Can they do this?

measles

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We have a livery yard and are lucky enough to have woods through our fields where deer live. We have a reasonable relationship with the neighbouring farmer but he keeps giving permission to individuals to shoot on his ground and they in turn don't give us any warning.

This morning, deer were running away from the woods bordering our ground into our fields in panic and our horses were equally worried by the shooting and dogs. Can they do this legally? If they gave us warning we could keep the horses in but they don't ever do that and we've already lost one horse with a leg broken in panic.

We'll continue asking our neighbour, in a reasonable and friendly manner, to ensure that anyone with permission to shoot give us warning, but has anyone else this had a problem like this? Thanks
 
What they can and cannot do depends to an extent on the terms of your possession of the land - is it yours or leased from the farmer?
If you own yours, and he owns his then clearly a reasonable approach needs to be made to him asking for a specified day each week when shooting might take place. If that fails then it is also possible that this 'sporting' use contravenes the current notified usage for the area, which I imagine is agricultural, if the shooting happens so often it is beyond 'pest control'.
Finally the local council can advise about nuisance behaviour and how to measure this with a view to a civil injunction application - by that stage your neighbour will hate you, of course.
 
You could contact British Association for Shooting and Conservation. They have a Code of Practice that should be observed to avoid nuisance to neighbours when shooting. I think they would be worried about this lack of courtesty. Getting to the point where a horse breaks its leg in a panic is not very neighbourly is it? I think that anyone shooting deer has to have a special licence as they use a rifle, surely, so they should be complying with various rules and regulations.

If we go rabbit shooting we phone up the local police and various neighbours and tell them about it first.

If they are not more considerate I think you are probably going to fall out with them anyway. You could ask the local Policeman to have a word, he wouldn't tell them that you had complained, although they might work it out! A gun licence holder has to apply to the Police regularly to have the licence renewed, so they wouldn't want to fall out with them.

Good luck, this is a problem for you, I hope you get a satisfactory result.
 
I have no answer to this.

We have people who come across our land occasionally and shoot in the middle of the night. We don't know who they are (but have suspicions) and the police aren't interested.

We also have one man who shoots the ducks from our pond by sending his dog over to scare them in the air, and then shooting them from a neighbouring farmer's land. If they drop on our land he sends the dogs to retrieve them. Claims he's not trespassing and not shooting birds from our land, but we've watched him!

He looks a very dodgy individual though and I'm not going to argue with a bloke with a shotgun, especially when my horses are often out in the fields, close enough to be targets, if he gets "one on him".

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This is bloody ridiculous, guns are dangerous things, how come the police aren't interested, too bloody busy eating dougnuts and drinking coffee no doubt.
 
Never let the opportunity to have a pop pass you by, do you........
Somebody shooting on their own land, or on land with the permission of the landowner does not automatically attract the attention of the Police - there ARE other agencies you know
 
Not interested because the people we suspect deny it and if it was them, they hold a valid Gun licence anyway.

Being on our private land in the dead of the night is a civil matter, not a criminal one. Problem is, we're up at 5am as it is. We can't stay awake at night roaming 230 acres in the hope of catching them. We just hear the shots occasionally in the night and know they're too close to home to be coming on anything but our land.
 
Was that a reply to me?

These are people shooting on OUR land without permission in the night that annoy us.

The other one, who shoots the ducks at dusk....well we don't own the ducks, they are wild, so apparently they're fair game.
 
No honey, to pedantic who is on the usual police bashing mission...

Of course nobody should be shooting on or over your land, however you and i both know that it is hardly the kind of thing that will mobilise several armed response units to deal with it - and to send anything or anybody less well equipped would be potentially fatal to the police officer or innocent bystanders (ie, you)

Therefore nothing will happen until one night one of these nights one of your tresspassers accidentally injures themselves tramping about in the dark, then it will be your fault



of course
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Sorry about the police bashing, yes yes I know they cant all be thick, trouble is I can only speak from my own experience, and in 53 years (and yes I have had dealings with them as friends and customers) I havent met a bright one yet.
 
