A Bloody Bull's Eye

Some of you might think that I have a death wish, because I'm about to clearly and unequivocally voice my opinion against people who own guns and know how to use them.

Of course I don't have a death wish, but the mere thought of birds being shot down by hunters is killing me anyway, and the fact once again it's happening during spring time, is adding salt to my already gangrenous wound.

So here goes....

My grand grandfather was a hunter, and so was my grandfather. Three of my uncles followed suit and three of their sons, my cousins, too. That's seven members of my immediate family happily blowing up little flying creatures and proudly stuffing them to serve as ornaments in their living rooms!

I'm stating this just to make it clear from the start that I've seen this tradition being passed down from one generation to another, I've seen the passion that hunters have for it, and I've seen the sacrifices and the expenses that hunters (and their wives) go through to nurture what they call their sport.

During hunting season, they quite literally wake at sparrow's fart and for the next few weeks all hell could break lose because nothing else exists.

Whilst growing up, I've had to listen to all the arguments in favour of this tradition, I also heard my grandmother worrying that if spring hunting had to be banned, my grandfather would kill himself, and I had to lie about being a member of Birdlife, 'not to give my grandfather a heart attack.'

As much as I hate what they do, these family members have time and time again proven that they are not intrinsically bad people, and that the main problem lies in their upbringing. They have been successfully immunized by their fathers, grand fathers and uncles, and their souls have been insulated to think that shooting a helpless bird is not in any way an atrocity.

Like all humans however, they do worry over what they love.

They lie awake at night worrying about the bird they shot and which their dog didn't manage to track down. But it's not the slow and painful death that the bird must have faced that concerns them but the cloud of bad luck that seems to have come over them lately.

They love their hunting dog to bits and worry about its well being, but unless it's hunting season, it spends most days locked up in a dark cold garage without much human interaction.

And they are nature lovers of course, but certainly do not worry about the lead pollutants that their so called sport is leaving in our soil.

They don't worry about all this because people they trusted ever since they were kids, have told them that there's nothing wrong with their 'sport' and that there's nothing to feel guilty about. Unfortunately, other ideological state apparatus like schools, church and the media, were not strong enough to convince them of the contrary.

So they grow up calling it a sport, because they kind of have to don't they? Given that we all live a few meters away from a McDonalds of some sort, they surely cannot claim that they do it for food now can they?

But what is so sporty about taking a machine that can fire a bullet so fast and with such force that it will savagely rip through metal let alone flesh and feathers?

What's so sporty about using such a machine against helpless little creatures that are simply minding their own business and slowly becoming extinct?

If shooting a gun and hitting a target is what you're after, it is only a sport if you do it in a shooting range, and not by sniping down migratory birds and limiting the public's access to Malta's already limited countryside.

On several occasions I suggested that they take up golf or perhaps start driving a souped up race car, but to them, nothing compares to blowing up birds, ducks, pigeons and anything that flies. Nothing compares to the incredible adrenaline rush that they get every time they kill a defenceless bird. And it is precisely this rush that they are addicted to and why they hang on to this arcane-mountain-man tradition like their life depended on it.

Like circus-goers, hunters argue that their pastime is no different to keeping cats and dogs at home as pets, or slaughtering farm animals for food. Of course both arguments are totally flawed because unfortunately we have now bred away every last bit of these animals' survival instincts. We have built roads where their habitats used to be, and we have essentially relegated them to the lowest end of the food chain, making them entirely dependent on humans to survive.

Birds on the other hand would be just fine, if only we just stopped blowing them away!

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