You can still drown, Dave.
They found a guy face down near his boat on Lake Saint Clair a couple years back... the water would have been roughly up to his waist.
BAC tested at something like .30%
He was, literally, too drunk to fish.
And, besides, you could put an eye out with one of those dreadful hooky things you torture the poor fish with...
Have you no morality or conscience or social responsibility?
My God man! Drinking and fishing!
He died doing what he loved. (And proved himself a real redneck by being too drunk to fish.)
The difference is, of course, that no one other than the dead guy was directly harmed by the dead guy's (over)indulgence. Ain't that way with firearms - pretty likely someone else will be harmed by the indulgent hunter. Which, I guess, is as good a reason for the distinction in the law. There's no drinking while hunting/shooting, but there's no law outlawing drinking and fishing, only no operating the boat under the influence.
And, as John in UK noted right upthread, on UK shoots you're likely to get "A" nip (of sloe gin) in the morning and "A" glass of wine with lunch. "A" as in "one". Which is, I guess, a sensible limit if alcohol is to be consumed.
