Pigeon in your garden? It could soon be fair game

Proposed legal change

Shooting a woodpigeon with an airgun is currently only lawful if you can justify it under a general licence. But a recently published Government consultation could change that, making recreational pigeon shooting and shooting for food, even in your own back garden, explicitly legal for the first time since the early 1990s. 

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How the new system would work

The consultation, published by Defra on 23 March and covering England, Scotland and Wales, proposes adding woodpigeon to the formal quarry list with a close season from 1 February to 31 August.

Currently, all woodpigeon shooting in England is carried out under General Licence 42 (GL42), which permits lethal control to prevent serious damage to crops. The equivalent licences are GL02 in Scotland and GL001 in Wales. These general licences allow year-round control and users do not need to apply for them, but must abide by their conditions, which tie shooting to crop protection rather than recreation or food. 

Neither the UK, Scottish nor Welsh Governments plan to remove those general licences, meaning year-round control for crop protection would continue unchanged. The open season would sit alongside them, providing a separate and explicit legal basis for recreational shooting and shooting for food within the defined window.

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Rationale behind a close season

“The introduction of a close season will reinforce the distinction between action that is necessary to manage serious damage and recreational hunting,” the consultation document states. “Only the former will be justified in the breeding season and we expect the introduction of a close season will lead to less recreational hunting during the breeding season.”

Britain has been out of step with the rest of Europe on this for decades. Of 29 European countries examined during the Government’s review, 28 already regulate woodpigeon shooting through a defined hunting season. France, Spain, Portugal and others have long recognised woodpigeon as a quarry species in its own right. The consultation proposes to bring Britain into line.

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Wider implications for shooting

It goes further than woodpigeon. The consultation also proposes restrictions that will concern other parts of the shooting community: shortened seasons for woodcock, the removal of several duck and goose species from the quarry list and extensive changes in Wales affecting waders and waterbirds. Those are largely shotgun shooting concerns and will be fought hard by BASC and others. For airgunners, they are peripheral. 

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Opportunity for new quarry species

However, the consultation explicitly invites views on adding other species to the quarry list, with BASC’s head of policy and campaigns, Dr Conor O’Gorman, highlighting the opportunity this presents for the shooting community. “There is an opportunity to get many species onto the quarry lists including brent goose, carrion crow, cormorant, Egyptian goose, goosander, great black-backed gull, herring gull, jack snipe, jackdaw, jay, lesser black-backed gull, magpie, mandarin duck, monk parakeet, raven, ring-necked parakeet, ruddy duck, stock dove and woodpigeon,” he said. 

While not all of those species fall within typical airgun range, the consultation represents a clear opportunity for airgunners to make the case for corvids, pigeons and other close-range quarry to be formally recognised on the list.

“Let’s mobilise and start getting thousands of responses into the consultation, starting today,” Dr O’Gorman added.

BASC has published guidance on responding at https://basc.org.uk/british-bird-quarry-species-review.  The consultation closes at midnight on 17 May 2026.