johnderondon
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Hunting pheasant - an inside perspectiveI've never hunted and I've never been on a 'shoot' so I really don't know much about it. I've never been keen on the idea of killings things but, being bang alongside the idea of a bacon breakfast, the looming double standard has always held my tongue from criticising.
However the following is a post written by a ex-gun dog trainer with extensive experience in the field and no inherent anti-hunting bias. It contains information and a perspective that I was unaware of and had not considered. I thought that others, like myself without hunting experience, might also be interested.
The writer had made the claim that 'shoots' were ethically difficult to justify. When asked for an explanation this was what he wrote:
| Quote: | I'll run a scenario past you.
You own some land.
You buy some animals that are not native to this country. You ship them over from, say Scandinavia.
You pay a guy to keep them alive. This guy stays up at night killing any predators who want to eat these none native birds.
He feeds them up long enough for them to become adults.
The guy who owns the land then invites some people to pay him to come and shoot these birds - for fun. They shoot the birds, enough to take home a brace each. Only, and here's the thing, they paid a LOT of money to come and shoot these animals and so they leave a whole pile of them dead, in a heap. The local game dealer, he's not selling much game now, he'll take a handful. The rest of the heap gets landfilled. Literally. Someone, probably the guy paid to feed them, protect them and rear them will now JCB them in to a large hole, because you can't actually give meat away to needy people (regulations).
I've been on hundreds and hundreds of shoots. I have seen the above scenario more times than I care to mention. Commercial shooting is hard to justify.
Guy goes out, shoots himself a brace of English partridge, feeds his family, sells his stock to the local pubs/restaurants - that's cool. That's a tradition that I'd bend over backwards to defend. But that's not what commercial shooting is.
I've been on estates where birds are shot that don't even have tail feathers yet. I've been on shoots where I've called my dogs to heel because they simply were not needed to flush game - these shoots are like chicken round-ups, the birds just run around by the thousands and then get up a few feet and someone brings them down.
As I say, the concept of bringing an animal to a country where it is not native (i.e. pheasants (not everyone realises that pheasants are not native to this island, but they aint!) paying a guy to feed it, protect it and rear it for the express purpose of a guy in a suit to bring it down almost before it gets air-borne, then it gets buried along with a few hundred more of its mates - I find that hard to justify. I like to think I have an open mind and sufficient experience of field sports so as I don't look like I'm coming at the issue like one of those generic anti-hunting/shooting/fishing folks (who are perfectly entitled to their views). I'd say I'm approaching it with inside knowledge and shooting per se, is a great - no - needed thing for the British countryside, commercial shooting and the bag sizes of some of the large estates is, in my view, unjustified and an animal welfare disgrace. |
Ryan O'Meara
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xristine
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I'm a vegetarian and have been for most of my life so I think I can safely say there's no double standard, John. Animals are killed for food; that's the way it works. But killing for fun is wrong. Killing pheasants doesn't require a gun; I've seen pheasants so lacking in a sense of danger that one could grab them! How anyone could shoot something so defenceless and then dump the bodies, I don't know. Hunting for food is understandable; hunting for enjoyment isn't.
I don't think you should hold your tongue. There is no hypocrisy in anything there.
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Spellbound
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I totally agree with xristine.
That is the exact reason I am anti hunting. If you are slaughtering animals for food, then that is very different but shooting these things just for the sake of it is barbaric and repulsive and is a prime example of what is wrong with the human species. There is no other species that I'm aware of that goes around undisturbed and kills things just because it has nothing else to do at 4/5am on a sunday! Have a damn lie in and if you feel the need to kill things, then get a job in a slaughter house.
Ok, rant over.
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