The great bait debate

Hunting’s opponents claim that the term ‘conservation hunting’ is evidence of hunters’ intention to conserve populations of feral species in the environment for their own ends, rather than striving to eradicate them. In fact the term conservation hunting describes a strategy aimed at the conservation of native species and habitat, through the control of feral species.  Hunting’s opponents also claim that conservation hunting will not achieve this objective and that is absolutely correct. The suggestion that hunters claim that it will, is nothing more than a convenient deception promulgated by those who would have hunting of all kinds banned. Such people have demonstrated time and again that they will do anything – including wilfully misleading the public – to achieve that end.

Game Council NSW has never claimed that conservation hunting is the solution to Australia’s growing feral animal problem, nor would any informed hunter make such a claim. It is simply one component of a range of initiatives that must be implemented if we are to first contain and then control a growing national epidemic. In fact, most of the academic wisdom suggests that it may be impossible to eradicate many of our feral species, which have been here for so long and are now so well adapted to the Australian continent, that they will likely be tomorrow’s natives species, but at what cost? Nature has only so many bio-niches, and if feral species are destined to be the ‘natives’ of tomorrow, it is logical to suggest that other species will have to make way for them today.

Hunting’s opponents claim that there are more effective and humane ways to control feral animal populations. Trapping and baiting are among the alternatives they promote and it is vitally important that the wider community should appreciate their possible consequences; in particular, the consequences of baiting.

A great deal of deception has been employed by interests who would have the public believe that baiting can be targeted at a specific species without consequence to other birds, animals and insects that share the same habitat.  It is difficult to source reliable studies that objectively document the impact of baiting on non-feral species. The little that is available reveals some very compelling evidence that baiting may have far reaching consequences for native animal populations, but from the layman’s perspective such studies are often far from reader friendly.

The long term future of conservation hunting will be determined by the court of popular opinion and the voter, and in the absence of easily digested objective facts the voter’s opinion is determined by a combination of urban myth, emotional manipulation and political hype. It may never be possible to convince the dyed-in-the-wool anti-hunter that hunting is no more or less ‘cruel’ than the end nature has in store for feral species, but it may be possible to enlighten the public as to the collateral consequences of the anti-hunters’ preferred options. Perhaps by doing so hunters can foster a greater public awareness of the complexities associated with non-hunting control strategies, such as baiting.

With this end in mind, I encourage the reader to view the GrafBoys’ exposé on baiting entitled “Poisoning Stewart Island – is it ecocide” which can be found below. (double click on the video to enlarge to full screen)

While not an Australian production, this brief New Zealand exposé does raise many questions that are relevant to the use of baits in Australia, especially those used to control non-carnivorous species. New Zealand and Australia share many invasive animal species and environments in common, and it is not unreasonable to suggest that we may also share similar outcomes in relation to the collateral toll baiting can take on native species, especially carrion eaters.

The exposé features the environmental impact of baits containing the second generation anticoagulant Brodifacoum, and it graphically demonstrates that the use of a non-hunting control measure does not automatically make it more humane for its intended victim, or less injurious to native species.

NZ is in fact the world’s largest consumer of Sodium Fluoroacetate, the poison known as 1080, which has been used to great effect in the control of New Zealand’s introduced mammals. However, it must be remembered that unlike Australian, which has many native land mammals, NZ has only two, both of them bats.  As a result, NZ is afforded the luxury of being able to adopt something of a scatter-gun approach to feral mammal control, because all but two of the country’s mammals are, by definition, feral.  Australia enjoys no such luxury and whether 1080 is in fact a humane poison remains a very contentious issue.

The RSPCA’s website advises that it has conducted a review of the available science on the ‘humaneness’ of the effect of 1080 and as a result its policy position is that 1080 is not a humane poison. However, the RSPCA acknowledges that in many circumstances there is “currently no alternative effective control method available”. This begs the question, if the effectiveness of a poison it considers ‘cruel’ mitigates the RSPCA’s opposition to its use, why is the RSPCA so vehemently and publically opposed to recreational hunting? But that’s a question to explore another day…

I hope you will find “Poisoning Stewart Island – is it ecocide” interesting. More importantly, I hope you will consider sharing the link with others in the hope that doing so will result in a greater appreciation of the many complexities associated with the use of poisoned baits for the control of Australia’s feral species. I believe that education is the key to achieving an objective public appraisal of conservation hunting’s true value in the control of feral pests.  Resourcing the public with the information required in order to ask the right questions and make informed decisions, is a practical strategy we should all participate in.

Anyway, I’ll get outa ya way now...

