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Shooting pigeons , for crop protection ,response from Natural England


fenboy
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I think if there were anyone studying this forum who wished us bad intent it would have happened long before now.

 

Such as when pics of stock doves , lead shot duck , deer / pheasant out of season , pheasants on a Sunday etc , etc , etc have been posted !

I think there are far more damaging things on here than some one posting a defining point of law that we should all know about anyway .

 

I have not yet heard of anyone getting dragged away in cuffs on here for any of the above !

 

Edited to add.

 

When I see such things posted , I always use the report button to get them removed , to protect our sport , how many of you do the same ?

Edited by fenboy
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Such as when pics of stock doves , lead shot duck , deer / pheasant out of season , pheasants on a Sunday etc , etc , etc have been posted !

I think there are far more damaging things on here than some one posting a defining point of law that we should all know about anyway .

 

I have not yet heard of anyone getting dragged away in cuffs on here for any of the above !

 

Edited to add.

 

When I see such things posted , I always use the report button to get them removed , to protect our sport , how many of you do the same ?

 

My God, you really are intent on dragging us down.

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Not at all it is those that , cannot identify quarry , those that do not understand laws and restrictions and dare I say those with their heads stuck in the sand pretending such things do not happen drag us down .

 

People that feel they can do as they please is the very reason the lead ban is back on the agenda .

 

Those wanting people to act within the law and to understand that law will NEVER drag shooting down , I am sorry you are too blind to see that , I guess its the sand in your eyes.

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I'll correct you there. He said that you can shoot them in that situation IF you have permission to carry out crop protection for that field of crops.

 

So u need permission of a random farmer (who may be miles away) to shoot a pigeon in ur garden or on ur land? Some farmers would have a cue of people knocking on there door if there the only arable farmer around for folk to use GL for the whole district

 

Its a hypothetical queation and will vary greatly exactly how the question was worded and its context. there is so many subtle variations that would change things. The exact wording of the GL pretty much changes every year anyway and is often not great creating grey areas.

 

I can think of 1 massive grey area that happens very often but i'm not about to mention it on a pblic forum.

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Not at all it is those that , cannot identify quarry , those that do not understand laws and restrictions and dare I say those with their heads stuck in the sand pretending such things do not happen drag us down .

 

People that feel they can do as they please is the very reason the lead ban is back on the agenda .

 

Those wanting people to act within the law and to understand that law will NEVER drag shooting down , I am sorry you are too blind to see that , I guess its the sand in your eyes.

 

I think ur slightly misguided while breaking laws does shooting nofavours, but those who want it banned dinae really care how law abiding we are.

They just want as much ammo as possible to use against us so washing dirty luandry in public does not help.

Esp when ur point is so vague, yes u may be correct but u only have to change a couple off things slightly to be within the GL

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I have made clear all along that , my post was prove things are not quite as simple with the GL as turning up somewhere and shooting pigeon .

 

It was never with a particular case of the law having been broken in mind , 99.9% of the time it would be difficult not to be shooting within the terms of the licence .

 

I also said it was open to interpritation , but was mocked and told it is simple to follow , you just need to read it !

 

There are plenty of grey areas , for instance it quotes " to prevent serious damage " who decides on what serious damage is ? you ? me ? the farmer ?

 

What happens when those that do not understand it are giving advice to the new shooters among us , I will stand by my stance that it is better to be open and honest rather than trying to sweep things under the carpet .

 

I could have kept quiet , but now plenty of people have chance to read this and have a better understanding , and that to me is a good thing for our sport not a negative .

 

I think that point made I will retire from this thread , think what you like , do what you like but the more of you that stay on the right side of the law will be doing our sport more of a favour than someone who could not care less.

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I doubt we will ever have rules,regulations, laws or guidance written in a way that will not lend itself to interpretation / misinterpretation. Other than the ten commandments maybe. That's why we have lawyers for all categories of possible offences.

Rules written in the way they are IMO, are to enable a fair minded person to amend their position slightly to be able to comply with the written letter without having blatant and total disregard for the rule.

I shall be happy to continue my sport as I have always done and that is without being pedantic about the wording of the GL.

Edited by Good shot?
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So u need permission of a random farmer (who may be miles away) to shoot a pigeon in ur garden or on ur land? .

This is the issue, people using the GL to shoot a protected animal because it's just there, eating and drinking.

 

The GL, imo is there to give legitimate reasons to be exempt from the law, I'm certain when it was drafted it was to protect major crop damage, for the greater good, not someone who's has his strawberry patch wrecked, or some **** on his garden bench.

 

If you grow substantial amounts, then fair play, but using the exemption to blat one (any bird) for no reason you deserve the consequences.

 

I've always said, I couldn't care less what people do, it's unlikely you'll get caught, but myself...well I have no reason to shoot a pigeon nobbing about in my garden.