Well they dont seem to have a problem sitting at the road side for hours on end in a van with a camera, maybe they would like a change and sit in a field, they could have their coffe and doughnuts flown in, maybe in the helipcopter that almost landed in our filed full of horses running around when they were tryin to catch somebody who possibly hadnt paid their tv licence, well I'm guessing that as we wern't told what the individual had done even though I asked and even though they were all over our fields, I think the answer was ugghh, possibly some police jargon, maybe you could tell me what it meant, is it similar to foxtrot tango bravo for dunno mate ?
 
Oh yea, dont remember being given a number to phone in case of a vets bill after the helicopter causing our horses to run around maybe made one or two lame, mind you they wouldn't know where we are as whenever I phone about kids throwing stones off the bridge at cars or illegal trial bikes or people setting the woods on fire they never seem to know where we are, well the public park has only been there about mmmmm, how many hundred years, well a long time anyway.
 
Knowing the costs of the police helicopter I imagine that it just possibly involved something a bit more serious than a TV licence.

You could ask the civilian employee in the camera van, but he of course is unarmed and therefore I wouldn't want to be the person writing that operation order as the health and safety check would make grim reading. No, you have to have an armed response to a known armed threat - therefore you would need a team of at least 8-10 armed officers to safely seal and secure the area and surrounding roads, the helicopter on standby - and given that those officers are entitiled to days off from timt to time, you would need the availability of a complete second team. How long are we going to wait for these poacher types to come back, a week, a month - let's say 6 weeks. And while they are dug in to various ditches around the farm they can't be responding to other jobs so there is a huge cost implication

As a local tax payer would you be happy with that?
 
yep, 57 billion to bail out a load of greedy shareholders who took a risk, yes, I think as a taxpayer and a grafter I could live with that, money spent on iraq, dont tell me we are short of money as we aint, out in the fresh air, good supply of dougnuts, team bonding, it would make a good training exercise, obviously dont use the people who trained the officers to work on the underground in London as communication would be a must.
 
We had a neighbor - well the farmer that owns the fields surrounding my parents that lets people come and shoot. We dont mind on the one condition that they do not fire at out land/property in any way. They ignored this and continued, dad called the farmer who apparently called the guy shooting. Who still shoot onto our land and it hit dads car so he dot his air rife out and fired back
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They dude got the message after that!!

But remember, it is an offense to knowingly alarm horses. If you have told the farmer that the shooting alarms th horses, and he still lets folk do it and not tell you surely he is breaking the law?
 
Couple of things:

1. I would be VERY surprised and shocked if the Police used a helicopter to catch someone who hadn't paid the TV licence.

2. If the Police helicopter had to make an emergency landing in your field my best guess is that they were trying to catch someone dangerous, with a gun maybe. Would you prefer that the spent the day attempting to get hold of you so you could give permission for them to land, and you then catch the horses...meanwhile said criminal gets away, possibly still carrying a gun, and puts lives at risk? All because they might upset your horses?

3. If you want people to respond calmly and sensibly to your posts I would suggest that you try to write more rounded, rational posts, rather than just spouting off crap you've read in the Daily Express or similar. Try to form your own opinions.
 
Thanks, everyone. Some good news - the farmer was called and he was furious at the people he had given permission to shoot as it had been on the condition that they give us prior warning so we could ensure the horses were in. He says they'll no longer have permission to shoot there, so hopefully the problem won't rise again. We appreciate his attitude very much.
 
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it would make a good training exercise, obviously dont use the people who trained the officers to work on the underground in London as communication would be a must.

[/ QUOTE ]

Those officers will have to live with the consequences of what happened that day for the rest of their lives, and you can be certain that they will, even if they have been publicly cleared of blame. I would be very surprised if many of them would willingly carry a gun again so you have no worries about that.
 
