what is the Law with regards to shooting pheasant with an air rifle?

[shaun the sheep]

Its always struck me as odd that the definition of 'sporting' is being "fair and generous in one's behavior or treatment of others"....
However, for the shooting community, taking a single shot gun to a bird on the wing is considered 'un-sporting', but a head-shot through cross-hairs is somehow fair & generous when I can't think of something more predjudicial really.

Not passing any kind of comment other than the paradox of the terminology...

Shooting(any live quarry),if we would all care to admit,is not fair! We,as the dominant species,decide we want to do it.Is it neccessary?Well,vermin controllers,such as myself,think it is.People employed in all aspects of the shooting industry,keepers,estate owners,shooting suppliers,RFD`s etc think the same..
However,after making the decision to shoot any creature we owe it to such bird or animal to at least strive to make its demise as quick and clean as possible. Bar blasting it with an expanding centre-fire round at 30 ish yards a well executed head shot on any small game,at a sensible distance,with an accurate and close to max legal power air rifle(or rimfire even) for me at least,is the most efficient method.I have to admit that I find it slightly more satisfying to drop a flying pigeon dead with a shotgun than to drop one dead out of a tree with an airgun BUT the shot to clean kill rate with the latter is much higher.--Shaun.