Pheasant shooting bloodbath begins

In terms of the numbers of animals persecuted and killed, no other blood sport in the country has such a devastating impact on animals as pheasant shooting.

Today marks the start of the pheasant shooting season and vast numbers of birds will be cruelly blasted out of the sky to provide ‘sport’ for people who care next to nothing for the welfare of their quarry.

An astonishing number of game birds are released into the countryside – government figures show nearly 50 million non-native pheasants are freed every year simply so they can be shot.

It’s difficult to comprehend the scale and cruelty of game bird shooting so I spoke to Paul Tillsley, our head of conservation and education who manages our wildlife reserves in the West Country.

He told me about our flagship Baronsdown wildlife reserve on Exmoor which is surrounded by four separate game bird shoots.

“From early in the morning until the light fades at the end of the day the sound of gunshots is relentless.

“The heavy booms created by shotguns echo around the valleys and signify hundreds of pheasants falling victim to the guns. Some will die outright; others will be wounded and face a slow lingering death.

“The shooting takes place six days a week for four months and it fills me with dread and horror that we can treat animals this way.”

It isn’t only the shooting itself that reeks of cruelty. More than 100,000 game birds are kept in tiny, cramped cages for breeding purposes.

We know of at least 300 game bird farms where breeding takes place, indicating the industrial scale of shooting and its cruelty.

The pheasants don’t even qualify for some of the minimum welfare standards other farmed birds receive such as minimum space requirements and routine official inspections.

It’s why we are calling on the government to ban the use of cages for breeding game birds and to end the cruelty they face in these tortuous conditions.

And it’s not just pheasants that suffer at the hand of the shooting industry but other wildlife too.

Gamekeepers use a cruel trap known as a snare to catch any wildlife they perceive to threaten their pheasant stocks.

Up to 200,000 of these deadly traps lay hidden in the countryside at any one time.

These wire traps tighten around the neck, torso and legs of any wildlife unlucky to tread in them, causing immense pain and suffering.

They’re indiscriminate killers too with government figures showing three quarters of the animals being captured are the wrong target species and include hares, badgers and even people’s pets.

The Welsh and Scottish governments have banned them. The current UK government pledged to ban them in England in their last manifesto.

It’s now time for them to act and to outlaw these archaic traps.

You can take action here.