Did you drag your best gun to Olde Blighty to shoot the deer? Did you do this last year? Will you do it again, this year, or, next? Why not? 20 years ago, I inquired about doing some hunting in France. My hosts, gracious, but honest, informed me that while it might not be technically illegal, it might as well be. As gunmakers, they had to score an invite from a landowner, and they would have a day out, surrounded by strangers, and they might get a shot at a duck, or not. The event usually ended as a party, and the guest of honor was most often a large boar that had been hit by a car, or shot on a hunt, but, usually, hit by a car. The pigs were a huge nuisance in that part of France, and getting worse. There were fees, of course, but, those fees promised them nothing, save they would be on the property that day.
They considered themselves lucky if they got out every five years. They were well connected, opposed to say, mostly anyone else. I was dumbfounded at how few options there were to this, and how they expected to produce hunting weapons in a culture that had almost no legal public hunting available to the masses.
As long as you have a pile of money to give them, them being the landowners, local enforcement agencies, and whatever government perfunctory is standing with his hand out, you are right, you can technically hunt, in Europe. Sometimes. What we have, here, is hugely different. The situation in Europe is most certainly not improving.
Good guns are much like gentlemen. Where you find them. Already pointed out, the good gun that is walked up to a peg in a slip, might not be all that great sitting in a duck boat for 40 seasons. Yes, I know guys that do that with a gun, and it is not an English gun.
Best,
Ted
No I leave the Holland home when I deer hunt(are you really that clueless?????)
I might make it over next year for Stags and walked up birds if the Covid situation stabilizes, not this year.
That may be the case in France, I have not hunted there. The people I know in the UK get out multiple times per year for birds and big game.
The costs associated with my hunting in the UK were on par with hunting in America, very tolerable.
I far prefer the large amounts of public land on offer here in the States to the European model but as the saying goes "When in Rome...."
I'm not much of a duck hunter for for the walked up game I pursue my H&H has been the perfect gun for me. What other choose is up to them but I have made my choice and can live with it just fine. Tuck thinks so too....
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