Thread spiking and other hidden dangers

While in Sydney recently I had a very enlightening conversation with some friends and acquaintances on the current and fraught topics of global warming, the carbon tax and the environment.  Never one to let a chance go by, I invited comment on the equally controversial topic of hunting on public lands. Given that everyone present was a devoted city slicker, I was surprised to find opinion split as closely as 60/40 against. However the real revelations were yet to come!

In due course the topic turned – as topics are apt to do these days – to what people had been ‘Facing’, ‘Tweeting’ and ‘blogging’ about environmental issues. It was in this context that people began to compare experiences of otherwise productive online conversations that had been sabotaged by intemperate contributors who’s ‘rants’ so tainted the discussion that all input from more responsible contributors ceased.  This is something we see quite often in hunting’s online discussion threads and it can have far-reaching consequences beyond the confines of the net.

More troubling still was the revelation that some hard-core ‘conservationists’ will fabricate very complex identities for the sole purpose of making outrageous comments in online discussions, with which they strive to draw equally outrageous responses. When successful, they draw these comments and threads to the attention of the community, politicians and the media as justification for their concern about, for example, a growing and violent ‘gun culture’.  If no one takes the bait, they move to phase two, which involves using a second fabricated profile to respond even more outrageously to the statements they made in the guise of profile one. It can’t fail to reap a result.

Perhaps because I’m a boy from the bush, I immediately saw the parallels between this practice and the practice known as ‘spiking’.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the tactics of irresponsible ‘conservationists’, spiking is the term applied to the practice of hammering pieces of steel (e.g. angle-iron from old bed frames), into tree trunks at heights calculated to destroy a logger’s chainsaw. The practice can also result in horrendous injury to the logger, and for this reason a tree assessed as having been ‘well spiked’ – that is to say, spiked in so many places it cannot be harvested safely – often escapes the saw. In both cases – trees and threads – something dangerous is intentionally introduced to an otherwise safe environment, with the sole intention of causing harm, and I now refer to the online practice as ‘thread-spiking’.

The more I think about it, the more I am certain I’ve witnessed thread-spiking in action. I’ve seen very moderate, constructive conversations, driven by reason and mutual respect, suddenly turned upside down by a couple of contributors who appear from nowhere to make offensive statements that seem curiously reminiscent of each-other in their poor grammar, appalling spelling and use of SMS-abbreviated english.  These calculated attempts to misrepresent the nature of hunters often remain in place for years, and so represent a lingering danger to the hunters’ cause.

During a recent, pre-recorded interview with ABC radio, a journalist – one of the more objective of his ilk – happened to mention to me that he was concerned by comments left on the ABC’s facebook page by people identifying themselves as “responsible hunters”.  His concern was genuine and as I would later discover when I dropped into facebook for a squiz, quite justified.  Most troubling was the fact that these irresponsible posts, which expressed intolerance and racism while threatening all manner of extreme violence against anti-hunters, were clearly colouring the journalist’s perception of hunters, and his reporting of the controversy surrounding hunting in national parks.  Let’s not pull punches; our ‘reputation’ in the public domain is not good, and highly visible threats on Facebook cannot do anything to improve it.

It is not hard to understand why some hunters might be tempted to lash-out in public. Green extremists take great pride and relish in portraying hunters as irresponsible, weapon toting homicidal maniacs in waiting, who threaten the very fabric of everything Australians hold dear. For the vast majority of we who contribute productively and responsibly to our communities, and conduct ourselves with dignity and our hunting activities with great care and responsibility, the defamatory statements of Green extremists, often calculated to deceive, are highly offensive. Yet this does not mitigate the fact that every time we lash-out, we issue ammo to the enemy; ammo that they are only too happy to shoot us down with.

If we are to preserve our hunting culture, we must work on our image every bit as hard as we work to retain our rights. This is not a simple matter of responding indignantly to each misrepresentation or falsehood. Nor can we afford to fool ourselves into thinking that because we know the truth about hunting, all will be well once the dust settles.

Hunting is in the midst of a public relations war and we’re losing! The prize is the right to continue to engage in a safe and responsible and deeply spiritual cultural practice of many thousands of years. On one front we have the declared anti-hunters who will stoop to any means to misrepresent our cause in the hope of turning the balance of public opinion against us. On another we have the voting public, who probably doesn’t hold any firm opposition to our cause and could care less whether we hunt or not. Yet as the voting majority in a Westminster democratic system, it is they who will ultimately make the decision about our future, whether by direct vote, or by expressing sufficient concern to sway the Nervous-Nellies in Parliament.  On still another front we have the threat from within and this represents perhaps the greatest threat of all, for it is the ill-considered guerrilla offensives, launched by hunting’s hotheads that so effectively fuel the engines that besiege us.

There are readers who will take great exception to my suggestion that we need to clean up our act. They will say that we should not have to justify our views and activities to anyone, and they will be wrong! The fact is we want something from a public that is not particularly moved to give it to us, but could very easily be moved to take away what little we have.

