Hunting and shooting in the United Kingdom

[2] Hunting has been practised by humans in Britain since prehistoric times; it was a crucial activity of hunter-gatherer societies before the domestication of animals and the dawn of agriculture.

During the last ice age, humans and neanderthals hunted mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses by driving them over cliffs; evidence has been found at La Cotte de St Brelade on the island of Jersey.

To protect the pheasants for the shooters, gamekeepers culled competitive species such as foxes, magpies and birds of prey almost to extirpation in popular areas, and landowners improved their coverts and other habitats for game.

It is less formal and may be funded by several people grouping together to form a syndicate, paying a certain amount each year towards pheasants and habitat maintenance.

UK law defines game as including: Bolt action rifles are used for deer stalking.

Waterfowl hunting is typically happens in the form of a single gun sitting in pursuit of ducks by a body of water, or on the coastal foreshore, often at dawn or dusk, and waits for birds to flight.

Due to the ban on the use of lead shot for hunting waterfowl or over wetlands, many wildfowlers are switching to modern guns with stronger engineering to allow the use of non-toxic ammunition such as steel or tungsten based cartridges.

Their representative body, WAGBI (Wildfowlers Association of Great Britain and Ireland), was founded in 1908 by Stanley Duncan in Hull.

[15] As of 2020[update] game shooting and deer stalking are carried on as field sports in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Hunting with hounds in the traditional manner became unlawful in Scotland in 2002 and in England and Wales in 2005, but continues in certain accepted forms.

In 2005 it became unlawful in England and Wales to shoot game birds while they are not in flight, an action which has long been considered unsporting.