Hunting and shooting in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the term hunting 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 by licensing.

Hunting has been practised by humans in Britain since prehistoric times; it was a crucial activity of hunter-gatherer societies before the domestication of animals and the dawn of agriculture. During the last ice age, humans and Neanderthals hunted mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses by driving them over cliffs; evidence has been found at La Cotte de St Brelade on the island of Jersey. In Britain, hunting with hounds was popular in Celtic Britain before the Romans arrived, using the Agassaei ^[d] breed. The Romans brought their Castorian and Fulpine hound breeds to England, along with importing the brown hare (the mountain hare is native) and fallow deer as quarry. Wild boar was also hunted.

Blunderbuss firearms were improved during the 18th and 19th centuries and percussion cap shotguns became more popular. To protect the pheasants for the shooters, gamekeepers culled competitive species such as foxes, magpies and birds of prey almost to extirpation in popular areas, and landowners improved their coverts and other habitats for game. Game Laws were relaxed by Parliament in 1831, which meant anyone could obtain a permit to shoot rabbits, hares, and gamebirds, although shooting and taking away any birds or animals on someone else's land without their permission continued to count as the crime of poaching, and continues to do so today.

Hunting was formerly a royal sport, and to an extent shooting still is, with many kings and queens being involved in hunting and shooting, including King Edward VII, King George V (who could shoot over a thousand pheasants on a single day), King George VI and Prince Philip, although Queen Elizabeth II did not shoot. Shooting on the large estates of Scotland has always been a fashionable country sport. This trend is generally attributed to the Victorians, who were inspired by the romantic nature of the Scottish Highlands.

The shooting of game birds, in particular pheasant, is often on land managed by a gamekeeper using British country clothing. When hunting with shotguns, there is a risk of accidentally injuring birds that survive. The bird struck by the central cluster of the shot typically dies and falls to the ground. However, animals on the periphery of the shot may still be hit by some pellets, which they survive but result in lifelong suffering. Shooting from too far away also increases the risk of causing harm to animals due to the increased spread of shot pellets.

Game birds are shot in different ways. In driven game shooting, where beaters are employed to walk through woods and over moors or fields, dependent on the quarry and time of year and drive game towards a line of 8–10 standing guns standing about 50 or 60 metres apart. Large numbers of pheasants, partridge and duck, but not grouse, are reared and released to provide sufficient numbers of game. Grouse cannot be reared intensively but the heather moorland where they live is intensively managed to maximise numbers.

Rough shooting, where several guns walk through a woodland, moor or field and shoot the birds their dogs put up, is increasingly popular. It is less formal and may be funded by several people grouping together to form a syndicate, paying a certain amount each year towards pheasants and habitat maintenance.

Rook shooting was once popular in rural Britain for both pest control and gaining food, wherein juvenile rooks living in rookeries, known as "branchers", were shot before they were able to fly. These events were both very social and a source of food (the rook becomes inedible once mature) as the rook and rabbit pie was considered a great delicacy.