Pigeon shoots present a problem for a lot of people. There are plenty of dedicated hunters who have issues with shooting birds for sport with no intent of putting something on the table. They ask, why not blow orange clay birds out of the sky instead of living animals? Then there are others who consider the statue befouling creatures the equivalent of flying rats. But as some animal rights activists found out – much to their astonishment – pigeon shooters have guns . . .
Something called SHARK (SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness) tried to stop a planned pigeon shoot in South Carolina last weekend as thetandd.com reports. Their weapon of choice: shame.
The plan: send something called a Mikrokopter – basically a camera-equipped drone – to film the goings on.
The resulting footage was do doubt destined for YouTube and the local nightly news. And the plan appeared to have worked. When shooters heard of the SHARK mission to document the slaughter, they packed up to leave.
According to Steve Hindi, SHARK’s president, “Once they knew nothing was going to stop us, the shooting stopped and the cars lined up to leave.” But some people don’t know how to handle victory. He decided to send the copter up anyway, even though all the shooting had stopped.
“Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out,” Hindi said in the release. “As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon slaughter, they had shot down our copter.”
He claimed the shooters were “in tree cover” and “fled the scene on small motorized vehicles.”
Imagine that. Guys with shotguns shooting down a flying camera that just ruined their event. Hard to believe.
“It is important to note how dangerous this was, as they were shooting toward and into a well-travelled (sic) highway,” Hindi stated in the release. He said someone from SHARK called the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department, which took a report of the incident.
The Colleton County Sheriff’s Department filed a malicious damage to property incident report.
According to the report, Hindi told the responding deputy the group’s remote-controlled aircraft “was hovering over U.S. 601 when he heard a shot come from the wood line. The shot sounded to him that it was of small caliber.”
This is, of course, Hindi’s version of what happened. If the incident, um, went down as described, shooting toward a highway was pretty stupid. But is hovering a remote-controlled drone over a US highway – as Hindi appears to have admitted – much smarter?