Why are we shooting less and less

Savage 110 Carbon Tactical - Unmatched Precision - Viking Arms
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He is only half right in what he says.
Yes I agree the organisations do not help. But then, when would I ever have the money to pay for a bespoke rifle. Mass produced (generalisation here) is better than bespoke. A machine can consistently reproduce an accurate part over and over again at a fraction of the price. Yes bespoke can fettle it to make a good rifle better.
Nobody takes on young people to train. Why would they? First, you have to find someone who wants to learn for a number of years and will not pack up and stack shelf’s because he gets more money and all his mates are there. Then you have to invest 20 or 30k a year in them.
Nobody wants to take on someone, spend the money training them for them to leave, halfway through training or worse still, train them up and they decide to leave for another company who will pay them a pound an hour more.
There is no tax incentive for any business to take on apprentices. That is the way of the world across all industry.

Attitudes have changed towards shooting, so many people live in cities and have no concept of where their meat comes from and, ( I kid you not) there was a court case where someone was shot dead, he had been running around with a revolver. Relatives were heard to complain that the police didnt need to shoot him, they could have shot the gun out of his hand. Who has been watching too many westerns?

Large shoots are seen by many as unethical and only for rich people, having seen the cost of a day on the pheasants, I have to agree. Way out of my budget.

Then there is the woke society,where banks will close your account because you are a gunshop etc etc etc.

And finally….. have you ever seen how difficult it is to get land to shoot on? Get someone to take you out on land? It is nigh on impossible. Why would you buy a rifle or shotgun if you have nowhere to shoot? It has taken me years to get the land I have, I regularly take people out to show them how to shoot, to give them a start. I have just helped a someone local to get a spot with some rabbits and pigeons but jeez, everyone guards their land and many will not entertain taking anyone out. Sometimes for the right reasons. But if we do not bring on the young, then, it will get smaller and smaller.
 
My observations from being a member here for 12 years are that the majority generally all recognise that the average age of the users here and shooters nationally is definitely not young. I'm (pleasantly) surprised how many over 60s are still out shooting and stalking, give me hope for my next 30 years. We can all pretty much agree that getting new people into the sport is tough, yet no one wants to admit that some of us (often those with the loudest voices and opinions) are our own worst enemy.

The fastest growing demographic of hunters globally is women, yet (using this site as an example) is a boys club that isn't especially open and inclusive. Yes a post from a female stalker about a group of ladies going stalking got a few replies and well dones, but when BASC did the same it was like a poor comedy sketch from the 1950s with pages of blokes weighing in about how it wasn't needed and necessary and almost unfair to them not having their own special days out and help🙄

We all agree that land is hard to come by to shoot on and yet almost everyone on here who has land to shoot on doesn't share it with anyone else, is way over protective about something that isn't even theirs and refuses to let anyone come out for frlear they'll steal their permission🤦🏻‍♂️

Again we can agree that bring out a young person or training up someone is a good thing yet what I read on here is summed up as "I took someone out and they refused to do exactly as I said and I was unwilling to listen to them and meet with any sort of compromise and they never wanted to come back again" and then act surprised about it and blame the youngster. Times change and we can all learn something from someone else even if they're inexperienced but too often it's the authoritarian "you must do as I say" approach from the older generation as that's how they were brought up and see no reason to change.

We're shooting ourselves in the foot and looking around for someone else to blame either through ignorance or not really caring about what the future holds for those who will still be hunting and fishing in 30 years.
 
