Woodpigeon: pest or a quarry species?

[Conor O'Gorman]

Some general principles as I understand them, with the England general licences in mind, these being the most confusing ones, but the following applies generally across all countries I think:

General licences allow preventative action to be taken so you do not need to wait until damage has occurred. You can shoot or trap the listed pest birds if you haven’t tried non-lethal methods because the decision is yours on the practicality of that. You can use decoys, shoot on stubbles, roost shoot etc. under general licence because they allow preventative action to be taken and there is no restriction on using decoys, shooting on stubbles, roost shooting etc.

For info on general licences in England, Wales, Scotland and NI click here:

General licences

All the latest news and advice concerning general licences and how they affect you.

basc.org.uk

 

[mudman]

The Canada might well be but it’s wrong to forget that it can only be shot out of season via justifiable pest control after none leathal control has failed . ITS NOT a 12 month season thing

Personally I was dismayed when the Canada goose was put on the GL and would have preferred the previous status quo.

 

[Heym SR20]

The Canada goose is on the Quarry list so you can shoot it for sporting purposes between 1st September and end of January. You can enjoy the shooting of it and take it for food.

It is on the GL so that it can be shot out of season if it is being a pest. You cannot shoot it for sport.

At the moment Pigeons are only on the GL. You cannot shoot them for sport, you cannot enjoy shooting them etc etc. you can only shoot them for pest control.

The proposal from the BASC is that they should also be on the quarry list with an appropriate season so that we can legitimately go out and shoot them for sport and enjoy an evening of flighting pigeons etc.

They would still remain on the GL so that they can legitimately still be shot for pest control purposes out of season - but not for sport.

Similar in the same way as out of season licences to shoot deer.

Seems entirely sensible to me.

 

[Conor O'Gorman]

Personally I was dismayed when the Canada goose was put on the GL and would have preferred the previous status quo.

I can understand where you are coming from on this. Mind you they continue to increase in numbers!

https://data.bto.org/trends_explorer/?species=Canada+Goose

 

[Apthorpe]

What most forget is that pigeons migrate.

Woodpigeons in the UK do not generally migrate. Most of the pigeons which breed here, remain here. They do migrate in Europe, owing to the harder winters and lack of feed, and that is why different legislation is appropriate there.

What breeds here in the spring and summer migrates southwards, and the majority of the overwintering flocks will come from Scandinavia.

I find the whole view of treating wild birds and animals as just pests to exterminated pretty distasteful and unhelpful. It’s the same attitude that has resulted in many, many species going extinct.

Like which?

Many species do gather in large flocks, herds etc. Go to the Bass Rock in the Forth Estuary. It is swarming with Gannets. The SD mentality seems that because its swarming with Gannets there are millions of them so they all must be shot.

However Bass Rock represents a large proportion of the European population.

 

[enfieldspares]

Shooting over stubble isn’t illegal if there are crops in the neighbouring fields that are getting damaged, nor using decoys to lure them away from the crop to the stubble. Same as roost shooting near crops, or flighting on the way to or from crops.

Ah well I'd say that according how the GL is worded it is NOT legal if the stubbles (or roost) are on land owned by a party different from the party that owns the land that has the crop on it that is suffering damage. Unless the person who owns the land on which the crops being damaged asks you to protect them by shooting those birds "at distance" from their land where the damage they are suffering is taking place?

So my reading the s27 is that if they are owned by two different parties that you need the authorisation of BOTH the owner of the land where you are shooting the birds and the owner of the land where the birds are causing the damage.

So it might be argued that as the "action authorised" is to protect land that the authorisation must also be given by the person on which those crops are situated? As if the person owning that land (the on which those crops are situated) does not agree to you protecting them on their behalf then you have no permission, surely, to claim that you have the lawful right conferred by the GL?

Authorised Person has this meaning: ‘Authorised person’ has the same meaning given in section 27(1) of the 1981 Act. It includes the owner or occupier of the land on which action authorised by this licence is to be taken, or any person authorised by the owner or occupier.

The scenario I have in mind is this. I am in the woods that form Smith's Covert. Roost shooting pigeons. Smith, after who the covert is named, is a dairy farmer. The police attend and ask what I am doing. I claim the "rights" under GL42. So they asks which crops? I tell them the field of sown or emerging X, Y, Z crop just there adjacent to Smith's Covert.

