As to the ethics involved, I cannot agree with Nitro E. He assigns emotions to an animal (terror). This is inconsistent with what I believe an animal to be capable of feeling. Pain, yes, though not the same as humans because there is no emotion, again.
SRH
First let me say I don't live pigeon shoot nor have I ever had the chance. Don't know enough about it to have a judgement about cruelty, one way or other.
While we (science) don't know if animals feel the same kind of emotions (terror) humans do, the last 100 years has been the history of disproving previously held beliefs that "dumb animals" are dumb.
Currently the only animal yet recorded, besides a human, of being able to plan three distinct, separate and consecutive uses of a tool to achieve one particular outcome is a bird, a crow in fact. Crows teach their young about dangers in the world (i.e specific humans) that have not ever harmed the young and a year later, with no contact with the human, the young remember. Crows are now being considered as perhaps the most intelligent animal besides humans. And the studies clearly suggest they have emotions of some sort.
Not that long ago it was said no animal feels pain. Kick a dog and tell me that's true.
Currently we are wrestling with whether animals feel emotions. Please, someone here with a dog tell me their dog feels neither joy nor shame. I've seen both from all of mine.
I'm all for the blood sport of hunting but I'm also for science and accurate knowledge, not misinformation to suit my case.
I can't attest to the accuracy of the following but many years ago, at some point during my educational career, spent entirely in church run ( Roman Catholic and then Anglican) schools, that at some point in the middle ages, the Pope needed to address exactly how big Heaven was and how it could hold all the dead creatures that had ever lived. His solution was to deny that animals felt pain or had emotion, thus rendering them soulless and Heaven, much less crowded.
