URGENT: Put a Stop to Cruel Pigeon Shoot in South Carolina, Part 2

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Please send one email using two email addresses and one fax using the below contact information and sample letter, or compose your own. This is the same alert done previously with different targets.


BACKGROUND

Reportedly, the Broxton Bridge Plantation in Ehrhardt, South Carolina, is currently holding a “pigeon shoot”—a grotesque event in which contestants compete for money and prizes by shooting at birds launched from spring-loaded boxes, with the goal of having bodies fall within a ring on the ground. Pigeons used in these events are typically trapped in urban areas and then trucked to properties, where, disoriented and terrified, they are launched into the air and shot at. Many pigeons are maimed—but not killed—by the shots. There is no shortage of video footage on the Web depicting the horrors of these notorious events.

Pigeon shoots may violate South Carolina law (§47-1-40) which prohibits “knowingly or intentionally … inflict[ing] unnecessary pain or suffering upon any animal.” While hunting is exempt from this law, pigeon shoots are contests or games and should in no way be considered “hunting” or “wildlife management.”

Please politely urge Colleton County officials to bar Broxton Bridge Plantation from holding pigeon shoots, possibly via a formal injunction. And please, forward this alert widely!


WHOM TO CONTACT

Sheriff George A. Malone
Colleton County Sheriff’s Office
843-549-1449 (fax)
gmalone@colletoncounty.org

The Honorable Isaac McDuffie Stone III
14th Judicial Circuit Solicitor’s Office
843-255-9512 (fax)

J. Kevin Griffin
Colleton County Administrator
kdaddieco@colletoncounty.org

Click HERE for access to free faxing from your computer.  No fax machine, registering, or credit card required.  Please remember to confirm the fax via your email after submitting.


SAMPLE LETTER

Dear Sheriff Malone, Honorable Stone III, and Administrator Griffin:

I am greatly disturbed to learn that Broxton Bridge Plantation, in Ehrhardt, South Carolina, is hosting the savage slaughter of thousands of pigeons for entertainment in a pigeon shoot. Indeed, I have even witnessed footage of such events, with severely injured and dying birds thrown in piles, casually ignored, in obvious states of agony, following such a primitive and reckless game.

Furthermore, it is my understanding that this type of “sport” is against the law: these shoots are in violation of S.C. Code Ann. ß 47-1-70 (2011), which makes it illegal to “abandon” any animal by “deserting, forsaking, or intending to” give up an animal “without securing another owner or without providing the necessities of life.” An “animal” under the South Carolina animal cruelty laws clearly includes pigeons because “animal” is defined as “a living vertebrate creature except a homo sapien”. This repeatedly sanctioned exploitation of animals is an unacceptable practice, and I therefore respectfully request you uphold the law and subsequently cease these events immediately.

However, as long as South Carolina supports the torture of animals, complicit in their abuse and death, I will discontinue visiting as a tourist and will share this information with friends, family, colleagues, and online social networks. It is important to accept that, what is indeed valuable, is the life itself and the capacity to experience emotion and suffering. Please observe this basic moral principle and act with justice rather than react with cruelty and cease these illegal pigeon shooting events.

I understand your time is limited and I thank you for your attention to this important issue.

NAME



SEE PREVIOUS

Contact South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to end pigeon shoots

shooting pigeons
not sport at all
just cruelty
and we sit here
appalled
just stop and think
about exactly
what this is
and you will surely
get out of the
pigeon killing
biz

Karen Lyons Kalmenson