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8% reduction in certificate holders in England and Wales


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nowt to do with the licencing its  time coming for us all.   im in my 30s  and im considered a youngster  in all of the clubs im a member of for any dicipline i shoot even PSG and mini rifle.  i bet the average age of a S1 and S2 ticket is over 60. id love to see the figures.  clearly shooting isnt as popular with younger people as it was in the 60s  70s and 80s and i worry that people are checking out faster than younger people are getting onboard

 

could be wrong i guess...did any of you think everyone was ancient when you all got into the sport :D

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9 hours ago, Sweet11-87 said:

nowt to do with the licencing its  time coming for us all.   im in my 30s  and im considered a youngster  in all of the clubs im a member of for any dicipline i shoot even PSG and mini rifle.  i bet the average age of a S1 and S2 ticket is over 60. id love to see the figures.  clearly shooting isnt as popular with younger people as it was in the 60s  70s and 80s and i worry that people are checking out faster than younger people are getting onboard

 

could be wrong i guess...did any of you think everyone was ancient when you all got into the sport

I think you are perhaps correct, shooting during my younger days 70s 80s I would frequently bump into other shooters around the same age (25-30) even midweek, pigeon shooting was very popular and there were plenty of outlets for your pigeons, but I have noticed over the last 10 years or so that I don't bump into many youngsters chasing pigeons, not sure why this is, could be lack of interest in outdoor pursuits, more interested in other things (social media) or they think its not cool to kill things (brain washed).

when I was a lad at school nearly every other kid had a catapult or air rifle or both, I spent many an hour shooting the sparrows and starling of neighbouring chimneys and guttering's or sneak off down the local woods in the hope of shooting something bigger.

Something else I have noticed and fairly recently and that's the lack of take-up when free shooting is offered, or someone with shooting is looking for a shooting buddy, I remember an avert in a local paper in the late 70s when a farmer near Bridgnorth asked for pigeon shooters to cover his rape, I phoned and he said the phone had not stopped ringing and people from far and wide were willing to travel to his farm for a bit of shooting.

PW is a good example of lack of take up when someone offers shooting opportunities, one of many I have seen over the last few years with very little response, who knows where shooting will be in 10-15 years from now….https://forums.pigeonwatch.co.uk/forums/topic/427374-shooting-buddy-north-hampshire/

 

 

 

Edited by old'un
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Shooting just isn't a mainstream sport, it can be expensive and difficult to get into. I'm in my 30's, with a young family and to be perfectly honest I do find it hard and expensive to get out. Firstly it's finding the time between work and keeping the kids busy as well as the million and one jobs that need to be done. When I started I had a number of places to control rabbits as well as a few warehouses as I live near London. Over the years these all dried up. Out went the free shooting, now everywhere you either have to pay an extortionate fee to do the farmer a favour or be part of a club. I can't tell you the amount of knock backs I have had and times I have been dropped because someone is willing to pay to do a service I was doing for free. I currently have one warehouse which I control pigeons for and I'm part of a wildfowl club which has a farm I can shoot pigeons but I still have to pay a premium on top of my club membership to do. I try to go clay shooting but with a young family I find it hard to justify the cost for a few hours of entertainment when it's just for myself. With the prices of carts and fuel going up and up, the imminent threat of a lead ban which would doubly increase the cost for steel, and other types of cartridges as a couple of my guns are not steel proof. It does get to a stage where you start to wonder what's the point. 

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21 hours ago, Lsto said:

Shooting just isn't a mainstream sport, it can be expensive and difficult to get into. I'm in my 30's, with a young family and to be perfectly honest I do find it hard and expensive to get out. Firstly it's finding the time between work and keeping the kids busy as well as the million and one jobs that need to be done. When I started I had a number of places to control rabbits as well as a few warehouses as I live near London. Over the years these all dried up. Out went the free shooting, now everywhere you either have to pay an extortionate fee to do the farmer a favour or be part of a club. I can't tell you the amount of knock backs I have had and times I have been dropped because someone is willing to pay to do a service I was doing for free. I currently have one warehouse which I control pigeons for and I'm part of a wildfowl club which has a farm I can shoot pigeons but I still have to pay a premium on top of my club membership to do. I try to go clay shooting but with a young family I find it hard to justify the cost for a few hours of entertainment when it's just for myself. With the prices of carts and fuel going up and up, the imminent threat of a lead ban which would doubly increase the cost for steel, and other types of cartridges as a couple of my guns are not steel proof. It does get to a stage where you start to wonder what's the point. 