I dont read ANY papers, there full of crap, my van gets broken into, no police only a crime number, I go to bed, 11.00pm woken up by TWO police officers to tell me my lads tax has expired on the car outside, duh, waste of money and man power or what, TWICE in 5 years pulled off the road in my van to have it weighed when it's obviously not overloaded, TWICE policeman askes how to spell my name WHEN IT'S ON THE SIDE OF THE VAN, DUH, TWICE I tell him it's on the van, thick or what, I do form my own opinions from my own experience of 53 years on this planet, I speak as I find, if the person they were after in the helicopter was armed, how come the police chasing wern't ?
Rounded rational posts are boring, yaaaaaaaawnnnn, what was it you said again....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
 
[ QUOTE ]
Thanks, everyone. Some good news - the farmer was called and he was furious at the people he had given permission to shoot as it had been on the condition that they give us prior warning so we could ensure the horses were in. He says they'll no longer have permission to shoot there, so hopefully the problem won't rise again. We appreciate his attitude very much.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent, some common sense at last.
 
Well having the depressed gene and bipolar disorder and being surrounded by arsholes doesnt help
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, other than that I am a well happy bunny
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, anyway nothing better than a massdebate with friends
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Pedantic; you are asked to spell your name in spite of it being on the side of your van, because it is a simple check that you are in fact the person you claim to be. If your van is ever stolen hopefully the police officer will ask the uneducated driver the same question if they manage to stop it.
Vans are stopped and weighed because they are far more likely to be overweight than heavy commercial vehicles, and the rear suspension on some most certainly gives the impression of overweight in some cases, as do underinflated tyres.
The highest I have seen is a transit that was 57% overweight - there is no way I would have wanted that heading towards me trying to brake and steer. Actually I am impressed that police in your area still stop and weigh vehicles, they are certainly too busy to do it around this way.
Why did you have 2 police men at 11pm? because at night it is safer to work in pairs. Why wasn't your lad's vehicle taxed if it was on the public road? And what could a police officer hope to acheive by visiting you when your van was broken in to that couldn't be done over the phone, presumably they asked sufficient questions to assess whether there was any suitablity for SOCO.

Helicopter crews aren't routinely armed - but you already know that, don't you.
 
What twice, is the police officer deaf, my lads tax is nothing to do with me, he doesn't live with me it's not my responcability, perhaps they should have checked where it was registered to rather than waking me up, it had no engine in it, he was working on it at my house, just because it was outside my house is irrelevant, strange how they didn't knock on the carvans doors on the fields at the illegal camp site, not a tax disc amonst them, is the law different for caravaners, funny the first time I was stopped to weigh my van was by a police woman ON HER OWN, do the police change the rules to suit themselves then like when caught speeding, (oh I was trying it out as it's a new car), how do SOCO know if there are prints on my van unless THEY COME AND LOOK, nobody came, when I had a problem with another van I bought I had to pester the poilce to sort it out and Oh wasn't I made to feel a nuisance tax payer for wanting it dealt with instead of nothing happening week after week after week.
Waste of time sending an unarmed helicopter to chase an armed villain eh.
Mind you I must commend the police for retrieving my daughters handbag so quickly stolen at Mcdaonalds, the policemans eyes lit up as soon as she walked in the station, I sometimes wish I had a pretty face big tits and a tight shapely arse, he couldn't do enough
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To be fair the the officer on the phone who took my details when some retard threatened me along the river was very helpful, he gave me a crime number ect, he got a map out and went through where it was over the phone, and they did call me back a week and a half later to ask me if I wanted to do a photofit, trouble was I couldn't remember what he looked liked that much later.
 
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No honey, to pedantic who is on the usual police bashing mission...

Of course nobody should be shooting on or over your land, however you and i both know that it is hardly the kind of thing that will mobilise several armed response units to deal with it - and to send anything or anybody less well equipped would be potentially fatal to the police officer or innocent bystanders (ie, you)

Therefore nothing will happen until one night one of these nights one of your tresspassers accidentally injures themselves tramping about in the dark, then it will be your fault



of course
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So sorry. I somehow missed Pedantic's reply.
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I couldn't quite figure out why you thought I'd not miss the opportunity to have a pop at someone.
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You're totally right. I know it's not a terrible thing, but it is annoying.
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