WHAT STOPS PEOPLE FROM GETTING INTO SHOOTING?
We have an image problem
By Ben Samuelson
Our sport suffers from more than its fair share of stigma. In the days when I wrote CVs, I would happily put shooting on my list of interests. Now, I’m not so sure. Shooting is perceived as being exclusively for middle-aged white men (OK, like me). The Corbynistas would say shooting is the snobbish preserve of the redcorderati…
While this may have once been of an eight-child household. I shoot with a lady in Oxfordshire who shoots beautifully and runs one of the finest gundogs I’ve ever had the privilege to disappoint. My 16-year-old daughter is as keen to take the sport up as her 14-year-old brother. But then my wife has been known to put two bullets through the same hole in a rifle target. I’ve had my eye wiped by folk representing a wide range of races, creeds and sexual orientations. I have spread my lousy shooting far and wide and have done so in a diverse way. Actually, when you look at the lack of injury to local fauna, I could probably add ‘sustainable’ and ‘vegan’ to the list of qualities I bring to my peg.
