I see what happened
Whenever I visit the UK for shooting and bring a firearm, I get a visitor cert and carry the gun myself. Our situation is the same, get a visitor permit. We have no estate rifle exemption. Whenever I have guests, I organise the permits. It takes about 6 weeks.
This is not a comment on your access to firearms, you are outside the curve because virtually all your shooting takes place on private property and traditionally there have been more people seeking to access shooting than places available. With the drop in active participants, that may change.
The word “we” refers to the shooting community in general, not specifically the UK. In the UK your large population pretty much guarantees that you can fill a vacant slot, so far anyway.
Over the last 30 years things here have changed drastically. My local club used to have 22 members and a waiting list. Today we have 13 members and no applicants. Tomorrow, 1nov, is the opening day of our pheasant season, it used to be an undeclared national holiday, everyone was out and local pubs held competitions for the biggest or heaviest bird, all that is gone.
Virtually no one is interested in eating game and very few are arsed walking the fields for a couple of hours, getting wet and uncomfortable.
I’ll be out myself, chasing dogs and missing birds, but I’ll see very few others and the ones I do see will be well North of 50.
Thats the problem, and its happening almost everywhere.