The article misses out completely on a couple of the more influential factors.
Age is probably the biggest, the baby boomer generation are shuffling along towards the end of their earthly sojourn and dropping out of active participation as age, infirmity and loss of lifelong shooting and fishing partners all take a toll.
The US has done a bit of research, most shooters and fishermen give up in their early 70’s for any or all of the above reasons.
Shooting is expensive, you need both disposable income and your own transport, for most young people nowadays that’s just a pipe dream, as is owning their own home.
Access to live game and land is difficult and it’s not being made any easier by changing societal attitudes towards all shooting and private gun ownership. Huge swaths of land are now controlled by corporations companies and organisations, that as a matter of policy, are utterly opposed to “ sport “ shooting of any kind.
30 years ago this attitude was rare, now it’s everywhere and it’s having a big impact.
We, that’s us, this generation, and our supporting bodies have permitted firearms possession to become a privilege.
The police have adopted policies with a strong bias towards refusal to grant or revocation.
Refusals and revocations generally go unchallenged.

Then theres the product itself, game.
It just doesn’t suit modern tastes, the quality and taste is hugely variable, it’s awkward to prepare, it can have a very strong flavour and sometimes comes with tooth marks and lead shot included for no extra cost.
Sing me no songs extolling the culinary excellence of the various creatures adorning our plates, I’ve tried most of them, even curlew ( tough, fishy and inedible, rather like osprey if you’re wondering) and you can keep most of them.
I like partridge, woodcock and snipe. I’m not over gone on pheasant or wild duck, especially ducks off the foreshore.
I don’t really care for hare or rabbits, except maybe for a couple of 3/4 grown grazers sniped in the local fields a couple of times a year. You can keep wood-pigeons unless they’re on grain. Brassica's, clover and ivy berries make them lean and bitter, old age makes them tough.
Venison, a young hind cleanly shot and well looked after ranks with pure manna from heaven. A stag in rut will stink the whole kitchen out and isn’t a culinary experience that most people would want to repeat.

If there is to be growth in the industry it’s going to come from the various target shooting disciplines. Target shooters are the only ones I can think of who will legitimately wear a gun out and they’re never satisfied with what they’ve got, ensuring a constant supply of decent secondhand kit for newbie’s.
Start with air guns and primary schools, since we’ve allowed access to even the humble .22 become difficult, air guns are accessible, cheap to run and can be used almost anywhere.
 
I think there are many issues. I am middle aged and growing up, I had a lot of friends who shot and fished and few do now. In my view, the reasons are:

1. Lack of land - before I moved back to my family’s farm, I didn’t stalk much, mainly due to the cost and lack of land. There is no easy solution to this. I was lucky and got taken out by a stalker as a boy. I am not sure with safeguarding being what it is now if this would still happen. Equally, I have seen many situations where stalking tenants have created problems for themselves. I am seeing more and more landowners moving to contractors. It is just much less hassle.

2. Changing attitudes - I know a lot of people who have given up as they have married someone who doesn’t like shooting etc and has grown up away from it. I also know a lot of people who changed their attitudes after going to university or to work in city jobs, where they gradually changed to match the views of those around them. I can think of three people who ten years ago were stalking, shooting and hunting at every opportunity and all three are now vegans.

3. Social Media - easy to get a fix without leaving your chair, why get cold and wet? Also pushing a relentless anti field sports message.

4. Lack of time - probably always been an issue but probably more of an issue now most women work full time, so more pressure on the whole family

5. Lack of disposable income - if I had to pay for stalking regularly, I couldn’t justify it. I don’t buy in to the whole cost of living crisis thing but money is definitely tighter for most people than it was 15 years ago. It makes me cringe to think of how many hours of nursery fees I could pay for if I swapped my rifle for a cheaper one.
 
This got me thinking. Is there a general apathy towards shooting in the Uk now.

People have so many other things to do these days, so shooting and fishing doesn't interest them. I can see it in youngsters, even my own. We live in a world of instant gratification, for example computer games, you tube and so on. So sitting by a riverbank and maybe not catching something or being out hunting for a day when nothing comes along, just doesnt interest them. I had to smile at nun hunters points as I see exactly the same in so many posts. So much so that this is the first real post I have made in a long long time. I just got fed up with all the righteous, right-wing, racist and misogynistic comments. It really doesn't make for good reading.

