LIVE BIRD GAME SHOOTING

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 12369, 7 June 1938, Page 3

LIVE BIRD GAME SHOOTING

Sir,—Mrs Rutland’s letter in -your issue of 2Sth ult., expressed a desire to hear from some of your readers why shooting at day 'discs was not considered as good sport as shooting at live birds. -Mr Rae, President of the Tauranga Gun Club, in reply states that live bird game shooting is the most humane of all game sports. May I give Mrs Rutland a few particulars of this “most humane of game sports.” When a youth I witnessed many live pigeon shooting matches and in these matches the pigeons were enclosed in a trap which was pulled from a distance, the top of the trap dropped and the pigeon was released. In many cases the pigeon would not “rise” and had to he scared to make it fly. In some cases the pigeon “broke” fairly fast, but in many eases the bird’s flight was slow, in such cases the odds being decidedly in favour of “the gun.” Now for Mr Rae’s “most humane of all game sports.” I saw many birds drop with broken wings and leg injuries. In such cases tho birds were not killed but if the shootist succeeded in catching the bird within the boundary of “the shoot” it counted as a kill and the bird when caught was killed by “wringing its neck.” I do not know whether this is allowed at present day “shoots,” but the fact remains that many birds must escape gravely injured to die later or remain cripples. In disc shooting the discs were released from revolving arms and discharged at various angles. Shooting at them requires considerably more skill as their initial flight greatly exceeds that of a pigeon at commencement of flight. Summed up, the difference between the sport of disc shooting and live bird shooting is that in the former, to put it bluntly, there is “no blood and feathers,” whilst in the latter there is the killing and mutilation without killing of the hapless victim. “BIRD LOVER.”