Pigeon shoots are vile competitions where thousands of birds are shot, killed or suffer terrible wounds and crippling pain.

These innocent animals are neither fed nor given water for days before the shooting starts, so that they will be easier targets. Suffering from dehydration and starvation, they are then launched out of small wooden boxes and into a storm of gunfire. Wracked with pain from searing buckshot lacerations, some will twist and fall from the sky with broken wings and backs. Other will escape, though death comes slowly for these poor birds for it may take days for them to succumb to their wounds.

All of this suffering, all of this pain and torture, happens because a few people take pleasure in such blood sport. If we are to call ourselves a civilized society, then we must forever ban live pigeon shoots.