Game Shooting or Shame Shooting.
This week, Wildlife Matters Investigates the shooting industry and asks if this is Game Shooting or Shame Shooting. The Game shooting industry is now a big business, with around 300 game shooting estates in Britain. This industry is reported to be worth £2 billion to the economy.
Every year, around 50 million non-native, factory-farmed pheasants and red-legged partridges are released into the British countryside—purely to be killed by shooters. This massive influx of non-native birds devastates our native wildlife, as Pheasants eat amphibians and reptiles such as lizards and snakes. The native Adder has become a high-profile victim of this, with many reports of local extinctions being reported from around the UK. Pheasants also have a significant impact on the local vegetation.
Following a legal challenge by Wild Justice, a UK-based conservation organisation founded by Chris Packham, Mark Avery and Ruth Tingay, licences are required to release game birds into the countryside starting in October 2021.
The Game shooting industry annually releases around 38 million captive-bred pheasants and about 12 million red-legged partridges into the British countryside. The combined weight of these non-native game birds is roughly the same as the whole bird population in the UK, meaning that one in two European pheasants is in the UK.
This massive ‘industry’ is causing horrific stress and suffering for the birds. Pheasants, used for egg production, are confined for their whole lives in tiny metal cages known as raised laying units.
Each cage will hold five or six female pheasants and one male pheasant. The birds are often fitted with “hoods” to cover their beaks, which helps prevent pecking and reduces the risk of injuries during the inevitable fights. However, these breeding units can cause anxiety and stress for the birds. While broody hens may still be used to hatch young in smaller rearing units, most birds are artificially incubated.
After hatching in an incubator, the chicks are moved to a brooder system, kept warm for the first few days. The mother bird provides this warmth in nature by sheltering them under her wings. However, artificial heat is used in a rearing unit. These units can house up to a thousand birds, but the high density causes stress in the chicks, leading to feather pecking and cannibalism. To prevent this, the birds are fitted with beak bits that open their beaks.
According to the Game shooting industry, around 15 million birds are shot; whilst they don’t say it, it is believed about 3 million of these birds are eaten by humans. Whatever your thoughts on eating meat – that’s way less than 10% of the total released.
So, “One for the Pot” is a myth. Far from the industries’ claim that the birds live natural wildlife whilst breeding to support the native population next year, the truth is that many of the birds that are shot are simply “tossed” into mass graves after the shoot, making it clear that this is a bloodthirsty killing frenzy and nothing to do with food or conservation, in truth, more of the birds will die from predation, exposure, starvation and traffic collision than will ever be shot or eaten.
The most common type of game bird shoot is “driven shooting”, where ‘beaters’ drive the birds from cover towards a line of stationary guns. The laughably named British Shooting and Conservation Organisation, in short, BASC, states, “This form of shooting is much more formal than simply walking with your dog.
To quote them: ‘On the shoot day, a team of shooters, or ‘Guns’, line out at numbered pegs. Meanwhile, under the gamekeeper’s instructions, a group of beaters and their dogs move through woodland areas, flushing the game ahead of them. ‘The aim is to get the birds to break cover and fly high over the line of ‘Guns’ to provide sporting shots. The shot game is retrieved quickly by a picker-up who sends their trained gun dog to where the shot game falls.’
The claims of the BASC of the quick collection of shot birds were shown to be false in the video, released by animal welfare activists, where the ‘gun’ obviously ignores the injured birds, leaving them ‘flapping on the ground’ as they die from the gunshot, also including an unfortunate few that have fallen into the nearby river and are drowning. No attempt is made to retrieve them at all. This “Gun” is as inaccurate as he is cruel and irresponsible. This is a bloody “shooting frenzy”, not the controlled event as the BASC claims. With no mandatory firearm training requirement in the UK, many birds die slow, painful deaths after being shot by inaccurate and inexperienced shooters.
“Guns” will pay around £1000 for a day of shooting. How can that be viable for a few braces of pheasant? Most use a repeating shotgun with a 12 or 20-bore with lead ammunition. Lead is a poison, and that’s why we have removed it from petrol, water pipes, paint, fishing weights and many products – So, how are these people allowed to shoot lead into ‘food’ birds that will enter the human food chain? We would not suggest anyone eats game food shot with lead. Still, the UK Food Standards Agency are sufficiently concerned to advise that pregnant women trying to become pregnant, toddlers, and young children should avoid eating game meat shot with lead.
Game birds that are sold at Butchers and Supermarkets, or indeed given to food banks, do not contain any warning labels; following testing in 2020 that showed high levels of lead contamination in game birds sold by supermarkets, only Waitrose have agreed to only supplying game meat that was not shot with lead, whilst Sainsbury’s game meat was found to have the highest level of lead contamination in the tests. Of course, hundreds of tonnes of highly toxic lead shot are discharged into the countryside environment each year. This contaminates rivers, lakes and soil and enters the food chain when predators feed on shot birds’ carcasses.
Despite its claims of conservation, the UK game shooting industry subjects millions of birds to inhumane conditions before shooting them for pleasure.
Wildlife Matters wants legislation that requires game bird treatment standards to, at minimum, match those of farmed birds. We must ban the use of lead ammunition and enforce regulations that prevent them from killing more birds than they have orders for. This is just a start that will help stop millions of birds’ suffering every year. Let’s work together towards a more ethical future for all animals.
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Further Reading
Game Bird Shooting – League Against Cruel Sports
Game Bird Shooting Laws and Impact – RSPB
Game Bird Shooting – Animal Aid
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