No hunting for the common man in the UK?
Well that's news to me. I shot a free range Fallow, muntjac, and Chinese Water deer as well as walked up Ducks and Pheasant. I did pay a small trespass fee but that is common in America as well.
I have been dragging my best gun across our high prairies in search of Roosters and grouse for about fifteen years and I see absolutely no ill effects from hunting that gun.
You will be hard pressed to find a bigger smile on face then when I roll a cagey wild bird over my dogs with that old Holland. Despite what all the nah sayers constantly spout, in the years I have owned that gun it has needed zero maintenance beyond cleaning and lube.
Did you drag your best gun to Olde Blighty to shoot the deer? Did you do this last year? Will you do it again, this year, or, next? Why not? 20 years ago, I inquired about doing some hunting in France. My hosts, gracious, but honest, informed me that while it might not be technically illegal, it might as well be. As gunmakers, they had to score an invite from a landowner, and they would have a day out, surrounded by strangers, and they might get a shot at a duck, or not. The event usually ended as a party, and the guest of honor was most often a large boar that had been hit by a car, or shot on a hunt, but, usually, hit by a car. The pigs were a huge nuisance in that part of France, and getting worse. There were fees, of course, but, those fees promised them nothing, save they would be on the property that day.
They considered themselves lucky if they got out every five years. They were well connected, opposed to say, mostly anyone else. I was dumbfounded at how few options there were to this, and how they expected to produce hunting weapons in a culture that had almost no legal public hunting available to the masses.
As long as you have a pile of money to give them, them being the landowners, local enforcement agencies, and whatever government perfunctory is standing with his hand out, you are right, you can technically hunt, in Europe. Sometimes. What we have, here, is hugely different. The situation in Europe is most certainly not improving.
Good guns are much like gentlemen. Where you find them. Already pointed out, the good gun that is walked up to a peg in a slip, might not be all that great sitting in a duck boat for 40 seasons. Yes, I know guys that do that with a gun, and it is not an English gun.
Best,
Ted
