ON Tuesday the partridge shooting season begins. The birds, literally millions of them, have been bred and reared as live targets for sport.

One of the things that is little mentioned about shooting at live birds for sport is the level of cruelty involved. The flying birds are shot at with shotgun pellets, which often do not kill outright.

The pellets can disable, with the bird then crashing to the ground, sometimes to be killed on impact, sometimes unable to fly and seeking to find cover.

Other times the birds are only slightly wounded and glide, or fly on, only to come to grief far away from the shoot. At a typical shoot there are twice as many shots fired as there are birds downed.

This is not precision, humane killing. It is haphazard and wounding and winging for sport.

The image that the shooting industry tries to present — of expert marksmen and women killing birds humanely for the pot — is just not borne out by the facts.

Shooting as a sport appears to appeal to men as some sort of power fantasy. The chance to exercise the power of life and death.

As a society we send very conflicting messages where, on the one hand, we criminalise violence to, and the unnecessary killing of, domestic and farmed animals while, at the same time, we allow the killing of wild animals with guns for sport.

We send out equally confusing messages when we deplore gun culture among young criminals but, at the same time, license children and adults to use shotguns and firearms to kill wild animals for sport.

It is still legal to hold a firearm certificate in the UK for an elephant gun. Why do we need to allow people to acquire huge and lethal firearms that cannot possibly be needed in the UK?

To my mind, anyone who causes unnecessary suffering is an abuser. When that unnecessary suffering is explained as being a sport, the suffering of the target animals is as naught.

People have a responsibility for the welfare of the animals they interact with. To chase, to harry, to injure and to kill animals for sport is an abuse of that responsibility because it is being done deliberately and not humanely.

Kathy Moyle

Collins Park, East Budleigh

(by post)