Lawrence Darmanin in his letter Birds for Clay Pigeons (April 21) amply shows his ignorance and prejudice by failing even to understand what I wrote.

Nowhere in my letter did I state or imply that I am against clay target shooting. Even if I had asked for "scientific evidence", as he puts it, showing that compact sporting is taking over hunting, he failed to produce it.

If, as he stated, "Edwin Vella is quite knowledgeable in this" then he should have left it to the expert to substantiate what he wrote. Am I to take Mr Darmanin's reply as the official position of the Malta Shooting Sports Federation or will Mr Vella be correcting this nonsense?

The point I made is that clay pigeon shooting can never be considered as an alternative to hunting, and I gave valid reasons for my views.

Knowing that he cannot disprove my arguments, Mr Darmanin resorted to the usual trite remarks typical of people who look at hunting, with blinkered eyes, as "butchering", and see it only as illegal. He also missed my suggestion that those "so called hunters who have no clue of what real hunting is all about" could be attracted to compact sporting.

With his suggestion that our members join clay shooting clubs to ensure hunters make "clean kills" when hunting, Mr Darmanin is at least agreeing with one suggestion of mine. He seems to be forgetting that practically every clay pigeon shooter that represented Malta in international shooting events is a hunter.

However, clay pigeon shooting did not replace these people's hunting; and it certainly will not replace mine.

Mr Darmanin talks about the effects of lead on the human being. He might like to learn that the largest concentration of lead is to be found in the air that he breathes. This probably explains his thorough knowledge of the many toxic effects of poisonous lead "when it interacts with the acid in the stomach, is that it affects the brain permanently and makes people stupid." He is probably speaking from experience.