THE LAW RELATING TO DEER AND GROUND GAME 
ten -shilling gun licence and proceed to shoot rabbits, he could not be 
prosecuted under the Gun Licences Act, 1860, for shooting rabbits without 
a game licence. 
Section 10 has reference to the killing of ground game on days on which, 
under other statutes, the killing of game is prohibited (as, for example, 
on a Sunday or on Christmas Day, or at night), and is to be read in harmony 
with such statutes. 
If a snare be set on a Saturday, and game be caught on Sunday, it is 
deemed to be used on Sunday within the meaning of the Act, and the person 
setting it is liable to a penalty, though he may not have been on the land 
on Sunday.* 
Section 11, the last, gives the short title of the Act thus: This Act may be 
cited for all purposes as the Ground Game Act 1880. 
The question sometimes arises whether an “ owner ” has the right to 
ferret rabbits on land which he has let to the “ occupier.” There can be no 
doubt that he has, for an “ occupier ” has no monopoly of any particular 
method of capture conferred upon him by the Ground Game Act. He has 
merely a concurrent right to kill the hares and rabbits on the land in his 
occupation, and the landlord retains a similar right. Both may employ 
dogs, ferrets, traps, nets and snares; in fact, whatever method is legal 
to the one is legal to the other, the Act not stating otherwise. The fact 
that no mention of “ferreting ” is made in the Act shows that the right 
remains unaltered; for if the landlord had been deprived of such right, 
the Act would have stated it in express terms. 
THE GROUND GAME AMENDMENT ACT, 1906 
6 Edward 7, c. 21 
This Act, which is a very short one, provides an extension of the period 
during which occupiers may kill ground game on moorlands. Under the 
Act of 1880 occupiers and persons authorized by them could only exercise 
the right of killing from December 11 to March 31 except on detached 
portions of moorland adjoining arable lands less than twenty-five acres 
in extent. Now by the Amendment Act, 1906, they may kill and take ground 
game otherwise than by firearms between September 1 and December 10, 
both inclusive, and with firearms from December 11 to March 31, that is, 
from the end of the grouse -shooting season until just before the commence- 
ment of the nesting season. 
* Allen V. Thompson, L.R. 5 Q.B. 336; 22 L.T., 472. 
W W 
337 
