JJsDad

Surprised you didnt include Brexit & caronavirus as well ! Your one sided rant ignores the following: The GPs letter fiasco is directly down to some Chief Constables exceeding the Home Office guidelines on medical checks and the BMA failing to come up with guidelines on fee`s for GPs. Some of whom do not view this as NHS core business and refuse to take part in the call for GPs letters. BASC have been taking the Home Office, Chief Constables and the BMA to task over this and are trying to get all stake holders around a table to thrash the mess out. They have in the meantime set up a scheme for members to be put in touch with GPs who will produce the required letter. The General Licence fiasco was a direct result of a legal challenge by Wild Justice on a weak knee`d Board of Directors at Natural England (NE) who cancelled a selection of GLs at 48 hrs notice. Everyone was caught flat footed, not just BASC. Our represtatives in parliament didnt even know what was going on. Once the poorly worded intial GL became available, BASC fought tooth and nail to get a workable and fit for purpose licence issued; which took a move of the problem from NE to DEFRA and the intervention of Mr Gove before it was sorted out. Lead - I wont even go there. Pages & pages have been devoted to this already. All I will say is that single use plastic is in the public eye. Many if not most game shoots stipulate fibre wad only; that should tell you something. If you were unaware of the constant drive to get rid of lead, you must have your head firmly planted in the sand and were obviously waiting until goverment legislation brought an end to its use. I suppose you would then throw a tantrum that BASC failed to warn you.

Not all Police Forces have implemented this as a mandatory requirement. If it was a requirent of your county force, I would have thought your FEO would have mentioned it. Kent Police website cleary states the requirement and says "No GPs letter = No Licence.

You need to ask your Firearms Licencing Dept as there is no national agreement across all forces on this. Some do, some dont and some are in the process of intoducing it. You also need to check with your GP, he may or may not be too busy; but some practises have a policy of not taking on this extra work. If your county force is saying no GPs letter no licence you havent got much choice. I have recently (Sept 19) had to change GPs in order to get the letter required by my county force,

Aagh, but the original 2 founding members morphed into one you will recall, and that one found then found the dialogue to hot to handle; so it was more of a shell club, until they could recruit others ! 😂 With the CPSA statement we can probably expect some new members with something to say on the matter !

Perhaps you should read through the other 14 pages on this sordid little saga under "Oh Dear". The unknowns may then be a little clearer to you !

And being members of the `Thursday` club !

Drop Beretta an email, see link below. Very helpful when I needed bits for my AL390. estore@beretta.com

The simple answer is, no they dont. There are no price guidelines, so Doctors are free to charge what they see fit for what is non-NHS work. You are evidenty lucky in that your GP decided not to charge, mine was £25 which I was happy to pay. Others have not been so fortunate and there are horror stories on this forum of people being told to cough up between £100 & £200.

You dont need a tin hat, not everyone needs or wants to know. A photo of the area around the proof marks will help identify the relevant marks, as different manufacturers & proof houses all have different ways of indicating the degree of choke present when the gun was first made. However, these marks can mislead, as what they wont tell you without gauging is whether the choke has been eased out slightly by a previous owner since the gun was made. If you want to know accurately, a friendly gunsmith will for free or a few pounds measure them with a bore micrometer. Alternatively the simple brass chokes gauges available off the bay, though not dead accurate, will at least give you an indication of the degree of choke present.

For exactly the same reason as the proof house has stipulated below to 8 shot, as dedicated high bird guns they are probably choked 3/4 & full ! my Miroku's 12 and 20 are ok for for standard steel👍, but "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES" through anything tighter than half, preferably less than that as cosmetic damage WILL be the result .

As David is the only one from the shooting organisations with the guts to stick his head over the top of the trench and try to answer the questions raised on this forum, your hysterical comments are ill judged and ill informed. Quite how you consider the entire shooting world is stained and damaged is totally beyond me. If you want out of BASC, fine; stop paying your subs and find another organisation to represent you, but do spare us your hysterics because you are actually helping no one. The vast majority in the shooting world knew plastics and lead shot were under the microscope; better off we look at doing something positive now rather than wait until goverment legislation is forced on us.

You are not alone ! Our local Sainsbury`s were totally sold out yesterday, clear shelves, not a loo roll of any description in sight. The girl on the check out told my good lady that people were buying 10 packs at a time; in the large packs there are 10 rolls !!!! I mean who wants or needs 100 rolls I can understand someone buying a few tinned steak & tiddly pies or other tinned goods to avoid the weekly scrummage, but 100 loo rolls defies belief. Unless there is a very dodgy curry complaint doing the rounds.

Cardigun hi. Yep, see your point. It was your comment about local representation that steered me towards the local BASC reps as shown in the magazine. Even so, a local BASC rep should be able to furnish you with the names of the council members. Kalahari who is a member of PW, has I think stood for election in the past & may be able to shed some light on your question. If you google BASC Council Members, you can bring up the list. However, for obvious reasons there are no contact details. A phone call or email to BASC might reveal how to make contact, albeit the phones are probably running red hot at present !!!!!

I think if you look in the BASC magazine (towards the end) it lists the sub-areas like Scotland, SE, Wales etc and the area reps. However, as the statement(s) were distributed from the BASC media centre at Marford Mill, an approach direct to them might be the better route. I think one of our members has already visited them in person. Might have been Salopian, have a search for his posts.

Yes, but they are responding to the joint statement by the shooting organisations, with whom they are a bit peeved. If the goverment steps in and introduces legislation banning all lead shot cartridges and single use plastics in say 2025, you might find the impossible suddenly becomes achievable, because otherwise the last person leaving the Gamebore building can turn out the lights.

