Georgia's Dr. John Waldrop is an organizer of live pigeon shoots, where he and his network of fellow contest-killing enthusiasts blast starved, dehydrated, captive pigeons from spring-loaded crates. Now is the time for them to end.

Waldrop is no peach when it comes to animal cruelty, that's for sure. The wealthy orthopedic surgeon is hosting one of the country's biggest live pigeon-killing contests—right there in his own backyard.

Here are the components of his spectacles of animal cruelty:

• Millionaire friends with thousands of shotgun shells.
• Pigeons flung from box cages and shot at point-blank range.
• Animals wounded by the thousands—eaten alive by predators if they escape the shooting grounds or dispatched by young “trapper boys” who stomp the animals or snap their necks as they flop in agony on the ground.

It's sadistic. It's done for no good reason. It's unsporting. The pigeons are purchased by Waldrop and his cronies and shipped into Georgia, dehydrated and starved, just to be blown to bits in contest shoots.

But Waldrop is no stranger to danger—at least to birds. He's already under federal indictment for protected-bird-related charges last year. He's not playing it safe, but instead doubling down on animal cruelty.

Georgia: Make these contests explicitly illegal. Join the states that have already criminalized live pigeon shoots. There's no place for this cruelty.