Thursday 26th May 2011
Poll exposes game shooting’s dwindling popularity
Only 7% think teaching children to shoot animals for sport is appropriate, according to new poll.
As National Shooting Week gets underway new polling reveals that public opinion is firmly against the shooting of animals for sport. Figures released by the League Against Cruel Sports show that 61% of people think shooting animals as a sport is unacceptable with less than a quarter of people – only 23% – in favour.
National Shooting Week is an annual event to encourage more people into the sport of shooting. The body behind the event is the British Sports Shooting Council which develops responsible fire arm use and promotes the sport as an Olympic and Paralympic discipline. However, National Shooting Week is organised on their behalf by the Countryside Alliance, the UK’s pro-bloodsports organisation.
The polling by YouGov, carried out for the League, also asked about the appropriateness of teaching children to shoot animals for sport to which an overwhelming 74% found to be inappropriate. Only 7% think it is appropriate to teach children to shoot animals for sport.
League Chief Executive Douglas Batchelor said: “Let us not be fooled that National Shooting Week is about encouraging future Olympic hopefuls in the discipline of target shooting. This week is about pushing the Countryside Alliance’s bloodsports agenda and nothing else. Encouraging children to take pot shots at living creatures purely for sport is appalling and this new polling shows public opinion is firmly against allowing children to play with lethal weapons”.
“National Shooting Week has run for a number of years but with public opinion so low it’s clear they should hand in their guns and go for more modern sports that don’t involve the killing of wildlife,” Mr Batchelor added.
http://www.northern.police.uk/News-and-Media/news-item.htm?item_id=PR3320_2011 26th May 2011 The Sporting Manager for Skibo Estate today pled guilty to the possession of the banned pesticide, carbofuran, at Inverness Sheriff Court and was fined £3,300
A Scottish shoot manager has been fined £3,300 for being in possession of enough illegal poison to completely wipe out Scotland’s bird of prey population six times over.
Dean Barr, who worked on the prestigious Skibo Estate – which famously hosted the wedding of Madonna and Guy Ritchie – was convicted at Inverness sheriff court for possessing over 10kg of carbufuren, a toxic poison which has been illegal in the UK for ten years.
Northern constabulary began investigating the estate in May last year after hill walkers alerted them to a dead golden eagle. Just days earlier the body of another golden eagle had been discovered and shockingly a third was found over the course of the investigation. The police found 10.5kg of the illegal substance locked in a store to which only Mr Barr had a key.
This conviction comes just weeks after a television documentary highlighted the scale of the problem of bird of prey poisonings in Scotland.
