HUNTING, shooting and fishing brigade devotees were left spitting feathers after one of Britain’s biggest landowners banned grouse-shooting on its estates.

Water company United Utilities provides water and sewage services in north-west England, where it owns huge swathes of moorland in the Pennines and Lake District.

Current leases to shoot grouse will not be renewed, the company said.

The decision brought a furious response from the Countryside Alliance, including a suggestion that the ban was merely a “distraction” from the company’s main problem — dumping raw sewage into the north-west’s waterways.

United Utilities is one of Britain’s worst polluters and its annual meeting last Friday was targeted by protests from health professionals, wild swimmers, boaters, dog-walkers, anglers and environmental groups.

Pro-hunting campaign group the Countryside Alliance said in statement: “United Utilities seem to be panicking about its recent appalling media coverage over their pollution of our waterways.

“The suggestion that it is banning shooting on its land has all the hallmarks of an ill-thought-out distraction technique that will inevitably backfire.”

The alliance said menacingly that United Utilities “should expect to find all its operations significantly more difficult, as a large part of the countryside will no longer want to co-operate with them in any way.

“It would be a stupid move for any landowner and utility provider to pick a fight with the countryside, let alone one which relies so heavily on access on to other people’s land,” said the alliance.

Water companies have a statutory right to enter private land without the owner’s permission.

The League Against Cruel Sports welcomed the company’s “historic” decision.