Changing the Narrative
Changing the narrative around shooting birds
The shooting industry relies on tropes it constantly uses to justify itself.
We need to recognise those when we seen them and to challenge them at every opportunity.
- ‘It’s normal to hunt‘. Killing birds for fun, for profit, for a day out, for a reward or a business incentive, is not ‘normal’ and it isn’t ‘glorious’.
- ‘It’s all about spending time outdoors’. Shooting is not about enjoying our wildlife or our landscapes – it’s about going into those landscapes and enjoying killing wildlife.
- ‘It’s the countryside way‘. Killing birds has never been a ‘rural tradition’. Even if it once was, it’s very different now – it’s a highly organised and profit- driven industry built on killing birds on an industrial-scale.
- ‘It’s none of your business what we do‘. We love wildlife, of course it’s our business. We have every right to be asking that shooting explains why in the 21st century such an anachronism should still exist.
- ‘You people have a Disney-fied view of wildlife‘. Not at all. We don’t think animals are ‘cuddly’ or ‘cute’ we just want a better world and a society that values their lives as much as we do.
- ‘It’s only extremsist who want to stop shooting‘.It’s not ‘extremist’ to be ‘anti’ pain and suffering or exploitation of animals, to want to save lives and protect the wild. It is though extremist to kill for pleasure. We are working for a better world for our wildlife.
- ‘We have to control pests‘. Shooting routinely labels native predators as ‘vermin’ or ‘pests’. That’s simply not true. These are animals like any other, important to the way ecosystems function, and have the same rights to life and freedom from pain and suffering as any other.
- ‘We need to keep a balance in the countryside‘. Considering the mess the environment is in and the land management practices that have got it there, this is laughable. Especially coming from the shooting industry. Releasing millions of non-native birds, killing native wildlife on a vast scale using crude tools like traps and snares, is not about ‘balance’ or ‘countryside management’, it’s just about the industry ensuring its profits by allowing more birds to survive long enough to be killed by shooters.
