Food for thought

@WillaKissing [quote]So, no not the same as the king we kicked out of the US.[/quote]
That king didn't have those powers either.

George III was a constitutional monarch who turned over the Crown Estate to Parliament.

You can hunt on your own land or land that you lease in England so long as you have a gun licence. But you do have to have the appropriate firearms certificate and you may have to complete a course demonstrating that you know the rules and can humanely kill the animals.

You don't need permission in the sense of having to ask a person who might deny you on a whim but you do have to qualify to own or use a weapon.

I'm getting people to at least to pay attention to their freedoms even if I might be wrong some times.

I guess I don't want see people take freedom for granted and maybe in my own way trying to make people awhere of what's going on.

@ninalanyon Good for the Brits! I like my freedoms better.

@ninalanyon @WillaKissing Freedom to do what, exactly?

Those rules include which animals may be shot, and when (by season), as well.

It is a very limited list, mainly pheasants and grouse bred for game-shooting, and deer shot for venison. Some wild-fowling too.

Wild animals can be shot for conservation and agricultural-protection, but only by those authorised to do so. Farmers can also shoot domestic dogs as if foxes attacking their livestock, usually sheep. Though some are strays most of those dogs are pets allowed to run free by irresponsible owners who seem unable to grasp that they are taking an essentially rather dim-witted, instinct-driven predator into the countryside.

I don't know but guess that most clay-pigeon shooting in Britain is for its own sake, not partly as practice for game-shooting though I assume that happens too.

There are quite a large number of licensed "sport" game-shooters in Britain but it is very much still a minority hobby in a country that on the whole likes animals and dislikes guns, and a costly hobby at that.

@ArishMell It sounds like you are living in the UK and not the US. Because in Ohio in the us there are species you can hunt year-round like Coyotes, ground hogs, and feral pigs. And I rather enjoy the hunting season limitations as well, it gives the animals time to mate to reproduce and rear their young.

Derr bow hunting season which I love starts in the end of September and runs until February 8th. Plenty of time to get out and bow hunt. Gun hunting season falls for a two-week period during the bow season as well.

Yes, I feel we have a ton more freedom than the UK.

There are a lot more species and season throughout the US than the UK as well.

@WillaKissing I do live in the UK, yes, and we may well have fewer animal species than on a huge continent, but it's not a matter of "freedom" when considering killing wild animals for "fun".

The UK is actually a very free country but freedom also carries responsibility, and most animals in the British Isles are protected by law unless their hunting is specifically authorised, or for genuine pest-control. There are many who would outlaw all except genuine pest-control or woodlands-management killing, so the situation now is a sort of rather uneasy compromise.

As you probably know, fox-hunting (or hunting any wild animal by dogs, really) was a centuries-old tradition in England until only a few decades ago, when growing public pressure against it finally moved Parliament to outlaw it. "Drag-hunting" (following an artificial scent trail) is its legal replacement, but there are anecdotal reports of hunts still killing foxes, and there have been one or two prosecutions under that law. The larger charges against the hunts are of things like damage to hedges and walls by followers scrambling over them; and a lot of farmers have banned the hunts from their land.

Besides, there is also a major social difference between the USA and the UK, in that we do not worship guns so owing guns is a minority interest not a regular activity, nor do we go in for playing "wild west" with Nature by shooting at it.

I do not know if shooting animals with arrows is legal here. Probably not. There are though strict seasonal limits on authorised shooting (by gun). For bred pheasants I believe it's several weeks in November and December, but I don't know the actual dates.

@ArishMell I think bow hunting would be illegal on the grounds that it is very difficult to ensure a clean kill. The rules on deer hunting specify the minimum mass of the bullets to be used as well as the minimum muzzle velocity allowed, analogous rules for archery would require a very heavy arrow and bow or the use of a compound bow. But accurate shooting even with even a compound bow is much more difficult than with a rifle.

I suppose one could say that bow hunting would be fairer in that it requires the hunter to get much closer and be more skilful meaning that more of them get away. But on the other hand the animal is more likely to be merely injured rather than killed outright.

@ArishMell Just looked it up on Wikipedia:
[quote] Nations including Denmark, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Finland and Bulgaria use bow and arrow hunting as a hunting tool in modern game management. Some European countries, including the United Kingdom, prohibit bowhunting.[12] Bowhunting, like target archery, was revived in the UK during the Victorian era,[13] but has been banned since 1965.[14] Recently a law was passed in Estonia that would allow bowhunting of small game.[15] [/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowhunting#Europe

So no bow hunting in the UK and it looks like most European countries that do allow it allow it only for game management not for recreational hunting.

@ninalanyon Interesting! Thankyou for doing that.