Hares in Ireland II

Well, I have now spoken to a conservation officer and to a ranger. Both have made inquiries and they both concur with my own findings. It is perfectly legal to shoot hares in Ireland with a rifle. If you want to use a rifle that is not deer legal, as I would recommend, unless you are using something like KJG or Impala bullets which require reloading or having ammo shipped from Germany or Austria and on which I will expound later. The smallest cartridge legal in Ireland for shooting deer is .22-250 which from a humanity POV I'd abolish, but it will still make quite a mess out of a hare.

So if you want to shoot hare with a .17 HMR or .22 Hornet, you'll need to have it stated in your cert.

The origin of this myth appears to be that the law says that it is legal to shoot hares with a shotgun. Since no other protected species can be shot with both shotgun* and rifle, only 'vermin', somebody must have deduced that the inclusion of the shotgun is an automatic exclusion of the rifle and the myth stuck and got perpetuated.

*birds only with shotgun (why?) and deer only with rifle (I effin well hope so)

What can one use to shoot hares in Ireland?

I recently got told on boards.ie that it was illegal in Ireland to shoot hares with a rifle. I had a browse round the Irish Statute Book and found this:

(3) It shall be an offence for a person to hunt or injure in the course of hunting with a shotgun a protected wild animal other than a hare otherwise than under and in accordance with a licence granted in that behalf by the Minister.

Now this seems to say that it is legal to shoot hares with a shotgun, but not that it is illegal to shoot hares with rifles. I have asked in the forum and got told to ask my local ranger or the Ministry for the Environment. I have asked a ranger who is on boards.ie via private message and I rang the ministry who took my details and promised to find out and ring back. The guy actually sounded interested. My current impression is that this may well be a well perpetuated myth.

I am admittedly finding it bizarre enough that one cannot hunt protected wild birds with bullets in this country (doesn't apply for vermin such as crows as far as I can see) and would be surprised if one could not hunt the smallest protected mammal with a bullet - on earth why? But we will see ...