Police Move Will Help Gamekeepers
19 May 2008
Gamekeepers and stalkers with firearms licensed to cull deer will soon be able to apply to the police to shoot foxes and other small pests as well.
The National Gamekeepers' Organisation has welcomed a decision of the Association of Chief Police Officers' Firearms and Explosives Licensing Working Group (ACPO FELWG), to draft a new ‘condition' to the effect that firearm certificate holders licensed to take deer may also take fox and vermin.
Until now, many police forces have set conditions when issuing firearms certificates restricting the use of a particular calibre rifle to a specified quarry species. This has meant, for example, that a gamekeeper out with a rifle approved only for red deer has been unable to shoot a fox, even though the shot in question would have been completely safe.
Certificate holders will be able to apply for species-specific conditions to be removed from their certificates and replaced with the new wording. Other laws, such as the Deer Act, which for good welfare reasons require that certain species must only be shot with sufficiently powerful guns, will remain in place.
The NGO said, "We approached ACPO FELWG last November urging this common sense approach and recently had a face-to-face meeting with their Chairman. We are absolutely delighted with this outcome."
Assistant Chief Constable Adrian Whiting, Chairman of ACPO FELWG said, "I consider it a sensible approach that where a shooter is considered to be safe enough to take deer, then that same shooter should be considered safe enough to take lesser species as well, where they have the appropriate permission to do so. ACPO FELWG has issued such guidance to all forces in England & Wales. Scotland already follows this practice. It is of course guidance, and individual forces are entitled to come to their own decisions, nonetheless it is my view that policing effort is better expended elsewhere in terms of ensuring public safety in firearms licensing than on policing restrictive conditions of this kind."