaign for expanded access in England and Wales has gained traction, with vocal supporters arguing that we should have more freedom to walk, camp, swim and explore.
But here’s the thing: we already have excellent outdoor access in the UK. Between the CROW Act, Scotland’s open access model, permissive paths, green lanes and national trails, there is a remarkable freedom to explore – especially for such a crowded island. Possibly even the finest outdoor access of any nation with similar population density.
What concerns me, and many others, is not public access in principle. It’s the assumption that more access is always better – for people and for wildlife.
The Right to Roam campaign frames access as a moral right. But it rarely acknowledges the ecological consequences: ground-nesting birds disturbed during breeding season, dogs chasing livestock or flushing hares, wildflower meadows trampled, sites overused. Human presence is not neutral. And those of us who push back against expanded access often do so from a conservation perspective, not from snobbery.
Access is a privilege, yes – but it’s also a responsibility. We forget that at our peril.
A wider window, a clearer view
I don’t claim to have the answers. But I do know that the current boundaries of outdoor discourse are too narrow – and too shallow. If we want to build a better relationship with land, we need to stop pretending that some outdoor lives are more virtuous than others.
Because the people who walk the moors, dig the ditches, mend the fences and manage the deer are not necessarily your enemy. They may not speak your political language. But they are fluent in season, in place, in consequence.
And sometimes, that’s the only language that matters.