Sad to hear that Lsto - re shooting permissions. I can’t believe that people are actually paying to carry out vermin control. That transaction seems to be the wrong way around…..?! At least it seems strange where I come from. Is it possible to cast your net further away from  the crazy ‘London effect’? I know that being a dedicated dad is a busy time, but you need to get away from it all occasionally. There’s no better escape that a little bit of old fashioned hunting. Besides, in years to come you might be taking your children. Don’t give up!

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On 18/07/2022 at 10:51, Fellside said:

Sad to hear that Lsto - re shooting permissions. I can’t believe that people are actually paying to carry out vermin control. That transaction seems to be the wrong way around…..?! At least it seems strange where I come from. Is it possible to cast your net further away from  the crazy ‘London effect’? I know that being a dedicated dad is a busy time, but you need to get away from it all occasionally. There’s no better escape that a little bit of old fashioned hunting. Besides, in years to come you might be taking your children. Don’t give up!

I won't knock it in, sometimes I just feel like it. Soon as my boy is old enough I'll be getting him out with a little 410. 

Unfortunately as for the 'london effect' I think your exactly right. I live in Essex and I have tried places all from London all the way to the coast. Either they have someone who pays, or want a rediculous amount of money. As I said the shoots I had over the years have either packed up or started asking for more money than I care to pay. I have my club and I dare say sooner or later something will come up again. These days it's all money money money and the pound definitely isn't going as far as it once did.

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On 17/07/2022 at 10:11, old'un said:

of lack of take up when someone offers shooting opportunities, one of many I have seen over the last few years with very little response, who knows where shooting will be in 10-15 years from now….https://forums.pigeonwatch.co.uk/forums/topic/427374-shooting-buddy-north-hampshire/

To be fair I posted and I PMed, and yet no reply. So sometimes it's too good to be true! 😞 Or they don't want a newbie to air.

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Shooting need not be expensive. I’m a professional with 3 boys, house, dogs etc running a business in my mid 30s for very little reward, so have to be economic with how I spend my money. Our syndicate has gone up to £425/annum but I’m there shooting most weekends... it works out at £8 per week. My main gun cost £100 and i shoot the cheapest cartridges I find. If you love a sport or a way of life you can find the money. 

The backlog of grants and the ageing population of shooting men are both likely to be big factors in the shortfall. My peers are more likely to be vegan than shoot. 

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Location can be a main factor as well , if you are in a built up area then you need to go further afield for any shooting opportunities , would I had been shooting all my life if I had been born in a large town ? , I very much doubt it , I was born in a small village that was classed as a island with the edge of the estuary down the end of our road , at that time the shooting was free both on the estuary and both sides of the ( walls ) that were five miles long , you were also surrounded by marsh land and you soon knew who the landowners were and the locals who had permission to shoot it , no body at the time, or only the odd person was interested in shooting good numbers of Pigeons and when a local farmer started to grow Peas for Birds Eye they not only attracted Wood Pigeons they also had a lot of interest from the towns feral Pigeons , I went to see the farmer in the late 60s to see if I could try and keep the Pigeons off his Peas and getting the go ahead was the start of over 50 years of shooting on the same farm , from shooting the Peas we helped him loading up the small bales of straw after harvest , this then gave us the shooting on the stubble , which in time gave me a free hand at wildfowling in the Winter and to this day I still shoot the wild fowl in the Winter on those original marshes .

Both the local clubs have got some brilliant wildfowling marshes and loads of Pigeon shooting land which is only lightly shot, so for the locals who are interested in field sports they can get some very good shooting for about £225 a year , this include Clay shooting , Gun dog training days , Pigeon shooting and of course wildfowling , so even in this day and age you can still get some cheap shooting , but to get the best out of it you need to live fairly local , hence location matters .  MM

 

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12 hours ago, HantsRob said:

To be fair I posted and I PMed, and yet no reply. So sometimes it's too good to be true! 😞 Or they don't want a newbie to air.

I must admit that I have also noticed that….where someone post free shooting or asks for a shooting buddy but they never acknowledge any posts or reply to PM’s.:sneaky2:

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7 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

Yes all very odd, makes you wonder why any of us bother, I have given up offering these days.

It can put you off when you try to help someone and have it all thrown in your face through ingratitude when they become an instant expert.

edit: the longer I shoot, the fussier I become who I shoot with.

