Dorset Police seized a deer manager’s firearms and is now declining to let him have them back. Stu Miles’s girlfriend dumped him, may have made an allegation to the police about him, which led to them seizing his guns, and then withdrew that allegation.
Now the constabulary is refusing to give back his guns. Since the then Home Secretary Priti Patel issued new guidance to police firearms licensing departments in 2021, some constabularies have been draconian in their enforcement, and are using any excuse to seize guns.
Even after Stu’s former partner confirmed to Dorset Police that Stuart is of no risk, officers are not backing down.
Stu started his shooting while working on a farm. “We had a few feral pigeons, I got an air rifle, started to control those,” he says. “That led to me getting a shotgun. And then that then led on to moving on to a rimfire. And then I got into the centerfire stuff. And it’s just kind of built from there, really.
He set up earlier in 2024 as a deer stalking guide. Then his relationship with his partner ended.
“I got home from work and she decided that she wasn’t happy in the relationship and it was my turn to leave the house,” he says. “We’d only moved there about three weeks prior to that. I was quite happy in the new home. Naturally, I had something to say about it. We had a bit of an argument. I don’t believe that anyone in my situation wouldn’t have something to say about it.
“It was just a run-of-the-mill kind of argument. There was there was no shouting or screaming. I wasn’t happy about having to move out. I was quite happy in the relationship.
“A couple of hours later, I left the house and I drove to a mate of mine’s about an hour away.”
The police rang Stu at 2:30am the following morning. “They wanted to make sure I was OK,” he says. “I told them that I’m fine. Then, three hours after that, they turned up at the house and seized all my firearms.”
Stu was able to get his guns to local gunshop Coombe Farm Sporting rather than let Dorset police take them away.
“I’m assuming she said she felt unsafe or threatened. I was told by the police that she’s ‘made an allegation’,” he says.
Stu has no complaints about the behaviour of the police at this stage. “When they turned up with me, they were good as gold,” he says. “I was very cooperative with them. And they thanked me for that. We shook my hands.”
There was a moment when Stu took the rifle out of the slip to show them there was no bolt, no magazine, no ammunition with it, and he wanted to remove the scope. “They kept their hands over the top of my hands as if I was going to do something ridiculous,” he says. “So, a little bit forward there. But other than that, they they were fine.
“Whatever she may have said, it was a mistake. She doesn’t feel threatened by me. She’s happy. She’s always felt that I’ve been safe with firearms. She doesn’t want it to affect my hobby – part of now my livelihood, my sponsorship deals – she doesn’t want it to affect them, and rightfully so.“
It was after Stu’s ex partner sent an email to police confirming Stu is not a risk that the trouble started. The email read: ‘…he is no risk to myself or my daughter and the breakdown of our relatioship exasperated [sic] this situation leading to his firearms beind removed. I do not want to cause upset to Stuart’s livelihood and his shooting and I feel safe in the knowledge that there [are] no further issues.”
Stu complains that the police did not follow up their actions. “No one spoke to me,” he says. “I had to do all the chasing to find out what was actually happening. And so they’ve affected my whole livelihood and taken away everything that I’ve built and then gone, ‘oh, well, we’ve got that now. Now we’ll just push him to the side’.
“I haven’t heard a single thing on what’s going to happen with the final decision. I chased the police two weeks after they took the guns and they said, ‘we don’t know what’s happening. It’s now with firearms licensing’.
“I then chased firearms for a week and, eventually, after I went through a friend of a friend of a friend, I found out who my firearms case officer was.”
“I had a telephone review, which took about 25 minutes. And she left it that she was happy and told me that she was going to send it off to headquarters, and they are going to make their final decision. I don’t know so far.
Stu reckons that over the seven weeks of the case so far, he has lost £700, but it is money he needs as he tries to rebuild his life.
“It’s almost like they’ve gone, right, we’re going to take this away from you and then we’ll forget about it and kind of left me in limbo, chasing and worrying,” he says. “I’ve got some really good friends that have been helping me to look after my permissions to keep those going, because if you go quiet in this game, someone will always want to come along and take them. And farmers have their pressures.
“The reason I got into this was because I want to back British farming and support them. And if they’ve got deer taking crops and affecting their income, I want to be able to do something about it. It’s the same with fox control and lambs. Every fox I shoot that doesn’t take a lamb is a financial gain for the farmer. I want to support the British farmer with my shooting.”
What’s the easy thing for Dorset Police to do to solve this? Stu answers that straight: “You’ve done my background check. You’ve got my character references. You’ve seen the effort I’ve put into getting my license in the first place, with my with my firearms training, my months of mentoring. You’ve had a confirmation from my ex-partner to say that it isn’t what actually happened. Just hand me my certificate back and let me get on with my life. That is it. That’s all I need.”
