Originally Posted By: craigd
Originally Posted By: Konor3inch
....This can be arduous hunting involving rising in the winter hours before dawn ,traipsing out over the mud in the dark and holing up in a creek bottom in the snow or rain to pass shoot ducks or geese. All this with no guarantee of a shot ,with a 50 yard range over miles of foreshore that geese may flight over it can be a frustrating game....

Sounds more fun to me than having some estate worker telling me where to stand and which direction the birds will be coming from. I think we can all list alternate activities, done many ourselves, but they don't necessarily help out with the appreciation and future of sport gunning. For that reason alone, you have more allies, I didn't say friends, among pistol and semiauto enthusiasts than the social engineers.

You are aware that Scotland is quite a bit smaller that the US, aren't you? If you are so concerned with prevention of accidental shootings and non nut job related shootings that you say are a US plague, how could it be possible to have handgun suicides in Scotland when they are illegal? Ah, it's probably just me 'looking things up'. By the way, this does not look like a good time to ask rm bill about access to the outdoors. Remember, if you get to visit his neck of the woods, try to without preconceived notions.


CraigD
I couldnt agree more shooting on the shore is the ultimate shooting experience for me. I also have access to a lot of rough shooting over good ground with a dog and that comes a close second you can be more flexible and I enjoy this type of walked up shooting. The syndicate shooting is fun ,more social with like minded people mostly local farmers ,we split our numbers in half and alternate between walking/beating where birds can still be shot going back away from the standing guns ,and standing we dont stand at pegs we are all experienced enough to line out and cover the likely areas birds will flush over, we dont always get it right though.
I havent heard of any recent suicides with handguns here. Organised crime still have access to hand guns ,if you are bringing in drugs you can bring in hand guns ,there are restricted two shot handguns normally revolvers with 4 blocked chambers which are available for humane despatch of deer and there is no ban on muzzle loading revolvers so thats three possibilities there are also arms and ammo still in families which were originally war trophies