Animal Aid playing cards
Animal Aid playing cards with anti-shooting cartoons created by Steve Hutton.
Animal Aid is an animal-rights group, founded in January 1977, which works, by all peaceful means, for an end to animal cruelty. A ban on the production of pheasants and other birds for ‘sport’ shooting has been one of Animal Aid’s long-standing campaigns, and Animal Aid’s National Anti-Shooting Week takes place at the end of September each year, just ahead of the start of the pheasant shooting season. More information can be seen here►
This pack, which has square corners rather than the usual round corners, shows 13 anti-shooting cartoons created by Steve Hutton, repeated on each suit, together with another cartoon repeated on the 2 jokers. See the leaflet►


Above: Animal Aid playing cards with anti-shooting cartoons created by Steve Hutton.

By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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