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Let's just look in detail how that might happen:

  1. Fenboy posts response from Natural England.
  2. Jobsworth from Natural England searches forums for letter sent recently to Fenboy and finds it.
  3. Jobsworth writes down the usernames of all the people who - though probably obeying the law in practice - argued against Fenboy's interpretation in the discussion.
  4. Jobsworth sends list of usernames to the police.
  5. Police obtain warrant from judge to force PW to release the personal details of those members where suspicion of wildlife crime may have occurred.
  6. Police seize firearms of those members as a "preventative" measure whilst investigations occur.
  7. Investigations continue for 18 months.
  8. Members are found to be innocent of any crime, but are prevented from regaining FACs / SGCs because "balance of probability" means the respective Chief Constables can refuse to re-instate certificates.
  9. A career-minded liberal MP takes up the cause... of preventing anyone not employed as a professional pest controller from using the general licences to shoot pigeons, because the incident demonstrates that the law is not well-understood by the common man.
  10. Further restrictions are placed on shooters in light of the incident.
  11. Fenboy sleeps soundly, safe in the knowledge that being right was more important than ruining livelihoods and ending pigeon shooting in this country as we know it.

Ok - so numbers 9-11 may be a little far fetched (though has anyone remembered the name of Kenny McAskill who's done just that with air guns in Scotland?) but I'll leave Fenboy with this advice:

 

 

 

Are you serious? :rolleyes:

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So if I planted one beetroot seed in my garden and shot a pigeon just poising his beak to eat the young shoot that would not constituteserious damage to my crop. The law in this country is prohibitive if it is illegal it is written in statute.

One beetroot seed could not be described as a 'crop' as defined. In addition, if it was one beetroot seed, you would REASONABLY be able to take other measures (net over, for example) to prevent the bird from damaging it. Remember that shooting is supposed to be the last resort !

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One beetroot seed could not be described as a 'crop' as defined. In addition, if it was one beetroot seed, you would REASONABLY be able to take other measures (net over, for example) to prevent the bird from damaging it. Remember that shooting is supposed to be the last resort !

Is it, I was under the inpression that the policy of "shoo before you shoot" was dropped following the consultation process and lobbying from the CA and BASC in september 2014.

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With the response you got from natural England you are breaking the law roost shooting or shooting over stubble then.

Stubble is not a crop, so you don't have a crop to protect.

It's ok saying they might come back on a future crop but what if farmer leaves as set aside.

 

Also who's saying joe blogs with his acre of concrete doesn't decide in the future to rip it up and drill some cereal?

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With the response you got from natural England you are breaking the law roost shooting or shooting over stubble then.

Stubble is not a crop, so you don't have a crop to protect.

It's ok saying they might come back on a future crop but what if farmer leaves as set aside.

 

Also who's saying joe blogs with his acre of concrete doesn't decide in the future to rip it up and drill some cereal?

You've not been reading have you.

 

Prevention.

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There really is no point in this thread, it was a hypothetical and quite unlikely scenerio/question designed for the answer the OP wanted. So many different but similar scenerios it's impossible to generalise on a thread like this

 

Bottom line u ALL should read the GL's a understand them and try to interepet them, for most decoying shooting u will be covered but i'm sure there is a lot of shooting goes on around the edges in the 'grey' areas, as has been said roost shooting could be a grey area (how far can a roosting wood be from a crop fields, and if u believe some of the replies here u need permission from the crop field owner to shoot a roosting wood miles away??), few other grey areas i can see if u wanted to take the GL literally but so many ways to interrept it.

 

If in any doubt phine BASC/ur org and ask them? Also just because u spoke a some EN employee does not mean he knows the correct answer, not all polis understand firearms law or even the FLO's on occasion

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Well done fenboy . Your right and lots of us were wrong. Can I just thank you for making sure that we are all understanding the GL regarding pigeons . To even go to the trouble to email NE to get clarification that you were indeed right to prove us wrongens wrong was a very selfless thing to do and I bet you took no pleasure in it what so ever . Lol

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So does NE speak for the whole of the UK or is it just england as there are many irish ,welsh and scots on the forum ,just wondered why its just england that always seems to be mentioned,this being a a mostly a UK forum?

johnnie

edit .and before anyone asks ,yes i have read the GL and understand it(well most of it) :rolleyes:

NE We're the government’s adviser for the natural environment in England, helping to protect England’s nature and landscapes for people to enjoy and for the services they provide.

Edited by AULD YIN
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Fascinating how we interact! But on a serious note you would have to be fundamentally stupid not to see/realise the growth in pigeon numbers in the uk or certainly in East Anglia. Further more, again you would have to be fundamentally stupid, not to realise from crop contents that the grey hoards are eating our crops - 'our crops' being the food planted to feed our expanding population. What is the current population of woodies? I read somewhere (was it a CLA survey??) it could be as high as 30m. RSPB estimate was less than a third of that I recall but can any of you learned gents remember any studies done by independent bodies?

 

So, as an old keeper told me as a boy, we need as many of you in the woods as possible for roost shooting, to reduce their numbers before they start to breed. Even though it is fun, we get to loose off a lot of lead with gay abandon, we might even put a few in the freezer, we are part of the crop control process.

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I'm confident that the guy who responded to the e-mail to clarify also interpreted the wording, I bet they had no input into writing it originally or the like.

 

You only have to read the GL to see its PREVENTION not PROTECTION, they mean very different things and thus shooting over stubble, roost shooting etc are well within the law.

 

On the side... *** guys stop all the chest puffing egotistical bull, you do youselves no favours bar showing your true colours.

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