The field is on Jones's land. So the police contact Jones. Jones says first that he has never heard of me, that he doesn't need his crops protecting as he has daylight firing gas guns for that and, finally, that in any case he wouldn't given permission to anyone to shoot on his land on a Saturday afternoon as he objects to the noise disturbing him listening to "Final Score" on the BBC television. So now what happens?

 

[25 Sharps]

Ah well I'd say that according how the GL is worded it is NOT legal if the stubbles (or roost) are on land owned by a party different from the party that owns the land that has the crop on it that is suffering damage. Unless the person who owns the land on which the crops being damaged asks you to protect them by shooting those birds "at distance" from their land where the damage they are suffering is taking place?

So my reading the s27 is that if they are owned by two different parties that you need the authorisation of BOTH the owner of the land where you are shooting the birds and the owner of the land where the birds are causing the damage.

So it might be argued that as the "action authorised" is to protect land that the authorisation must also be given by the person on which those crops are situated? As if the person owning that land (the on which those crops are situated) does not agree to you protecting them on their behalf then you have no permission, surely, to claim that you have the lawful right conferred by the GL?

Authorised Person has this meaning: ‘Authorised person’ has the same meaning given in section 27(1) of the 1981 Act. It includes the owner or occupier of the land on which action authorised by this licence is to be taken, or any person authorised by the owner or occupier.

Who said anything about the neighbouring fields belong to another party?

The arable farm I shoot is 1200 acres, the mixed farm is about 3000.

 

[25 Sharps]

The Canada goose is on the Quarry list so you can shoot it for sporting purposes between 1st September and end of January. You can enjoy the shooting of it and take it for food.

It is on the GL so that it can be shot out of season if it is being a pest. You cannot shoot it for sport.

At the moment Pigeons are only on the GL. You cannot shoot them for sport, you cannot enjoy shooting them etc etc. you can only shoot them for pest control.

The proposal from the BASC is that they should also be on the quarry list with an appropriate season so that we can legitimately go out and shoot them for sport and enjoy an evening of flighting pigeons etc.

They would still remain on the GL so that they can legitimately still be shot for pest control purposes out of season - but not for sport.

Similar in the same way as out of season licences to shoot deer.

Seems entirely sensible to me.

Sorry, where does the legislation say you cannot enjoy shooting them?

 

[enfieldspares]

Who said anything about the neighbouring fields belong to another party?

I don't think that your statement made that clear? Not as I read it. In your circumstance where all the land is in the same ownership I don't think there would be a problem. But where it isn't? It is no different from my (I live in a rural village) shooting pigeons in my back garden and claiming that I am preventing damage to the crops in the field literally just across the road.

 

[25 Sharps]

I don't think that your statement made that clear? Not as I read it.

I just said neighbouring fields, as in the fields immediately surrounding those with the stubble or the roost.

I don’t know why you’d jump to the conclusion they would belong to a third party. If I’d said ‘neighbour’s fields’ then your conclusion would make more sense.

 

[Heym SR20]

Jesus , comparing gannets with pigeons now , this is getting ridiculous.
Last time I checked I dont think gannets cause serious crop protection

No, but I was using an extreme argument of very large numbers of one species in a small area. They do however eat large volumes of fish - mackerel and herring in particular, so do compete with fishermen.

A better example would have been Barnacle Geese which do cause damage to grazing. They do over winter in large flocks, but each flock represents a very large proportion of the population.

An even better example is the passenger pigeon of North America. This went from a population of huge flocks that were easy to shoot providing large volumes of food and sport to complete extinction over a period of about 40 years. By 1900 they extinct in the wild and last one dying in captivity in 1914.

 

[Tim.243]

The Canada goose is on the Quarry list so you can shoot it for sporting purposes between 1st September and end of January. You can enjoy the shooting of it and take it for food.

It is on the GL so that it can be shot out of season if it is being a pest. You cannot shoot it for sport.

At the moment Pigeons are only on the GL. You cannot shoot them for sport, you cannot enjoy shooting them etc etc. you can only shoot them for pest control.

The proposal from the BASC is that they should also be on the quarry list with an appropriate season so that we can legitimately go out and shoot them for sport and enjoy an evening of flighting pigeons etc.

They would still remain on the GL so that they can legitimately still be shot for pest control purposes out of season - but not for sport.

Similar in the same way as out of season licences to shoot deer.

Seems entirely sensible to me.