Edited by London Best
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29 minutes ago, London Best said:

It can put you off when you try to help someone and have it all thrown in your face through ingratitude when they become an instant expert.

edit: the longer I shoot, the fussier I become who I shoot with.

only ever had one mate (billy no mates me) who I had been shooting with since I was 16 and had 100% trust in, we built up a far amount of land/farms to shoot over, when I got older and it became a bit to much to cover we let a lot of the farms go, I could have introduced/given away lots shooting to younger shooters but I could never find anyone I could trust or with the same enthusiasm/commitment as myself or my mate.

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1 minute ago, old'un said:

only ever had one mate (billy no mates me) who I had been shooting with since I was 16 and had 100% trust in, we built up a far amount of land/farms to shoot over, when I got older and it became a bit to much to cover we let a lot of the farms go, I could have introduced/given away lots shooting to younger shooters but I could never find anyone I could trust or with the same enthusiasm/commitment as myself or my mate.

I had one mate that I had shot with for 20 years. Then suddenly, whilst I was away in Africa, he turned up at one of my local farms (where I always shared the flight pond with him anyway) and tried offering my farmer friend money to rent him the sole shooting. We have not shot together since.

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4 hours ago, London Best said:

It can put you off when you try to help someone and have it all thrown in your face through ingratitude when they become an instant expert.

edit: the longer I shoot, the fussier I become who I shoot with.

I get the fussiness. Truly.

I am humble enough to be grateful and to learn from someone far better than me and to learn as much as you can! I still shoot with a nice lad from here who took me out, nice man and was happy to loan me his gun and give me his wisdom. Also, OF also was kind enough to take me out, and also meet up on a shoot. I listen to everything he says as his knowledge will always beat mine. (OF, I can't wait to see your stock finished and aged a few months!)

I do of course accept some people can be buttholes.

Edited by HantsRob
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There are lots of reasons why people are giving up. Not being able to find anywhere to shoot is definitely a big one as mentioned before

It's been going on for a long time just wearing people down with all the hassle makes it not fun anymore 

Age is also another reason. It's becoming an old man's pastime. No new blood.

8% reduction in certificates but I bet the number of guns held has reduced even more. I have reduced the number I hold and would be reducing even more if I thought I could get a sensible price for them. Out of principle I am not giving them away.

One of the clubs I belong to has lost over 100 members in the past few years..

A committee member told me that and they are afraid to put up the membership fees for fear of losing more members, even though they need to.

Even those that are still members the attendances are way down. Many that were regulars are once in a blue moon now. The social aspect of the club is much diminished.

Plus people are complaining about can't get powder and primers and if they can they are moaning about the price.

It's not the thin end of one wedge it's the thin end of lots of wedges 

Edited by Vince Green
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1 hour ago, Vince Green said:

Even those that are still members the attendances are way down. Many that were regulars are once in a blue moon now. The social aspect of the club is much diminished.

Same with our rifle club.

We had good attendance before Covid, but since returning numbers are down and we are struggling to cover the costs.

It's ingrained into people to stay home now, because of lockdowns :mad:

Edited by Newbie to this
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On 18/07/2022 at 10:51, Fellside said:

I can’t believe that people are actually paying to carry out vermin control. 

Oh you can believe it. THOUSANDS of pounds. But it's all wrapped up in nice little terms like " buying the shooting rights" or a "place in a rough shooting syndicate "

Edited by Vince Green
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8% reduction in registered firearms owners but numbers have been increasing over the years, maybe because clay pigeon shooting is more popular now.  There is more hassle with shooting now. Laws rules regulations health and safety. I live in a built up area in a large town and I have shooting on nearby farms and my local estuary and I have shot all my life. I have shot over areas  that are now built over . Large housing estates (new towns)1000s of houses including shops and pubs, factories ,industrial estates,motorway,farm buildings converted into homes, power station,supermarket,fire station, driving test centre, 2 country park ,3 cemetery ,2 golf course ,2sports ground ,sewage plant,  and council recycling centre. There is a lot of wildlife in some of these places. A lot has changed in my lifetime but it doesn’t stop me shooting . I never realised how many areas I shot over until I read some of the comments on this topic. It’s a lot of land that’s been recycled. It didn’t stop me from shooting .

