I find it hard to recognise the description of fieldsports here in Britain from the above negative posts and can only assume that it is a reflection of experiences gathered from commercial shoots where you get what you pay for and probably pay dearly for the experience that is commercial driven shooting.
Thankfully our sport is freely available to residents through syndicates for a yearly cost less than one days driven shooting. Deer stalking
is not hard to come by at little if any cost and wildfowling is available through the right to shoot in Scotland in the area covered by the high and low tides. Our seasons are long, we have geese ducks and other wildfowl in great numbers and syndicate shooting for game is easily obtainable with little effort or cash.

I can’t see how shotgunlover failed to have his shotgun certificate renewed when there is no need to have access to private land or game shooting to qualify. Clay pigeon shooting is good reason as is wildfowling over the previously mentioned tidal areas which are public lands. His tale of being swindled by a police sergeant with a folded cheque seems to me to reflect more prejudice than anything else and begs the question why did he not return with the cheque to rectify the matter. Britain isn’t a police state and officers are accountable for their actions.

Quite a bit of this thread seems to indicate that there is little real knowledge on this forum of fieldsports in Britain. I have shot here over fifty years and have enjoyed predominantly rough shooting ,coastal and inland wildfowling ,deer stalking and driven shooting ,none of my personal experience is reflected in the views expressed by many contributors to this thread. I can only assume that they have little personal experience of something that they seem to hold very strong opinions on. Perhaps accessing articles in the British Shooting Times or Sporting Gun magazines would provide a valuable insight into British fieldsports that seems to be lacking in some of the contributors here.