Our columnist Ruth Wishart calls for an investigation after mountain hare stocks in the Scottish Highlands fell to 1 per cent of their 1950s level.

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Being a total wimp on the matter of animal cruelty, I normally avoid any images liable to cause distress.

(I’m the viewer who can’t watch any of the award-winning David Attenborough documentaries because something seems to be savaged by something else less than five minutes in every time.)

But I forced myself to look at a picture on social media this week which featured a group of self-satisfied men in tweeds, presumably gamekeepers, standing behind row upon row of dead hares in their winter whites – all shot at the behest of the landowners, lest any diseased tick might transfer to their grouse stocks.

And the latter must be protected from disease at all costs of course. In order to kill them.

There was, too, a documentary on the BBC the other week featuring secretly shot footage of a jeep load of hare carcasses. And this week a report was published suggesting stocks of mountain hares in Scotland were at just one per cent of the level of the 1950s.

Cue huffing and puffing from the Scottish Moorland Group, who say they only cull “between 7 and 14 per cent” of these utterly beautiful native beasts – an assertion quickly rebutted by assorted animal charities who note that large scale culls are actually illegal under EU legislation and that “they are an unwarranted means of controlling grouse disease”.

Perhaps this latest alarming statistic will finally prompt some real action to investigate just how great the threat has now become.

There is something very special about our mountain hares; graceful, athletic, enchanting in their natural habitat. And something very special about those who think maintaining grouse stocks at any cost is a price worth paying so that a minority of – very often non-native – species can roam the moors, shooting birds and animals herded into their path and gun sights to ensure maximum carnage.

This time last year I was having a conversation with celebrated chef Tom Kitchin, who had just had a new book published on cooking game.

He took the honest position that he would not oppose killing anything which was specifically destined for the pot. And it’s difficult for any carnivore to argue with that. Loving gambolling springtime lambs does not prevent my scoffing the odd chop.

But I do very much take issue with hired guns killing off precious hare stocks, lest their clients have fewer feathered targets to blast out the skies on their annual jolly to the Scottish Highlands.