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4 hours ago, Vince Green said:

Oh you can believe it. THOUSANDS of pounds. But it's all wrapped up in nice little terms like " buying the shooting rights" or a "place in a rough shooting syndicate "

The only place I actually pay a landowner cash, costs me 50 quid a year for 350 acres, and that’s at my insistence just to keep the land exclusively mine. 
I’ve known him and his brother since school, and many moons ago two other mates and me asked him how much it would cost to make the land exclusively ours as a rough shoot ( our dedicated rough shoot adjoins this land but we don’t pay to shoot on that. It means in essence that we have a 750 acre rough shoot ) and he thought for a bit and said ‘ how’s about a pound an acre?’
Within a couple of years one mate ( who has always liked a drink ) was being subbed by myself and the other cos he couldn’t afford to put away 2.50 a week, and then when the other mate moved away I took it all on on my own, and the landowner said ‘just give us 100 quid’.
I invited a syndicate member to join me but he just took the ****, so that was short lived. 
So until very recently it was just me for years, then I invited mate to join me and so we pay 50 each to keep the land ours. I offered the landowner 100 each but he said he wasn’t bothered whether we paid or not, the land was ours, but it’s a token of our appreciation if nothing more. It’s not like he needs the money. 🙂

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Just going back to the OP's first post. 

An 8% reduction is a massive number. Is it really due to the licensing issue or rather the cost of shooting e.g. putting birds down, cartridges, fuel costs, feed costs etc.?

Also of course everything is going up up up and something has to give in times of hardship.        

The numbers are really worrying and once someone sells up their gun cabinets and guns and ammunition they are unlikely to return.

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2 hours ago, Scully said:

The only place I actually pay a landowner cash, costs me 50 quid a year for 350 acres, and that’s at my insistence just to keep the land exclusively mine. 
I’ve known him and his brother since school, and many moons ago two other mates and me asked him how much it would cost to make the land exclusively ours as a rough shoot ( our dedicated rough shoot adjoins this land but we don’t pay to shoot on that. It means in essence that we have a 750 acre rough shoot ) and he thought for a bit and said ‘ how’s about a pound an acre?’
Within a couple of years one mate ( who has always liked a drink ) was being subbed by myself and the other cos he couldn’t afford to put away 2.50 a week, and then when the other mate moved away I took it all on on my own, and the landowner said ‘just give us 100 quid’.
I invited a syndicate member to join me but he just took the ****, so that was short lived. 
So until very recently it was just me for years, then I invited mate to join me and so we pay 50 each to keep the land ours. I offered the landowner 100 each but he said he wasn’t bothered whether we paid or not, the land was ours, but it’s a token of our appreciation if nothing more. It’s not like he needs the money. 🙂

I know blokes who think nothing of paying £200 each for a days rough shooting. They are members of my club, they are people I rub shoulders with.

They are however not people I go shooting with.

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1 hour ago, Vince Green said:

I know blokes who think nothing of paying £200 each for a days rough shooting. They are members of my club, they are people I rub shoulders with.

They are however not people I go shooting with.

There are some days that could be worth it I dare say, but it’s a bit of a lottery as to whether anything turns up. 🤷‍♂️

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16 hours ago, Gas seal said:

8% reduction in registered firearms owners but numbers have been increasing over the years, maybe because clay pigeon shooting is more popular now.  There is more hassle with shooting now. Laws rules regulations health and safety. I live in a built up area in a large town and I have shooting on nearby farms and my local estuary and I have shot all my life. I have shot over areas  that are now built over . Large housing estates (new towns)1000s of houses including shops and pubs, factories ,industrial estates,motorway,farm buildings converted into homes, power station,supermarket,fire station, driving test centre, 2 country park ,3 cemetery ,2 golf course ,2sports ground ,sewage plant,  and council recycling centre. There is a lot of wildlife in some of these places. A lot has changed in my lifetime but it doesn’t stop me shooting . I never realised how many areas I shot over until I read some of the comments on this topic. It’s a lot of land that’s been recycled. It didn’t stop me from shooting .

Every single day there will be someone somewhere who have lost a piece of land where they once shot over , tomorrow there will be slightly less of the countryside than there is today , people like yourself who have just lost plan A and with 100% enthusiasm to shooting have moved on to plan B then another hurdle get in the way and so you move on to plan C , for some people with the likes of you and me will keep finding a way around the different hurdles that keep getting in the way , but a lot of other people if they lost plan A then they haven't got a plan B to fall back on , the reason could be ever ending like , time , cost , distance , family commitments and so on, sadly this won't go away anytime soon and will we be losing another 8% of today's figures in the next few years with the lead shot ban and more demands in getting s g c's , I believe we will :no:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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