The countryside community has been left deeply anxious about what comes next after Labour’s call for evidence on game-bird shooting closed on November 1.
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs announced earlier this year that it would explore introducing a licensing regime for the activity, a move that has alarmed those who depend on the sport.
Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, warned: “The practical legislative route to licensing the shooting of game birds requires them to ban it first.”
The activity would need to be “prohibited” before ministers could determine its future shape, he said.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock, who launched the consultation in September, acknowledged that shooting “can contribute to rural economies and land management,” but said its wider impacts remained insufficiently understood.
Yet supporters of the practice argue that evidence suggests that well-managed shoots deliver significant ecological gains.
British Trust for Ornithology research has found that land where cover crops are planted for pheasants and partridges supports 12 times the density of wild birds, species such as buntings and sparrows, compared with conventional arable fields of wheat or barley.
The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has also established that farms hosting shoots tend to maintain more hedgerows, which in turn support greater wildlife populations.
Brewery Farm in Suffolk, a 200-acre holding that runs seven shoot days per season, exemplifies this relationship.
Ecologists have recorded 73 bee species on the land, alongside rare turtle-doves and near-extinct nightingales, drawing regular visits from ornithologists.
A 2024 study by Cognisense, commissioned by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, found that 620,000 people take part in the sport, collectively spending £4.4billion annually on everything from dog leads to pheasant-plucking equipment.
The sector sustains 67,000 full-time positions, among them roughly 11,000 gamekeepers and over 12,000 shoot managers.
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Tens of thousands more work as beaters and pickers-up.
Graham Denny, whose family has farmed Brewery Farm for three generations, pays each of them £40 a day.
Revenue from selling shooting, around £6,000 per team per day, funds Denny’s habitat creation and nature-friendly land management.
Without shooting income, Mr Denny told the Telegraph he would have to choose between farming his land more intensively or leasing it to solar panel developers or housebuilders.
He said: “I could make loads of money out of solar but you couldn’t have a solar farm and have shooting.”
The very “multi-functional” landscape the Government claims to champion would vanish.
Steve Thurlow, a retired Dulux factory worker in his 70s who beats two or three days a week, dismissed the caricature of shooting as an elite pursuit.
He said: “It’s normal, like-minded people who just do the same thing together. I would miss it very much.”
Ian Pearce, a retired farmer, put it simply: “The countryside would be a sad place without shooting.”
A spokesman for Defra said: “The Government has no plans to ban game-bird shooting. High environmental and animal welfare standards must be in place for sustainable shooting to succeed, protecting our ecosystems and biosecurity.”
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