Bodkins; illegal in the UK?

[Jaeger]

England is one of our greatest allies , i cant understand where the world is headed with the things people are for nowadays,taking hunting away from people is just ,just I have no words either it makes my blood boil to hear about it too!

[billy]

HEy, the govt over here is also trying to steal our freedoms as well.  Just remember what they did to the Native Americans.  That same govt still rules us today, and anyone who thinks they are any different or they have changed their stripes over the years  is a fool....

[Rod]

From what I gather, bowhunting was banned because it is an inhumane way to kill an animal (to be honest). There were many problems with people shooting an animal, it ran then off with an arrow in it and they couldn't find it to finish it off so they left it wounded to die slowly, or when they did catch up to it they weren't able to bring themselves to kill the animal, and so left it. Another issue being poaching; the bow and arrow is silent compared to gunshot, people could easily sneak around and hunt without being detected.

As I recall it was a knee-jerk reaction to a rash of oiks shooting pets and swans and suchlike.
Often with a crossbow judging by the missile found in some of the animals, which stands to reason since most of these blokes likely would not have been able to hit the inside of a barn with the door closed with anything that required some skill.

As for poaching with a bow and arrow, not too clever unless you can retrieve all your arrows. Especially if you are known locally to be an archer capable of hitting his mark.
And in those days we still had enough rural bobbies who knew their patch and just about everyone on it.

Rod.

[zeNBowyer]

"Most of these blokes likely would not have been able to hit the inside of a barn with the door closed with anything that required some skill"

Rod,
       though  the  English  may  not  hunt they  have  a  long  tradition  of  archery,  with  lots of  clubs  where  people  shoot regularly, when  I was there I  shot at  one  of their  clubs  and  they are  no  slouches  when  it  comes  to bows:)

[Cromm]

"Most of these blokes likely would not have been able to hit the inside of a barn with the door closed with anything that required some skill"

Rod,
       though  the  English  may  not  hunt they  have  a  long  tradition  of  archery,  with  lots of  clubs  where  people  shoot regularly, when  I was there I  shot at  one  of their  clubs  and  they are  no  slouches  when  it  comes  to bows:)

What Rod is saying is that it  wasn't an archer but most likely be a guy or boy who has just got a crossbow for £45 or $60 at a fishing shop, gone into the woods got bored with shooting at a 10 ring target and has shot a deer,dog,swan or something with a target point arrow, the animal runs off is found walking around with an arrow in it's butt and it's the Archery club members that must have done it!!!!!!

As far as I know when it came up at parliament to find out if bowhunting in the UK should be banned. The man who was to stand up for bowhunting with a paper with 8000 names on it, was waiting for so long that he had to go take a pee and in that 5 mins, the matter was  called up, no one was there to stand up for bowhunting so it got banned in the UK........

[D. Tiller]

Yep! We here in the US need to stick together. Once your libertys and rights start to disapear its just a short step into slavery to the state.

I think I like the motto "Live free or die!"

[stickbender]

     Mon dieu! Ze French, can do what the ze English cannot?  Perhaps, ze time has arrived to show ze English, the French have not forgotten Ze defeat by the English.....Marie!  Where is mon bow, and arrows, and ze map of England......

Sorry, couldn't resist that.                                            Wayne

[mullet]

 I have to differ about the bow not being a good weapon for poaching. When it comes to hunting, being an excellent shot is only part of the story. The rest is to be able to blood trail, recover, debone and pack the whole deer in 3 or 4 Zip- Lock baggies. ,,,from what I've been told.

[zeNBowyer]

Absolutely,  the  only thing  that reduces the  lethality  of the  bow is  the  level  of  amateur  shooting  it:)

[Harudath]

More often than not, giving an idiot a bow and arrow is more dangerous than handing them to an archer.

If that story abpout 8000 signatures and needing the bathroom is true, I'm goddamn furious. Anyone fancy starting a campaign to get it legalised again?

[Cromm]

More often than not, giving an idiot a bow and arrow is more dangerous than handing them to an archer.

If that story abpout 8000 signatures and needing the bathroom is true, I'm goddamn furious. Anyone fancy starting a campaign to get it legalised again?

It's already happening here in the UK, it just seems to be taking a long time. There is a lot of people that want to be able to bowhunt, but there is also alot of loud people saying it's wrong to hunt, why hunt when meat comes from the store anyway??? And that kind of rubbish.....

[triton]

from what I'm told, it's not actually illegal or legal to hunt with a bow in England.  Apparently there is a list of approved hunting weapons and a list of banned hunting weapons.  The bow is on neither list.   

[Rod]

Eddie,
Are you  saying that you have never left an arrow in the woods?
I know I have and I'm not exactly a slouch when it comes to hitting what I shoot at.
What Grandad had in mind was not that you couldn't take game efficiently with an arrow, but that most folks back then used crested arrows.
If you did not recover such an arrow you might just as well have left a signed note for the gamekeeper. ;-)

He taught me on land where we had permission to rove and take game within reason.
I guess the keepers thought it better to have local eyes on the ground and be warned about foreigners long netting and such than to try and ban a local who was out there more often than they were and would take game if he chose, like it or not, if they were to ban him.
The owner was an incomer anyway. New money from commerce and his family had parked quite a bit of the farmland so there was still some resentment locally, but he had the sense let the head keeper run the game side of things.
Grandad was a yellowbelly, "out of the ground" as Rudyard Kipling once described it, and regarded most of the proprietors in the county as usurping incomers, except for the people over at Bourne who, although they came with the Normans, had settled in and become accepted.

Rod.

[stickbender]

     Incomers!  The Pikers!!

                              Wayne

[mullet]

 Rod,

 Yea, I've left a few, but not many sticking out of animals. If I did, I trailed them enough to know if I didn't find them  nobody else was going to crawl back into that thick stuff to see what the smell was. And a lot of the places I hunt are 7,000 acres or more, dead stuff everywhere every day, mostly cattle ranches. And Most people in the States don't write their names on arrows anymore.
 It has got the same here, used to be able to hunt most anywhere but without permission it is against the law now.