Deer are certainly hunted, but there's only like 5k licences, a typical pre-condition for a gun licence, and a gun dealer needs it too to release the gun. Now there are farmers and others who don't take licences too literally, or only have one in their imagination, or used to have one, but there's few like one 19 years who returned shooting 595 deer, with slaughterhouse paperwork for everyone. Consider the entrails, taking off the head etc., he's an organised lad, even if he's likely returning a lot for poachers. Deer hunting allows a higher calibre rifle than other forms of hunting, but you can go hunting them with a .22. In my inexpert opinion, that might work out badly, surely too small of a calibre. I think it was connected with discouraging high calibre rifles during the Troubles, which was the context for deer licencing from 1976. There's also wild fowl, snipe, pheasant, woodcock, on game estates, foreshore (barring that bordering the Duke of Devonshire's estates, as the boundary was never made there around the Blackwater, between his lands and former Crown lands), wherever.
I think punt guns are somewhat legal, at least to those with certain old licences (although the problem is getting sufficient powder for one legally), and legal enough in the north. I suppose if you're impatient. The UK overall has a few in use.
It might be a rare example of a gun legal here and illegal in the US, maybe. Imagine shooting one into water and the dog going again and again to retrieve birds.
