Hello Martyn.
In my opinion, loss of available land to shooting (by which I mean driven, rough, wildfowling, stalking, the lot) is the single greatest danger our sport faces. The fact is that there isn’t that much land to go around, and there are arguable far better economic uses for much of it than the various forms of shooting. Much of the shooting in the UK is organised and accessed in a way that reflects the structure of land ownership. Broadly, there are a lot reasonably large estates, farms, and some FC land with people who either own or lease the various sporting rights. Only where land is owned outright by the users is the perennial use for shooting guaranteed. We’ve seen prominent cases recently of long-established driven shoots losing their access to land owned for example by the National Trust, not necessarily because they’re fundamentally hostile to shooting, but because it’s a minority pursuit and arguably was in the way of how most users wished to access the area. At the other end of the scale, my wildfowling club lost the roughshooting lease in an FC wood just because a couple of regular dog walkers vociferously complained about shooting, despite there being no dangerous behaviour or anything of the sort, which the FC confirmed. It’s just that the land had to be shared with dog walkers, cyclists, etc. and that in this case, shooters turned out not to fit on. Finally, here in the South-East, the way in which access to the foreshore for wildfowling (the closest thing there is to the UK to public land for hunting) could be removed if Boris Johnson were to put an airport in the middle of the Thames Estuary. Other and greater interests can easily supersede shooting if access and use is controlled by another party.
Because of the structure of land ownership, there’s every chance that the use of land for high-cost commercial driven shooting is economically sustainable, but this would cement shooting’s image as an elitist pursuit. Some time ago, I think John Swift at the BASC (maybe someone else, correct me if I’m wrong) said that there had never been as much shooting available as now for those who can afford it. That isn’t good enough. Fieldsports need grassroots support and guaranteed accessibility for those with normal-depth pockets (including kids, who have no money and not much ability to travel under their own steam) for social and political sustainability. Now BASC is an organisation with its’ roots in wildfowling, but most of its’ members are not wildfowlers. Nevertheless, BASC should understand that the continued provision of places to shoot is essential to maintaining the reason for its’ existence. It sits on something like £5m in cash which could be better used to start a programme of strategic land purchasing. In turn, land ownership confers financial and political clout, to the benefit of all shooters.
It’s a long term strategy and it will be some years before it pays dividends, but it’s an existential matter. BASC does great work, but isn’t powerful enough in this respect to stand up to the likes of the RSPB and the NT. There’s also no reason at all why all can’t use the same land and rub along just fine. It’s just easier to make that happen if its’ yours.
, best of luck with the elections.
