AS the pheasant shooting season gets underway, the public image the industry will seek to evoke is one of gentlemanly conduct, self-discipline and respect for its "quarry".

But recent articles in the industry's own publications reveal an altogether different picture. Pheasant rearing and shooting is now a massive agribusiness built on greed and excess, where the shed-reared birds are regarded as nothing more than feathered targets in a fairground-style shooting gallery. Few shooters wish to have any physical contact with the creatures they have just blasted out of the sky, let alone eat them.

In spite of industry lobbyists admitting that millions more birds are shot than are eaten, they continue to be mass produced to satisfy the base instincts of vain and boastful gunmen who associate manliness with the number of semi-domesticated birds they can blast out of the sky.

The environmental dislocation does not end with the sudden annual release of millions of pheasants. These so-called "guardians of the countryside" annually trap, shoot and poison nearly five million wild mammals and birds who are attracted to the unnaturally high pheasant numbers. Then there is the acknowledged crop damage, soil erosion around release pens and greatly increased risk of disease being carried from the enfeebled factory-reared creatures to wild animal populations.

Animal Aid is at the forefront of alerting the public about the reality of this squalid and cowardly bloodsport.

Andrew Tyler

Director