You can sell pigeons into the food chain but not a Canada despite the Goose being on a the quarry list.
With them breeding all year around (see example) that young bird is not very old compared to the adult, a good number shot yesterday could have paired up at some point and started the whole cycle again.
I know where they went as my friend picked them up for his ferrets.
Last year a 30k bird order for Holland was filled by the Lincolnshire lads but just a drop in the sea of pigeons.

 

[Bowland blades]

Personally I was dismayed when the Canada goose was put on the GL and would have preferred the previous status quo.

Totally ! Killing during the period with young that are totally dependant on both parents should have been kept on Special licence not OGL . I fully get the damage the parent birds can do to grass / crop but " special licence " at least can have a little investigation as to if the said landowner had the real and genuine need to kill in this period and that genunine none lythal means had failed . These are birds with tight family bonds that last many years

 

[enfieldspares]

An even better example is the passenger pigeon of North America. This went from a population of huge flocks that were easy to shoot providing large volumes of food and sport to complete extinction over a period of about 40 years. By 1900 they extinct in the wild and last one dying in captivity in 1914.

Yes. They had a stuffed one in Leicester's main museum on New Walk. However according to internet sources hand in hand with shooting was the loss of 180 million acres of forest habitat in the USA between 1850 and 1910.

 

[JTO]

When we used to get hard Winters, reducing pigeon numbers was thought to be a waste of time because a significant proportion would die of starvation anyway, and the only way to protect a crop was to shoot over that crop.
With the mild Winters that we now get, and the amount of Oilseed Rape being grown, I doubt the starvation argument is valid.

 

[Conor O'Gorman]

Ah well I'd say that according how the GL is worded it is NOT legal if the stubbles (or roost) are on land owned by a party different from the party that owns the land that has the crop on it that is suffering damage. Unless the person who owns the land on which the crops being damaged asks you to protect them by shooting those birds "at distance" from their land where the damage they are suffering is taking place?

So my reading the s27 is that if they are owned by two different parties that you need the authorisation of BOTH the owner of the land where you are shooting the birds and the owner of the land where the birds are causing the damage.

So it might be argued that as the "action authorised" is to protect land that the authorisation must also be given by the person on which those crops are situated? As if the person owning that land (the on which those crops are situated) does not agree to you protecting them on their behalf then you have no permission, surely, to claim that you have the lawful right conferred by the GL?

Authorised Person has this meaning: ‘Authorised person’ has the same meaning given in section 27(1) of the 1981 Act. It includes the owner or occupier of the land on which action authorised by this licence is to be taken, or any person authorised by the owner or occupier.

The scenario I have in mind is this. I am in the woods that form Smith's Covert. Roost shooting pigeons. Smith, after who the covert is named, is a dairy farmer. The police attend and ask what I am doing. I claim the "rights" under GL42. So they asks which crops? I tell them the field of sown or emerging X, Y, Z crop just there adjacent to Smith's Covert.

The field is on Jones's land. So the police contact Jones. Jones says first that he has never heard of me, that he doesn't need his crops protecting as he has daylight firing gas guns for that and, finally, that in any case he wouldn't given permission to anyone to shoot on his land on a Saturday afternoon as he objects to the noise disturbing him listening to "Final Score" on the BBC television. So now what happens?

I appreciate that is your viewpoint but I have been tagged on PW regarding the same viewpoint that you have posted there also and am a bit concerned that you might put some folk off with getting on with controlling woodpigeons with your viewpoint.

I don't know if you read my post above or not so I will just repeat it here again below. Also, just to qualify that I am not saying my advice trumps yours, there is no case law on this as far as I know, but my advice is based on BASC's website and my own experience of dealing with policy on general licences for circa 20 years.

Some general principles as I understand them, with the England general licences in mind, these being the most confusing ones, but the following applies generally across all countries I think:

General licences allow preventative action to be taken so you do not need to wait until damage has occurred. You can shoot or trap the listed pest birds if you haven’t tried non-lethal methods because the decision is yours on the practicality of that. You can use decoys, shoot on stubbles, roost shoot etc. under general licence because they allow preventative action to be taken and there is no restriction on using decoys, shooting on stubbles, roost shooting etc.

For info on general licences in England, Wales, Scotland and NI click here:

General licences

All the latest news and advice concerning general licences and how they affect you.

basc.org.uk

 

[enfieldspares]

I appreciate that is your viewpoint but I have been tagged on PW regarding the same viewpoint that you have posted there also and am a bit concerned that you might put some folk off with getting on with controlling woodpigeons with your viewpoint.

