Hunting Bill (Hansard, 13 February 2003)

§ Lord Whitty

The Hunting Bill is concerned with hunting with dogs and not directly the issue of alternative methods of pest control. An automatic condition of all registrations is that reasonable steps should be taken to ensure that any wild mammal which is shot during the course of registered hunting must be shot by a competent marksman. Competence is a matter to be determined on the facts of each individual case and will reflect the appropriateness of the experience, skill and qualifications of the marksman to the difficulty of the shooting being carried out. As that difficulty will vary depending on which species is being hunted and as a result of local factors, the Bill does not prescribe a single standard or provide a definition of what is competent.