Whilst I am primarily an angler and only an occasional shooter, I am proud to have been asked to be a Centenary Patron of the British Association of Shooting and Conservation (BASC). I am full of admiration for the work of my colleagues at BASC and regularly remind Britain’s 3 million anglers that a sport with less than one-third of their numbers can boast a national organisation with over 100 full-time staff. By contrast, I doubt if the organisations that are at long-last coming together to provide a unified voice for angling can lay claim to having more than a dozen full-timers on the payroll.

That said, shooting doesn’t have a great system of national governance and this has been cited as one the reasons for the UK’s poor performance in Beijing, which was disappointing, although not a complete wash out - Britain did win a  Paralympic Gold at air rifle. It’s important to remember that shooting is one of the few sports in which the disabled can compete on equal terms with the able bodied.

This year is BASC’s centenary and the centenary appeal is to fund the building of a state of the art communication centre - underlining the importance of informing and persuading the public that shooting is conducted responsibly and to high standards - BASC is not sitting back quietly and hoping nobody will interfere with us.

Governance is a serious issue for the target shooters, less so for the live quarry shooters. A unified organisation of target associations will be easier for government to deal with and may produce dividends in terms of reducing duplication and effective use of funds for developing talent and international competition - all of which may feed into some Olympic medals in 2012.

I can’t help thinking our current lack of success in competitive shooting revolves around recruitment and participation strategies against a wider picture of public misunderstanding which deprives youngsters of the opportunity to take up the sport and develop their talent. There are plenty of schools which won’t even allow air rifles on the premises. We need to be promoting the sport to the wider public, correcting the misunderstandings and allaying any fears. There are in my view huge benefits of introducing the young to responsible shooting and in the way in which kids grow in confidence and responsibility

It’s a shame that there has been a division for many years between target and live quarry shooting. This has tended to stem from the feeling from some of the target shooting governing bodies that associating with live quarry shooting could compromise public acceptance of their sport. I think this is no longer relevant at a time when all the major political parties support shooting. I’m not arguing the case for immediately creating a new shooting union - but for a union of effort, activity and possibly policy to support the sport.

There is a strong economic case to be made as the PACEC report (2006) found that live quarry shooting funded the equivalent of 70,000 full time jobs, that live quarry shooters spend £2bn a year on goods and services and that their shooting is worth £1.6bn to the UK economy.

All shooting organisations do meet together in the British Shooting Sports Council (BSSC), while this is welcome they tend not to engage with public relations for the sport and this role tends to fall to the good people at BASC.

My purpose in penning this piece is not to point the finger at any organisation but to encourage shooters to think about how best to take the sport forward.

First published in ‘Tackle and Guns’ as Commons Man