Shooting sports is a group of competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms and bows/crossbows.
Hunting is the human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food and useful animal products, for recreation/taxidermy, to remove predators dangerous to humans or domestic animals, to eliminate pests and nuisance animals that damage crops/livestock/poultry or spread diseases, for trade/tourism, or for ecological conservation against overpopulation and invasive species.
The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) is an international wildfowl and wetland conservation charity in the United Kingdom. Its patron is Charles III, and its president is Kate Humble.
In the United Kingdom, access by the general public to firearms is subject to some of the strictest control measures in the world. However, fulfilment of the criteria and requirements as laid out by the laws results in the vast majority of firearm licence applications being approved. Laws differ slightly in Northern Ireland due to Northern Ireland having its own firearms legislation. Concerns have been raised over the availability of illegal firearms.
A gamekeeper, or in case of those dealing with deer (deer-)stalker, is a person who manages an area of countryside to make sure there is enough game for shooting and stalking, or fish for angling, and acts as guide to those pursuing them.
The .243 Winchester (6×52mm) is a popular sporting rifle cartridge. Developed as a versatile short action cartridge to hunt both medium game and small game alike, it "took whitetail hunting by storm" when introduced in 1955, and remains one of the most popular whitetail deer cartridges. It is also commonly used for harvesting blacktail deer, pronghorns and mule deer with heavier rounds, and is equally suited to varmint hunting with lighter rounds. The .243 is based on a necked down .308 Winchester, introduced only three years earlier. Expanding monolithic copper bullets of approximately 80 to 85 grains or traditional lead rounds of 90 to 105 grains with controlled expansion designs are best suited for hunting medium game, while lighter rounds are intended for varmints.
A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and early 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations. These weapons are characteristically too large for an individual to fire from the shoulder or often carry alone, but unlike artillery pieces, punt guns are able to be aimed and fired by a single person from a mount. In this case, the mount is typically a small watercraft. Many early models appear similar to over-sized versions of shoulder weapons of the time with full-length wooden stocks with a normal-sized shoulder stock. Most later variations do away with the full-length stock — especially more modern models — and have mounting hardware fixed to the gun to allow them to be fitted to a pintle.
Bowhunting is the practice of hunting game animals by archery. Many indigenous peoples have employed the technique as their primary hunting method for thousands of years, and it has survived into contemporary use for sport and hunting.
Waterfowl hunting is the practice of hunting ducks, geese, or other waterfowl for food and sport.
A combination gun is a firearm that usually comprises at least one rifled barrel and one smoothbore barrel, that is typically used with shot or some types of shotgun slug. Most have been break-action guns, although there have been other designs as well. Combination guns using one rifled and one smoothbore barrel are commonly found in an over-and-under configuration, while the side-by-side configuration is usually referred to as a cape gun. A combination gun with more than two barrels are called a drilling with three barrels, a vierling with four barrels, and a fünfling with five barrels. Combination guns generally use rimmed cartridges, as rimless cartridges are more difficult to extract from a break-action firearm.
Big-game hunting is the hunting of large game animals for meat, commercially valuable by-products, trophy/taxidermy, or simply just for recreation ("sporting"). The term is often associated with the hunting of Africa's "Big Five" games, and with tigers and rhinoceroses on the Indian subcontinent.
Shooting Times and Country Magazine, more commonly known as the Shooting Times, is a British shooting, fieldsports, and conservation magazine, published by Future plc. The magazine also features articles on fishing, deer stalking, gamekeeping, gundogs, cookery, and conservation.
Sir Walter John "Johnny" Scott, 5th Baronet succeeded his father Sir Walter Scott as baronet in 1992. He is a natural historian, broadcaster, columnist, countryside campaigner and farmer.
Deer hunting is hunting for deer for meat and sport, an activity which dates back tens of thousands of years. Venison, the name for deer meat, is a nutritious and natural food source of animal protein that can be obtained through deer hunting. There are many different types of deer around the world that are hunted for their meat. For sport, often hunters try to kill deer with the largest and most antlers to score them using inches. There are two different categories of antlers. They are typical and nontypical. They measure tine length, beam length, and beam mass by each tine. They will add all these measurements up to get a score. This score is the score without deductions. Deductions occur when the opposite tine is not the same length as it is opposite. That score is the deducted score.
In the United Kingdom, the term hunting with no qualification generally refers to hunting with hounds, e.g. normally fox hunting, stag (deer) hunting, beagling, or minkhunting, whereas shooting is the shooting of game birds. What is called deer hunting elsewhere is deer stalking. According to the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) over a million people a year participate in shooting, including stalking, shooting, hunting, clay shooting and target shooting. Firearm ownership is regulated in the UK by licensing. Provisions exist for those without a Firearm or Shotgun certificate to shoot under the supervision of a certificate holder.
A hunting license or hunting permit is a regulatory or legal mechanism to control hunting, both commercial and recreational. A license specifically made for recreational hunting is sometimes called a game license.
Game preservation is maintaining a stock of game to be hunted legally. It includes:
Irish Countrysports and Country Life Magazine is an Irish hunting, shooting, fishing and country lifestyle magazine. From 1985 until 2002 it was known as The Irish Hunting, Shooting and Fishing Magazine. The magazine is produced quarterly and features seasonal articles on hunting, fishing, shooting, deer stalking, gamekeeping, gundogs, art, antiques, property, interior design and conservation.
A professional hunter is a person who hunts and/or manages game by profession. Some professional hunters work in the private sector or for government agencies and manage species that are considered overabundant, others are self-employed and make a living by selling hides and meat, while still others guide clients on big-game hunts.
Gun culture refers to the attitudes, feelings, values and behaviour of a society, or any social group, in which guns are used. The term was first coined by Richard Hofstadter in an American Heritage article critiquing gun violence in the United States.
