The grouse shooting season started last week, an important source of jobs and cash from visiting big spenders here in the Dales, an event which delights the field sports community and deeply offends some conservationists.

North Yorkshire, sadly, has a particularly bad reputation amongst the latter group because, in recent years, the numbers of wild birds of prey found shot or poisoned have led to accusations that this is the work of rogue gamekeepers anxious to protect their young game bird chicks from what are indeed efficient predators.

Squaring this circle has been worrying game-shoot owners for some years now, particularly since the introduction of once absent species of birds of prey like the red kite and the hen harrier, which to me have added extra delight to any walk in the country.

But, then, I am not a shooter and I do not have a business to run which depends heavily on shooting.

Now, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has almost completed a science based, long-term, experiment to come up with ideas that could help hen harriers and grouse live together successfully out on the moors.

The first discovery was that the major predators on grouse eggs and young chicks were foxes, carrion crows and hooded crows.

These, of course, can be legally controlled by game keepers.

And it suggests that hen harriers can be lured away from grouse-rich areas by artificially feeding them with dead rats or similar.

Expensive, no doubt, and time consuming. But the fact of the matter is that many of our wild birds – particularly our song birds – are being kept alive by garden owners and their feeding tables.

If this initiative can save these handsome creatures, back in the Dales after a century or more, this could be one of the most successful projects ever at closing the hostility gap between field’s sportsmen and their more vocal critics.