So maybe its not just apathy but a feeling of being outside the club and it being difficult to find a way in. Say what you will, but the hunting licence system here in DK is a way for youngsters and others to get into this world. Between 3000 and 4000 new hunters every year. We actively try and encourage new and young hunters through the hunting federation and the strong network of volunteer led hunting associations, which just doesn't exist in the UK.

The demise of gunsmiths is another story. Unfortunately they have not moved with the times and have not invested, just like most British manufacturing. That said companies like Air Arms have done well, but where are the British made shotguns and rifles? Gone.
 
My pennies worth. For most of my career I have been working with innovative companies, in particular funding them and getting them into early customers.

Fundamentally the UK has no interest in investing for the future or developing new technologies. Staff are viewed as a costly embuggerance to be got rid of if at all possible. Indeed much better to get of them all and use contractors instead. As for investing in developing new technologies for the future wealth creation - this is bloody hard to do and the vast majority of good ideas end up being acquired by overseas investors and companies.

20 years ago we had many innovative wind technologies - did we invest in the industry. Not at all. It all ended up in the hands of Vestas (Denmark) and Seimans (Germany) and their wind turbines fill up our mountains, grouse moors and shallow seas. We haven’t even got involved in the development- mostly in the likes of EDF using their own contractors.

The gun trade was always a few large conglomerates- Webley and Scott and BSA with a whole series of specialists. Italy and Spain were the same. But likes of the Beretta and Rizzini familes had the foresight to invest in new machinery, in particular CNC. This has allowed them to make high quality hand finished products with the requirement for lots of labour.

In the UK a lot of the very successful engineering companies are long gone. Certainly up here in Scotland. Most of them ended up in third and fourth generations of their families, all of whom required dividends at the expense of investment. They ended not being able to compete with companies elsewhere. You can only milk a cow for so long and then it dries up and dies.

And if you don’t invest for the future you have no more cows to milk.

And these days capital is free to move and has gone elsewhere.

As for the cost of fine guns, these are and always have been discretionary purchases. The Scottish guntrade was there due to wealth from trade and industry in Scotland. A handmade gun is similar to a Ferrari, or a bespoke yacht etc. They are a thing of beauty that you take pride in. But to build the fine guns you need a base of basic gunmaking to produce the basic components and more importantly to develop the skills of the youngsters.
 
Shooting has been on a downward spiral for donkeys years, I said 5 years it had 20 years, it’s probably got less that 15.

I’m not the only one saying it either!

That’s speaking as an ex keeper

Ammunition, prices against the price of living, the cost of shooting game or clays for that matter, I had an addiction for skeet and could quite easily shoot a slab on a Friday evening, do the maths of what that would cost?

To be fair once you add up what it costs, is it worth doing just to pull the trigger in my opinion? No not really.
 
He posts - If you look to the continent, in particular Germany, each person wishing to open a ‘Gun shop’ has to put forward a full 5 year business plan to a committee, put down a sizable bond of of €25k, pass an exam on the firearms law and employ a gunsmith with a recognised Gunsmith qualification. Yes that sounds a little draconian/nanny state, however, they have no decline in the people who shoot, so they must have something right.
He is wrong, my two best mates here have RFDs one has a one man gun shop and has been running it since the mid 90s it is open 6 days per week to the public he has only just set on his two sons into a newly equipped repair business next door after their Ferlach apprenticeships were over, the other pal has a gun room and he did the dealers course just to make buying of guns selling easier as registration is just putting it into his dealers book.
 
I’d say that young people aren’t bothering to get involved with field sports because they’ve been excluded from it for so long.
There has been little culture of starting off young people in this country, for at least 30 years, other than a few solitary sportsmen who have taken someone under their wing.
Millions have grown up to adulthood without being offered a chance to experience what many of us have taken for granted.
We all like to get our own children involved with shooting, hunting and fishing, but how many of us can honestly say we’ve encouraged other adults to start shooting?
 
stevec said:
I think there are many issues. I am middle aged and growing up, I had a lot of friends who shot and fished and few do now. In my view, the reasons are:

1. Lack of land - before I moved back to my family’s farm, I didn’t stalk much, mainly due to the cost and lack of land. There is no easy solution to this. I was lucky and got taken out by a stalker as a boy. I am not sure with safeguarding being what it is now if this would still happen. Equally, I have seen many situations where stalking tenants have created problems for themselves. I am seeing more and more landowners moving to contractors. It is just much less hassle.

