Okeechobee - Monday February 26, 2024: Two non-profit animal welfare groups, 'Animal Wellness Action' and 'Showing Animals Respect and Kindness', known as SHARK, held a Zoom news conference today to condemn what they said was the killing or maiming of 15,000 pigeons shot during a so-called “Swamp Shoot-Out” event held at the Quail Creek Hunting Ranch in Okeechobee this past weekend.
“This debasing activity bears no resemblance to hunting, which involves obtaining a license, honoring ‘fair chase’ principles, and consuming the meat of the animals,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, who also has campaigned against pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania and other states. “If this isn’t staged animal cruelty, I don’t know what is.”
“Target shooters have skeet and clay targets for recreational target shooting. To choose instead to slaughter live animals is just pathological,” said Steve Hindi, president of SHARK, who famously campaigned to help stop a notorious live pigeon shoot in Hegins, Penn. “Only a sick mind shoots animals for target practice when fast-moving clay targets are far more challenging.”
Animal Wellness Action General Counsel Scott Edwards wrote a letter to the State Attorney for Okeechobee County, Thomas Bakkedahl, and he sent a similar letter to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission South Regional Director, Dr. Thomas Reinert, asking both to launch investigations.
Both of Edwards' letters characterized the event as "an affront to decency" that "amounts to a collection of of violations of federal and state law."
The two groups say live pigeon shoots are outlawed in many states, and they believe the “Swamp Shoot-Out” violated violated Florida’s anti-cruelty laws and "should subject those involved to felony offenses."
"There are other potential violations of law related to jeopardy for bald eagles who feast on wounded pigeons with lead ammunition embedded in their bodies," states a joint news release from the two groups.
The event the shooting site is owned by Troy Link, the CEO of Jack Link’s Meat Snacks and the scion of this global beef jerky company, according to Animal Wellness Action President Wayne Pacelle. He said Link’s net worth is in the hundreds of millions.
The two animal welfare organizations obtained secretly recorded drone footage of the “Swamp Shoot-Out” event. It shows live pigeons being launched into the air from spring-loaded boxes and shot after fluttering out of the contraption.
The majority of the birds barely rise a few feet before they are blasted and typically fall onto the shooting field. Boys, hired for the event, are seen running out and wringing the necks of the wounded birds that are still alive. All the dead birds are then brought back off the field of fire and dumped.
Some of the wounded birds manage to fly outside the boundary of the shooting area, falling down some distance away. Those birds were not retrieved and the concern is that other birds of prey, including a family of bald eagles inhabiting the area, as well as other wildlife, may consume the un-retrieved pigeons and become poisoned by the lead in their bodies fired from the guns of the sportsmen who shot them.
“Target shooters have skeet and clay targets for recreational target shooting. To choose instead to slaughter live animals is just pathological,” said Steve Hindi, president of SHARK, who famously campaigned to help stop a notorious live pigeon shoot in Hegins, Penn. “Only a sick mind shoots animals for target practice when fast-moving clay targets are far more challenging.”
“This debasing activity bears no resemblance to hunting, which involves obtaining a license, honoring ‘fair chase’ principles, and consuming the meat of the animals,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, who also has campaigned against pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania and other states. “If this isn’t staged animal cruelty, I don’t know what is.”