The short answer
In England and Wales you can only use an air rifle up to 12ft/lb of pressure per square inch.
The UK has had some very strict gun laws for a while now and we don’t even come close to the level of gun sporting that countries like America have. Being out shooting in a field in the US with a sub machine gun would be considered exercising your rights, were as in the UK it would see you swarmed by a group of heavily armed response officers the second someone saw you had it.
This lack of access to legal firearms has made hunting a great deal harder, and with the ban of hunting with any kind of bow weapon this only leaves one option, the air rifle.
Northern Ireland and Scotland have their own licencing laws on air weapons, but England and Wales have no licencing what so ever. As long as you’re 18 or older you can walk into any store selling them and simply hand over the cash, there isn’t even identification required, so long as you’re old enough to not look like you need it.
Here’s a few points about air weapons in England or Wales:
- You must be 18 or above to buy one
- You can own one from the age of 14, but cannot legally buy it yourself
- The power limit without a license for an air rifle is 12 ft/lb of pressure per square inch
- The power limit without a license for an air pistol is 6 ft/lb of pressure per square inch
- It is legal to carry one in public but only if you have good reason and the gun isn’t being carried openly in your hands. It must be in a carry case or car boot, and can only be transported with good reason e.g. on your way to a hunt, taking it to a gun shop for repairs etc…
- You are not allowed to fire a shot within 50 metres of a public highway, which is any paved road openly accessible to public vehicles on public land.
- You need permission to shoot on any ground, where ever you fire a shot you need the permission of who ever owns that land to do so, no matter where it is.
- If you shoot a wild animal with an air rifle it is almost guaranteed to die, but if the initial shot wasn’t fatal it will develop gangrene from the lead pellet and die from disease. This applies to large game like deer which are far to big to kill with a single shot from an air rifle, but the animal will later die painfully from gangrene, making it very important to always be aware of your shots. Hitting a farmers sheep after a missed shot could turn permission to hunt on someones land into a very nasty prosecution case.
- Large game like deer or boar aren’t allowed to be shot, and it would be pointless as you’d have no chance of killing such a large animal with a shot from an air rifle.
Basically if you don’t have a firearms license and are over the age of 18, as long as you have the landowners permission you can hunt where you like. There are restrictions on what you can shoot though which are limited to small game like rabbits, squirrels and wood pigeon.
The biggest restriction to hunting with an air rifle is range, which is limited to about 30 metres at the most with a legal limit air rifle. This limits the tactics available when hunting as now you have to creep round hedge corners and slowly pop up over bumps to see if there’s anything within range. The biggest problem you’ll face when hunting with is slowly turning a corner to see a group of rabbits just out of range further up the field, something that seems to happen far to often.
However this is your only option to hunt in England and Wales, with Ireland and Scotland requiring a license to hunt with air weapons, though it does seem easy to get. To obtain a firearms license in the UK is more trouble than its worth, and even if you get one you’re only allowed a very limited amount of weapons and permission is much harder to get.
The single best piece of advice when buying an air rifle is to spend some money on one and test pellet types. You can pick up a 12 ft/lb rifle for as little as £50 but don’t expect it to be accurate or powerful at range. The other thing about air weapons is they each seem to prefer a certain pellet type and can be more accurate with a particular one. My own air rifle is a standard break barrel of the legal limit, but is far more accurate at range with a special zinc coated pellet i use than any of the standard lead shapes. On the other hand my fathers legal limit air rifle is more accurate with a certain type of standard rounded lead pellet than with my zinc ones or any of the pointed or flatter lead types.