2. Changing attitudes - I know a lot of people who have given up as they have married someone who doesn’t like shooting etc and has grown up away from it. I also know a lot of people who changed their attitudes after going to university or to work in city jobs, where they gradually changed to match the views of those around them. I can think of three people who ten years ago were stalking, shooting and hunting at every opportunity and all three are now vegans.

3. Social Media - easy to get a fix without leaving your chair, why get cold and wet? Also pushing a relentless anti field sports message.

4. Lack of time - probably always been an issue but probably more of an issue now most women work full time, so more pressure on the whole family

5. Lack of disposable income - if I had to pay for stalking regularly, I couldn’t justify it. I don’t buy in to the whole cost of living crisis thing but money is definitely tighter for most people than it was 15 years ago. It makes me cringe to think of how many hours of nursery fees I could pay for if I swapped my rifle for a cheaper one.
Click to expand...

Point 4 is far too underrated these days.

The 40 hour work week was fine when based on one person working and another looking after kids, cooking, cleaning and maintaining a household. Now that everything has gone up in price (apart from wages) means that both partners are working full time or pretty close to it and so there is almost no time for hobbies or relaxing, not to mention less money to spend on non essential items.
 
And it’s going to get worse…. Cost of living crisis is now just cost of living, pre Covid prices will not return, we won’t see an interest rate cut this year and inflation is set to run again as sterling falls further against basket currencies.

High oil prices will run due to ME instability impacting energy costs with no govt hand out this winter.

Wages won’t increase as UK productivity is a shambles, UK workers are lazy and apathetic preferring to blame brexit, Covid, immigrants, Tories etc etc

Taxes will increase as our public services demand more funding and social services are overrun with out of control immigration

More people will be hit with the interest rate as mortgages are due, thus far broadly shielded, this will impact property prices bringing negative equity exposure

None of this is new, just cyclical..

Those that can relocate will, those who don’t swallowed by a disfunctional Labour coalition shambles as the UK moves to a broadly Islamic nation..

Sadly, the UK is finished
 
firearm-shotgun-certificates-2021-01.png

This graph is from the gov.uk statistics site. Although it only goes up to 2021, really it shows pretty little change from year to year. Of course the dreaded Covid kicked in and I imagine some might not have renewed due to that. So folks, all is not doom and gloom. However, it's also probably true that there are less opportunities to shoot and this is in all likelihood due to less land available to shoot on. Although I think there's still a good number of game shoots, they have patently decreased in recent times, as well as clay shooting grounds. But not terminally so. As for stalking, in whatever form it takes it is also true that deer populations are increasing if anything and the people needed to try to stabilise that will still be needed.

So not all is doom and gloom. Cheer up, enjoy your field sports and drink from your half empty glasses for tomorrow we die!
 
I never read the article either too be fair but I feel like shotgun licenses will be plummeting in general for the distaste of mass game shooting and instead most are moving to deer stalking.
Also so, so many people shoot in this country without being documented (borrowing a gun on a shoot day, or an outing for a deer) that statistics are very wild and uncertain

There's way more women shooters out there than reconigised as almost all use there husband/relatives guns.

Lots of youth arent getting there licenses until 21/22 minimum since were confined too only start our shooting journey at 17 due to the estate rifle laws.

You folks that grow up with rifles its second nature too a lot of the modern day youth it isn't something they grew up with and they cant really start in there early teens.
 
Todays youth are too woke and easily offended to go out in the field and control wildlife.
 
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