'Gamebird' shooting
An estimated 35 million pheasants and millions more partridges are mass-produced and then released to be shot every year for ‘sport’ in this country.
On ‘game bird’ rearing farms, breeding birds are confined in small cages where they are forced to endure crowded conditions, stress and disease. Their eggs are hatched, and when the chicks are hardy enough they are transferred into outside pens and then released into controlled woods where they continue to be fed by the gamekeeper until the day of the shoot. The job of the gamekeeper is to feed the birds so they come readily to his call, and to kill any other wild animals who threaten or compete with the pheasants. Millions of other birds and wild mammals are killed every year by gamekeepers. Stoats, weasels, foxes, polecats and other animals are caught in traps and snares or simply poisoned. Sometimes, protected species, such as badgers, otters, wild cats, kestrels and owls and other birds of prey are killed to ‘protect’ the valuable game birds.
On the day of the shoot, gunmen line up along the wood where the pheasants and partridges have been living, while ‘beaters’ flush the birds out and scare them into the sky. so that they can be used as flying targets. Although the shooters try to kill the birds dead in flight, because they use spread-shot cartridges in the guns, a quick death is not guaranteed. Many birds either fly on, wounded by lead shot, or fall to the ground alive. These ‘downed’ birds are supposed to be retrieved by dogs who take them to the shooters so that they can club them over the head or break their necks. However, many wounded birds are never found and suffer a long lingering death.
Want to know more?
- Read our Pheasant shooting factsheet
- Watch Fowl Play – footage of game bird farming and shooters
- Watch Assault and Battery – footage of game bird farming
- Find out more on the Pheasant shooting section on main (adult) site