I don't know if you read my post above or not so I will just repeat it here again below. Also, just to qualify that I am not saying my advice trumps yours, there is no case law on this as far as I know, but my advice is based on BASC's website and my own experience of dealing with policy on general licences for circa 20 years.

Some general principles as I understand them, with the England general licences in mind, these being the most confusing ones, but the following applies generally across all countries I think:

General licences allow preventative action to be taken so you do not need to wait until damage has occurred. You can shoot or trap the listed pest birds if you haven’t tried non-lethal methods because the decision is yours on the practicality of that. You can use decoys, shoot on stubbles, roost shoot etc. under general licence because they allow preventative action to be taken and there is no restriction on using decoys, shooting on stubbles, roost shooting etc.

For info on general licences in England, Wales, Scotland and NI click here:

General licences

All the latest news and advice concerning general licences and how they affect you.

basc.org.uk

I am happy to have the matter addressed indeed.

And I hope you read my follow up post that in P/W was rolled into one posting. As I say I live in a village in the last but one house between me and open fields. Is it legal for me to shoot pigeons in my back garden...which is all lawn...on the claim that I am protecting the crops of the farmer who's field is in actual real life not even fifty yards away across the other side of the road? Where that farmer has no knowledge of what I am doing, is indeed totally unknown to me, and absolutely has had no intercourse whatsoever with me on the matter let alone made any sort of request for them to be shot?

So are you able to answer that? Because I think it would be illegal.

If that is unlawful then it is also surely unlawful that I be shooting them not in my back garden but in woodland where I do so under the exact same circumstance of there being no connection, in either his knowledge or his permission, between where I am shooting them and the farmer on who's land they are doing damage.

 

[potshotpat]

My money's on Richard, and common sense.

 

[Conor O'Gorman]

I am happy to have the matter addressed indeed.

And I hope you read my follow up post that in P/W was rolled into one posting. As I say I live in a village in the last but one house between me and open fields. Is it legal for me to shoot pigeons in my back garden...which is all lawn...on the claim that I am protecting the crops of the farmer who's field is in actual real life not even fifty yards away across the other side of the road? Where that farmer has no knowledge of what I am doing, is indeed totally unknown to me, and absolutely has had no intercourse whatsoever with me on the matter let alone made any sort of request for them to be shot?

So are you able to answer that? Because I think it would be illegal.

If that is unlawful then it is also surely unlawful that I be shooting them not in my back garden but in woodland where I do so under the exact same circumstance of there being no connection, in either his knowledge or his permission, between where I am shooting them and the farmer on who's land they are doing damage.

As I understand it the general licences are a legal defence not a legal right, if that makes sense. So if you are challenged what you say can be taken into evidence against you. In a garden situation you are far more likely to be challenged because neighbours may phone the police (or RSPCA, RSPB etc). That can also of course happen on farmland but less likely. Either way if that were to happen then your defence is that you were acting under the terms and conditions of the relevant general licence. That is it. It is then for the police interviewing you to decide how to proceed. Most situations never get to court. However, we should not be put in this situation in the first place as per OP.

 

[enfieldspares]

As I understand it the general licences are a legal defence not a legal right, if that makes sense. So if you are challenged what you say can be taken into evidence against you. In a garden situation you are far more likely to be challenged because neighbours may phone the police (or RSPCA, RSPB etc). That can also of course happen on farmland but less likely. Either way if that were to happen then your defence is that you were acting under the terms and conditions of the relevant general licence. That is it. It is then for the police interviewing you to decide how to proceed. Most situations never get to court. However, we should not be put in this situation in the first place as per OP.

Yes. I absolutely agree and I welcome any successful attempt to change the law that this becomes so.

A Court may argue that as the Animals Act 1971 s9 restricts the right to shoot a dog worrying livestock to a certain "class" (defined group) or person then does the defence under GL42 also only apply if the person shooting them is of a similar "class" (defined group). For certain I could not, as my late father once did on my small landholding elsewhere in Leicestershire, fetch a gun and leaning over the barbed wire fence between it and that field shoot a dog worrying sheep in our neighbours field without that express or implied authority from that neighbour. I have highlighted in bold what I think is pertinent.

Animals Act 1971​

Protection of livestock against dogs
s9 Killing of or injury to dogs worrying livestock

(2)For the purposes of this section a person is entitled to act for the protection of any livestock if, and only if—

(a)the livestock or the land on which it is belongs to him or to any person under whose express or implied authority he is acting;