Tulsa World
The head of an animal rights group has asked for an investigation and charges following a fundraiser earlier this month for U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe where hundreds of pigeons were released and shot.
The animal rights group, Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, posted a video of the event which showed workers throwing birds into air and to be shot by those attending the fundraiser held in Kiowa County. Steve Hindi, SHARK president, alleges the animals were tame.
In a letter to District Attorney John Wampler and Kiowa County Sheriff Bill Lancaster, Hindi said the event violates state animal cruelty statutes. He said the event involved about 1,000 pigeons.
“The senator is at the heart of this whole thing,” Hindi said Tuesday. “He is the person for whom the fundraiser was held. But as far as the animal treatment, everyone who was shooting was part of that.”
Read the entire story at www.TulsaWorld.com.
I am, and have been all my life, an avid hunter (key word ‘HUNTER’) – rabbit, quail, dove, deer, anything living in the wild and edible. What Inhofe and his cohorts practiced that that day was NOT hunting.
The only word I can come up with to describe it is ‘despicable’.
It is embarrassing to all Oklahomans and I have serious doubts that these activities would be approved by the NRA.
There is no way I could imagine Tom Coburn doing something like this.
While I’ve never done it myself (except with a BB gun as a kid), it seems some people consider pigeons to be legitimate game birds, that are available in inexhaustible numbers, and hunt them regularly. That being the case, transporting them to a pigeon-shoot area would be kind of like fishing in a stocked pond. Okay, maybe like fishing in a small pool.
For those interested, here is an Outdoor Life article on pigeon hunting.
http://www.outdoorlife.com/photos/gallery/hunting/2012/02/get-world-class-bird-hunting-americas-barnyards/?image=0