Bred to be shot: Inside the industry that raises 70 million birds a year for sport hunting

"They are raising flocks of birds in order to kill them," the international animal rights group PETA has said.

A large pit filled with the bodies of dead animals. The birds — pheasants — look at first glance like victims of predators in the wild.

But the reality is grimmer. They were killed by humans — not for meat or any other byproduct, but purely for sport.

These pheasants were raised specifically to be hunted. Born for someone's entertainment and killed for it, they lived and died as little more than human playthings.

The practice of mass-rearing animals solely for hunting persists around the world, and the scale is far from small. In the United Kingdom alone, up to about 70 million birds are killed each year for sport.

Birds are not the only targets. Deer, wild boar, kangaroos and even lions are among the animals bred for hunting in various parts of the world.

Britain is one of the most prominent countries with an organized game-bird shooting industry. The model is straightforward: operators hatch eggs, raise the birds and release them into the wild just before the hunting season. Paying clients then arrive with shotguns and shoot them down.

Hunters pay handsomely for the experience. The 2026 Game Shooting Census, published by the British shooting industry this year, put the average cost of a driven pheasant shoot at 51.60 pounds ($69) per bird bagged, while red-legged partridge averaged 51.87 pounds per bird.

Based on the average daily bag of 121 birds, a single team can spend roughly 6,240 pounds on a day's shooting.

The numbers behind the industry are striking. According to the British government, between about 39 million and 57 million pheasants are released each year, along with 8.1 million to 13 million red-legged partridges. Adding the upper figures for each species brings the total to roughly 70 million birds — meaning tens of millions of birds are produced every year for the sole purpose of being shot.

The hunting industry has drawn fresh scrutiny after animal welfare groups released a series of exposés in recent months.

In August, British animal welfare group Animal Aid published the findings of roughly 20 investigations into game-bird farms. The group said it found evidence of animal abuse or neglect at every facility it visited, and pointed to the broader system of mass-producing birds, releasing them into the wild and then shooting them.

That same month, animal welfare group Protect the Wild released undercover footage filmed inside a pheasant hatchery in Britain. The video showed newly hatched chicks being handled and sorted on a conveyor belt as if they were products on an assembly line.

The sustained pressure from animal welfare groups prompted the British government to act. On Sept. 4, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced it had begun formally gathering evidence on the entire cycle of breeding and shooting game birds, launching a probe into concerns including biodiversity conservation and wildlife protection across the industry.

The government noted that game birds bred for shooting are not subject to the same animal welfare regulations that apply to poultry raised for food, and said it would review whether existing protections are adequate. However, no decisions have yet been made on tightening regulations or banning hunting.

A central criticism is that the birds are being killed purely for sport, with no meaningful use of the meat. It had long been assumed that hunters would take their birds home to eat or send them to game-meat dealers for retail distribution.

But as the shooting industry has grown, critics have raised concerns that demand for the meat has failed to keep pace with the number of birds being killed. A 2018 report by real estate and asset consultancy Savills, which surveyed operations at 566 shooting estates in Britain, found that supply was outstripping demand.

The report found that 46 percent of shooting estates gave their birds to game-meat dealers for free, while 12 percent actually paid per bird to have them processed and disposed of. Warnings have also emerged this year, ahead of the new shooting season, that more birds than usual are being released — potentially exceeding what the meat market can absorb.

The shooting industry says it plans to expand the game-meat market and broaden retail distribution channels. Animal welfare groups, however, argue that even solving the consumption problem would not address the underlying issue — that breeding birds for shooting can itself damage natural ecosystems — and are calling for the practice to end.

Their concern is well-founded: pheasants and other birds released in large numbers for hunting are not native to Britain, meaning mass releases can produce unforeseen ecological side effects. The potential spread of diseases such as avian influenza to wild bird populations has also been raised as a risk.

The practice of breeding animals specifically to be killed is not limited to birds. In parts of the United States, facilities operate where large mammals such as deer and elk are kept in enclosures for paying hunters to shoot. Wild boar are another prominent example.

An extreme form of the practice is known as canned hunting. Humane World for Animals, an international animal welfare organization, has said that facilities in the United States have placed captive-bred or human-habituated animals inside fenced enclosures and allowed paying hunters to kill them.

These operations use not only native species such as deer but also exotic animals including African antelopes. PETA has said that the various animals used in canned hunting in the United States are either bred specifically for that purpose or sourced from animal dealers.

In South Africa, lions have become the defining symbol of the controversy. The practice of placing captive-bred lions in confined spaces for paying hunters to shoot has long drawn criticism. In response, the South African government adopted a policy in 2024 to end the commercial breeding of lions and halt their commercial use.

South Korea has not been immune to the practice either. Domestic shooting grounds have in the past offered farmed pheasants and wild boar as hunting targets, and such commercial hunting venues operated openly in some regions through the 2010s. They have not reopened since the COVID-19 pandemic, as concerns about infectious disease grew.

Humane World for Animals has identified captive and enclosed hunting as one of the most egregious forms of wildlife abuse, calling for an end to the practice of confining hand-reared animals inside fences and offering them as easy targets for paying hunters.

The group described the canned hunting industry as "facilities that breed and sell animals solely for kill-for-thrill purposes," adding that "captive-bred animals contribute virtually nothing to the conservation of wild populations."