A pigeon trainer was devastated yesterday when one of his racing pigeons returned to its loft with a gunshot wound to its wing.

Jesmond Zammit released his flock of 94 pigeons from Ta' Pinu in Għarb for a training session on Sunday morning but when they returned home to Fgura, 13 were missing.

"Today I know why," he said, disappointed that the surviving pigeon would probably be the only one of the 13 to return.

"I cannot understand why anyone would do this. It's impossible for a hunter to mistake a racing pigeon for quail or any another kind of bird. These are white and black and they fly together in a flock," Mr Zammit said.

He explained that since racing pigeons were given a lot of medication they were not even suitable for human consumption, so he could not see what someone could get out of shooting them.

"I have nothing against hunting. I have my hobby and hunters have theirs. I understand their position because if someone took away my hobby I would go crazy," he said.

But he felt such incidents, which although rare had happened before, made things worse for the hunters since it hurt their cause.

Mr Zammit said this was the worst time for such an incident to happen because races were being held next month, and by this time he would have just finished training them and set up a good team.