Game shooting review draws more than 10,000 responses

More than 10,000 people have emailed the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in response to its review of game shooting in England, BASC told members this week, as the call for evidence enters its final week. The deadline is 23:59 on Sunday, 1 November, and the association says thousands more responses are needed.

Why does BASC say the next week matters?

The call for evidence covers the rearing, release and shooting of gamebirds in England, and BASC’s message to members is blunt about what is at stake. “Anti-shooting groups, including Wild Justice and Protect the Wild, are urging their supporters to respond to Defra’s call for evidence,” the association wrote in an email to members on Friday, 23 October. “They want to use this review to create a negative story around shooting to justify a ban. Let’s make sure the real story of shooting is told.”

The association asked members who have already responded to forward the appeal to “three friends who shoot, beat, pick up or work in the countryside”, because many still do not know the review is happening.

Who should respond, and how?

Anyone with a connection to game shooting in England qualifies, whether or not they live there: Guns, beaters, pickers-up, shoot managers, farmers who host shoots and businesses that benefit from shooting. BASC’s campaign page carries a template email to gamebirds@defra.gov.uk, and the association urges respondents to add a few lines of their own experience, “because personal accounts carry far more weight than identical letters”. Defra is obliged to consider every submission within the review’s scope.

The association also asks respondents to copy its evidence team in, so it can track engagement and shape its own overall submission, and it has produced campaign posters, leaflets and a written response form to download and put up in shoot rooms and on local noticeboards. The page warns that those who want to shut down shooting are already responding.

BASC had asked Defra for more time to respond; the department refused, calling the two-month window reasonable, so the 1 November deadline is final. The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) has published its own template for supporters, and shooting organisations across the sector have spent October driving responses.

What happens next

The call for evidence closes at 23:59 on Sunday, 1 November. Defra will then weigh the submissions alongside the independent economic assessment it commissioned, and the sector’s organisations are expected to publish their own full responses. Evidence can be sent by email until the deadline; BASC’s template and guidance on what counts as evidence are on its campaign page below.