A BARBAROUS SPORT.

Woodville Examiner, Volume 2, Issue 156, 24 March 1885, Page 3

A BARBAROUS SPORT.

(to tuk ewtok.) i Sir,— All honor to you for ho openly j denouncing the cowardly and contemptible j amusement of pigeon-shooting. Men j may well assume false names when they | indulge in such unmanly practices. Sport I it is not, in the true acceptation of the - word. What would any of our sheep- I farmers say if it was proposed to have a I'heep shooting match, and start a sheep at ’UGyds, with riflemen to try their skill, and in many cases to let the poor beast rejoin its fellows with a broken leg, or a bad flesh wound ? W’e should soon have the little game stopped by Statute. I tail to see the difference, except that mo is a bird, the other a beast. As for a test of skill, it is nothing of the kind. Pigecnshooting is mere knack, and the only thing the practice encourages is the greed for betting and gambling that is the curse of the country. Nothing appears to meet with any encouragement that requires patient industry or labor, or that is of real lasting benefit to one’s fellow men, but anythin r that has the element of speculation, ; nd on which bets can be made, will have 8[ ©c al prizes ad infinitum bestowed upon it. In the old country the openly expressed disapprobation of some of the noblest in the land has brought the detestable practice into disrepute, and we no longer hear of beauty and fashion thronging to the “ slaughter of the doves,” —and it only requires the like expression •of public opinion here to put a stop to an amusement worthy only to be ranked with cock-fightingor bull-baiting.—l am, ■Ac., S couts man. Napier, March 18th. I