Your definition of 'preserve' interests me.

Here in the UK shooting is often organised by a group (syndicate) renting the shooting rights to an acreage of land.

The group pays a gamekeeper (or take on this work themselves as working parties) to catch wild pheasants, hatch the eggs, rear the chicks and release them into the wild, then make sure there is plenty of food in the woods and that vermin are controlled by shooting and trapping.

Shooting may be driven, with teams of beaters and dogsflushing birds to the 'Guns', or there may be two teams of 'Guns' taking turns to walk and drive the cover or stand and shoot. Alternatively, small parties may go out with dogs and hunt part of the ground, shooting any game flushed by the dogs.

If this is what you class 'a preserve' it is the norm in the UK and ensures there are birds in good numbers each season. As the birds are living wild and are free to leave the land if they choose (and a good percentage do), the sport is much like hunting wild-bred birds. The breeding and release system ensures that numbers are sustainable.

True wild bird shooting is inland duck flighting and woodpigeon decoying and flighting. If you encounter a pheasant in the wild, chances are that it was released as a poult somewhere, by someone.

I have heard rumours of places overseas where coverages of game crops are laid out and a set number of captive birds are released and then hunters 'hunt' the crop and shoot the birds they have released as they flush. This does not happen in the UK.

I have also heard tell of towers with live birds launched out of them like clay pigeons (apparently ducks or pheasants are the norm). Again, this is illegal in the UK. I have no experience of either practice.

I am not usually one to knock another man's sport, for we all have our preferences and our own moral and sporting outlook. However, I should not wish to participate in either of the latterly described pursuits.

They do not seem to me to be what our great sport is about.