Thank you, Ted Williams, for your recent Guest Opinion in the Bucks County Herald (“PA can shed the shame of live pigeon shoots,” May 30).
And thank you, Representative Perry Warren, for sponsoring House Bill 1475 which would ban live pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania.
I am not a hunter. I don’t eat meat. And I have a great love and respect for animals. But I can respect Mr. Williams for his point of view, that ethical hunters eat what they kill.
What I can’t respect or understand is people who take pigeons or any other living thing and throw them in the air and then shoot them, possibly leaving them to die painfully on the ground or in a garbage can. And perhaps the most horrifying part of this to me is that some of our children are being brought up to think that it is O.K. — even that it is a game — to torture gentle helpless birds.
To quote Natalie Ahwesh, Pennsylvania Director of Animal Wellness Action, “there is nothing ethical or sporting about close-range shooting of mechanically launched, dehydrated and disoriented birds.”
We have a chance to stop this horrible, barbaric practice as England did in 1921. And as Monaco, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have.
Bird watching is a huge hobby in Pennsylvania and birds are beloved all over the state. Letting one species of our beloved birds suffer for the “entertainment” of a small number of people should be stopped. Please call or write your representative and ask that they vote “yes” on HB 1475.
Jeanne Bray, Chair
Lower Makefield Township Bird Town
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