Clampdown needed on game shooting cruelty in Ireland

international | animal rights | opinion/analysis

Wednesday June 12, 2013 22:09

by Bird Man

Horrific "training" methods including using live birds to bait dogs

In the past few days, animal protection campaigners have become aware of a disturbing YouTube video that shows a leading dog trainer and breeder using LIVE, tied-up birds to train gundogs.

Fieldsport "conservation"

There’s a link to the video below. It clearly shows the trainer tying the legs of birds with elastic and then tossing the birds into the air. They struggle to fly, drop to the ground, and are then retrieved by the waiting gundogs acting upon signals from the trainer. He can be seen using the same pigeon more than once, which would be a terrifying ordeal for the bird. In another scene he can be seen kicking a bird before shooting at it.

This guy is a major player on the Irish “field sport” scene, a great pal of the pro game shooting bigwigs who like to tell us that shooting is about “conservation” and maintaining a balanced eco-system.

What we see in this brief film, made by hunters for hunters to enjoy, offers a unique insight into the Irish “field sports scene.

If game shooting is not about to be banned, it should at least be subject to massive regulations. Gun clubs should be under the aegis of the Wildlife Service or another State body, instead of operating in conjunction with the so-called the National Association of Regional Game Councils (NARGC) and other such NGOS.

Here’s a sample of their so-called “sport”:

http://vimeo.com/67771295

Here’s what the UK-based League Against Cruel Sportshas to say about this “sport”. It was referring to an upcoming shooting season:

… “Despite the number of novice and inexperienced shooters who will attempt to blast pheasants out the sky, wounding the birds rather than killing them, this is not the worst aspect of the blood sport. Some of the worst cruelty has been taking place for months prior to the season getting underway. Pheasant shooting is not about ‘one for the pot’ or providing organic free range game meat for the table. Despite what the shooting lobby would like us to believe the pheasant shooting industry is about mass cruelty and slaughter on an industrial scale.

Pheasant chicks are reared by their thousands in broiler sheds and battery cages, similar to those which cause such public disgust for rearing chickens. These chicks will have been crammed into tiny spaces until a few weeks before the season gets underway when they are finally released into the wild. The problems don’t end there though. These birds have no idea how to behave as wild birds and how to fend for themselves, hence the large number of birds we see wandering around country roads causing countless drivers to swerve to avoid hitting them.

Due to their complete inability to behave like a wild bird, and this includes limited ability to fly given that most have been unable to even fully stretch their wings let alone have any space to actually fly in the first few months of their lives, gamekeepers have to employ rigorous measures to protect the game birds from predators. After all, the more birds there are, the more money can be made from shooters.

Any species seen as a threat to the pheasants will simply be wiped out in a variety of methods including snaring, shooting, gassing and poisoning. It has been estimated that on any one day on shooting estates across the UK 12,300 animals are slaughtered as part of predator control programmes.

This is mass slaughter for the entertainment of a very small minority who enjoy killing for sport and for the next few months the countryside will echo to the sound of guns taking shots at thousands of birds which will end their days in almost as awful as a way as it started: dumped in a heap and discarded with the hundreds of others shot that day…”