Game shooting is by no means a ‘sport’

SPORT is often defined as a contest between equals, but would a game between the local park team and the Brazilian national team be considered a fair contest?

Yet we seem to accept the annual slaughter of around 50 million birds, shot in the name of “sport” across the fields and grouse moors of the UK as fair.

In the one team you have numerous 4x4 vehicles, dogs, beaters, gamekeepers and up to 10 wealthy individuals with highpowered shotguns firing poisonous lead shot.

In the other team you have a defenceless bird.

This carnage is not just cruel, it’s environmentally damaging and includes the wide-scale slaughter of thousands of vulnerable birds of prey such as hen harriers, red kites, peregrines and golden eagles in an effort to increase the number of grouse, partridges, snipe and pheasants bagged for their shooting masters.

Often these birds are left to rot, as they are riddled with poisonous lead shot and are inedible.

The damage done to our wider ecosystems is enormous. Anyone who sees the industrial numbers of newly-released partridges and pheasants slaughtered on the side of our roads will testify that these birds are anything but wild. In fact the combined weight of these “gamebirds” is more than twice the combined weight of all our native breeding birds.

There can be no place for this scale of legal cruelty and environmental destruction in a Britain which truly values its natural world. Shooting a camera can be so much more satisfying and empowering than a gun.