Student, 17, puts his game shooting study to the Defra review

A 17-year-old BASC member has sent his A-level game shooting study to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), whose call for evidence on the sport closes on Sunday, 1 November. Felix Hodgkinson-Last spent months weighing the case for and against shooting for his 5,000-word Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), which asks whether game shooting can be justified in the 21st century and concludes that it can.

What did his research find?

Interviewed by BASC this week, the junior member said he divided his report into the social, environmental and economic arguments, drawing on sources from across the debate, including interviews with a farmer, an MP and a person vehemently opposed to shooting. The strongest argument he found for the sport was its part in rural life: the farmer he interviewed described a local shoot employing around 50 beaters and 15 gamekeepers, and serving as many neighbours’ main chance to meet.

He set the economic case out plainly: shooting is worth £3.3bn a year to the UK economy and supports the equivalent of 67,000 full-time jobs, with 620,000 people actively involved, figures drawn from the Value of Shooting report. Against that he weighed a 2018 Survation poll finding that most rural residents in England and Wales do not shoot, before concluding that disliking an activity “is not, on its own, a good reason to ban it”.

The arguments hardest to call

On the environment, he cites the £500m of conservation work shoot providers and volunteers deliver each year, with habitat management across 7.6 million hectares, and GWCT research showing game crops holding farmland songbirds through winter. He also took seriously the arguments opponents raise on raptor persecution and lead shot, concluding that “the answer lies in the shooting community holding itself to the highest standards, not in a ban”.

Talking to shooting’s opponents taught him the community’s job is education, he said: “When people who have never been out on a shoot day try to picture it, they often imagine something very different from the reality.”

Why did he send it to Defra?

“I spent months weighing up the evidence on both sides, and I wanted it to count for something beyond my A-levels,” he said. The review of gamebird release, shooting and welfare in England is the one BASC and the sector’s other organisations have spent October driving responses to, and Felix urged every shooter to follow: “I would encourage everyone who shoots, whatever their age, to respond before the call for evidence closes. Long may our country traditions continue!”

What happens next

The call for evidence closes at 23:59 on Sunday, 1 November, and anyone connected to game shooting in England can respond by email. Felix’s full interview, with his verdict on each side of the argument, is on the BASC website, and the association’s template and guidance for responding are on its campaign page, linked below.