I hope and think you are correct. The non-toxic range of cartridges has improved greatly since the ban came in for fowling all those years back. It is in the cartridge manufacturers interest to improve still further in line with the joint statent by CA, BASC et al. However the statment would have carried far more weight if Gamebore, Eley & Lyvale etc had been brought on board. The joint statement might have needed a bit of tweaking to reflect the cartridge industry views, the time line might have needed extending etc. But we wouldnt be facing the current fiasco where people are saying, `who lied`?

Cant say I blame them. The announcement would have been considerably more meaningful if all the shooting orgs had brought the cartridge manufacturers on board before releasing their joint statement. I have been a member since the WAGBI days and I will remain so. But someone on the management board of each of the organisations who signed up to this, needs a serious kick up the ar**. They have weakend their case and made the whole collection of them look poorly informed and boardering on the stupid; in addition they have seriously upset the people we need on board from the cartridge industry.

A few facts would probably enable us to answer your question. BASC have grasped the nettle over lead shot and single use plasic and are urging the UK cartridge industry to start a serious look at alternatives, I for one intend to still be shooting in 5 years time. Do you want to wait until the whole thing is forced on us by central government ?

There speaks the voice of reason and common sence, rather than some of the hysterical reactions to the BASC et al announcement that have been quoted here and elsewhere.

Couldnt agree more. Reading through some of the posts on here, I can totally understand why BASC et al released their statement without discussion. There is no lead ban or ban on plastic wads and yet we have people rushing off to get their chokes reamed out, calling for the resignation of the BASC management, packing in shooting and not renewing their shooting org memberships. Most rational people have known for a number of years that sooner or later both lead and plastic wads were going to be subject to legislation and yet a 5 year voluntary phasing out has got us attacking our organisations and each other like a pack of rabid dogs. The anti shooting brigade must be laughing themselves sick reading some of the posts on here; they wont have to protest and legally threaten the government to get their way. There is evidently a small percentage of the shooting fraternity who appear to be happy tearing itself to bits without any help from fat man and Packham.

It varies from county to county. Best idea is to give your firearms dept a ring or check their website.

Exactly !

Glad to see it wasnt just me then ! I only went along with one good buddy so if we found ourselves waiting on the same stand as these characters we were usually outnumbered 4 or 5 to one. On one occasion when they were badgering the scorer over a chipped bird I couldnt stop myself and suggested they give the youngster a break. I got promptly told to wind my neck in and they then hung around behind the stand and roared with laughter at the first bird I missed and offered a load of crude advice. A complaint to the organiser was received sympathetically, but he was trying to keep the attendance numbers up, so other than a casual word to them, the intimidation side of it was glossed over. The only way to enjoy yourself was to avoid them as a group because once they had you marked, you would get a coughing fit behind you or a sly comment about your foot placement just as you were about to shoot. One of them seriously upset one member, who got his own back by taking a wheel brace to the headlight on one of their cars. They raised hell with the ground owner who stuck to his guns and pointed out cars were parked at the owners risk. A number of members knew the guy involved, but as the circus had made themselves thoroughly unpopular his name never came out and they were a bit more subdued the next time they appeared.

Not THE sole reason I packed in shooting clays, but this was one, of a number of things that I grew to dislike about competitive clay shooting circuit. In my area we had what club members refered to as the travelling circus, a group of guys who went from ground to ground at the weekend, but only showed when there was cash to be won. One of these guys later went on to great things as far as County and National Titles were concerned. On a normal practice day you never saw them, but advertise a cash payout and they would arrive en-masse and split into two groups, the non-shooting group crowded around and invariably tried to pressure the scorer that a wad that appeared close to the bird was in fact a chip. As most of our trappers and scorers were teenagers to keep the costs down; they invariably bowed to pressure from a small group of adults who were all supporting one another in the assertion that a clean miss was in fact a kill or a perfectly acceptable bird was in fact a `no-bird` due to a puff of wind. The understanding at the time was that they would target at least two or three venues each weekend that were paying out cash and drive from one to another throughout the day to try to pick up the cash. So no illusions from my end, competitive clay shooting has always had its `seamy` side and the money and bragging rights now on offer at big tournaments has evidently encouraged rule bending or worse.

I have followed this rather distasteful saga for the last 6 months, since Northwood first announced the disqualification way back in the late summer of last year. I no longer shoot competitive clays, having dropped out of my local club and sold my dedicated clay gun some years ago. I now prefer game shooting with long term friends who shoot for pleasure and the companionship rather than mixing with the pros trying to earn a living from the clay circuit at any cost and their coaching. However, I do casually follow whats going on and how guns, cartridges, skills and shooting grounds have progressed in the clay scene over the years. The above erudite post sums up my thoughts about this sad saga totally, however my reservations class me as a `hater` by his fanboys, if I dare express my view that this matter has done clay shooting per se no favours. As others have said, we shouldnt be raking over what he did as a rugby player, and was subsequently found not guilty. Thankfully, down to our astute set of moderators the `fan boys` or mischief makers who made a brief appearance on his behalf have been outed, and if anyone was hoping for a further revealing response from them, you live in cloud cuckoo land. Will the discredited individual come clean on this matter on an open forum ? As they say in my neck of the woods; `you are having a laugh`. The truth, as always will slowly come out. However, if you are expecting a baring of souls exclusive to Pigeon Watch, you are in for a long wait.