"JB" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 11 May 2005 11:04:50 +0000 (UTC), "Clive in Kent"
wrote:

Hi all, Need to get rid of (permanently!) 2 big, fat, greedy wood pigeons
and a verminous grey squirrel out of my garden. Thinking about buying an
air
rifle. Do I need a license for one of these nowadays?

Clive in Kent

You do not need a license for an air rifle with an energy of less that
12 ft lbs, which should be adequate to deal with most small vermin.
The rules which might affect you are that you can not use an air rifle
within 15m of a public highway and any bullet, shot or pellet from a
gun should not fall onto ground which you do not have permission to
shoot over. NB those are from memory so don't rely on that.

In practice the only considerations are normal gun safety guidelines
it is unlikely that anybody will complain if you send an air rifle
pellet from your garden into an otherwise empty field and if you are
shooting away from a road then you probably need not worry about
measuring how close you are. As long as you shoot over open ground or
into a hillside / backstop then you are generally OK.

Practical points are that pigeons can be suprisingly hard to take
down, an air rifle is adequate but on another forum I have read
anecdotal evidence that they can survive even glancing shots from a
shotgun. Other than that then depending on circumstance an air rifle
is in many ways the best solution and has the bonus of providing you
with pigeon and squirrel pie.

Talking of which does anyone have any suggestions on how best to cook
squirrel - I have the same problem with squirrels causing damage in my
garden!


Skin 'em and treat 'em like rabbits....same as for cats as well...you may
not think that funny but you 'old timers' out there know that in WW2 cats
were fair game for ration starved folk.....incidentally, both taste very
good'''HW
JB