Mark Heath from Staffordshire is a fieldsports photographer-turned-Zuckerberg. Back in the 1990s he worked as a photographer specialising in hunting and shooting sports for titles including Horse & Hound and Countryman’s Weekly. Today, he has turned his ‘media activism’ to help spread a positive message about fieldsports and, as part of that, he founded Gunbuck.co.uk
Gunbuck.co.uk is a social media platform for shooting and other country pursuits. The site offers information on various countrysports via a social media platform that allows members to access news views and reviews on a variety of devices. You can create profiles, groups, courses, chats, both private and group, topics, events, specialties and more.
Mark runs an airgun range in Staffordshire by day. He has high hopes that GunBuck will fill a gap that Facebook doesn’t allow, including mention of guns and ammunition. Its name is consciously similar to Facebook. The Shooters Network group first called itself Gunbook, but Facebook wouldn’t allow them to promote that. As a northerner, Mark pronounces the word ‘buck’ in the same way Mark Zuckerberg pronounces ‘book’.
Mark has found ways around Facebook’s policies. “I had an issue with Facebook,” he says. “They wouldn’t allow me to use the domain name Gunbuck. Eventually, I decided to buy £10-worth of advertising from Facebook – and they took the block off the name.”
It’s a great little site – and little is the word that currently describes it best. Facebook.com currently claims 2.7 billion active users world wide. Gunbuck.co.uk has 49.
Mark doesn’t mind. He sees it growing as fast as it grows. “There’s always something new on there – maybe five or six new posts a day,” he says.
If he has an ambition for the site, it is to make it a hub for countrysports news.