Luckily, the ‘ultimate weapons’ in the battle for hunting’s legitimacy are free and already in every hunter’s hands. They include:

• Exemplary conduct in all that we say and do,
• Strategic and above all sympathetic representation of our views and activities, and
• Assiduous self-regulation of public media such as threads, magazine content, Youtube; even club posters and pamphlets.

Exemplary conduct
The vast majority of the voting public are not hunters, and may never have any contact with hunters that they’re aware of. Their perception of hunters spans the spectrum from the romantic to the vengeful – from Daniel Boon hunting in the American wilderness with his old Kentucky riffle, to John Rambo bent on revenge with his compound bow and grenade-tipped arrows.  It’s not hard to work out which the public is going to see in the least threatening light.

• It goes without saying (nearly) that a zero-tolerance for all representations of hunters having a human quarry should be our main focus, and we should proactively express our concern and distain for such representations, whether in the movies, computer games or elsewhere. This is a job not just for hunters, but for organisations like Game Council NSW and our peak-bodies, which will need our active support and direction if they’re to identify material of concern and address it.
• Exemplary conduct must also be reflected in the field. When we are cautious and responsible in the field we minimise the risk of accidents that might be reported in the media, and also the risk of wounded game escaping only to die somewhere very public where the ‘cruelty’ of the death will be cited as justification for hunting’s abolition.

• And of course our conduct in commentary must also be exemplary. Anyone taking it upon themselves to speak to the media has an obligation to do so armed with arguments and facts that are based on sound and objective research. Let the Green extremists rant illogically and emotively about their fears for public safety and their perceptions of cruelly, while we calmly and respectfully ‘beg to disagree’ in considered terms and measured tones.

Strategic and sympathetic representation of views and activities
This is a tricky one, simply because its success hinges on the cooperation of so many organisations, publications and websites, some of which would rather arrogantly tough it out and lose, than make some relatively minor concessions and win.  It’s also too complex an issue to comprehensively flesh-out here, but strategies might include;

• Assessing the names and cover images of magazines for their visual impact beyond the hunting fraternity. Is our objective to shock the public, or promote our publications so as to increase readership and public support?

• Adopting stringent low visual impact policies for the depiction of hunter-game images intended for publication is also important, e.g. saving the photo of the boar with its mouth jacked wide open for the mantelpiece, and trying a little harder to get a good camera angle to display his tusks in a natural posture if the snap is destined for publication. Clearing away excessive blood on the animal, and the hunter too for that matter, and trying to ‘arrange’ the animal in a way that looks less dead can also help. I recently saw two photos – one of a deer, the other of a camel – in which both animals, while quite dead, looked like they’d just curled up next to the hunters for a nap. I should add that both hunters looked justifiably proud, but neither wore a maniacal grin. There should be no visual reference to the wound that claimed the target’s life either – no proud photos of headshots, no arrows protruding from fatal wounds, and certainly no entry/exit wound comparison shots.

• When talking about the efficiency of a weapon we should strive to avoid terms such as ‘killing’ or ‘stopping’ power, referring instead to the weapon’s capacity to minimise trauma to our quarry. This terminology helps to convey a consistent message of concern for animal welfare and a commitment to mercy.

• We should never try to assert that we can take an animal painlessly. Such assertions are all too easily refuted and, in fact, any suggestion that hunters have a responsibility to bring a quarry’s life to a painless conclusion is flawed. Perceptions of how an animal’s life will end in the wild are driven by the public’s experience of domestic pets. We fuss over them and monitor their welfare daily, and if they appear a little ‘out of sorts’ we rush them off to the vet. When, at a grand old age we deem them to be approaching the end, we assess their quality of life and if we find it wanting we seek veterinary intervention to bring life to a swift and merciful conclusion.
  
  Animals in the wild state do not fade away peacefully in an analgesic haze, safe in the bosom of devoted family and friends. They struggle to avoid healthier predators and eventually they lose that struggle and the end is rarely either painless or swift. Our real obligation is to ensure that our actions do not result in greater trauma than is inevitable with a so-called ‘natural death’ in the wild, and this is an important distinction that is made all too infrequently.

• Removing the ‘sex’ from hunting publications couldn’t hurt either. Associating hunting and dead animals with swimsuit-clad buxom blonds only reinforces perceptions that hunting is all about testosterone and machismo, and little to do with an abiding respect for the wild and a desire to preserve elements of an ancient and noble culture.

• Adopting a zero tolerance for any reference, either visual or verbal, to an association between alcohol and hunting is crucial. There should be no beer cans visible in hunting or campsite snaps, and no references to enjoying a few beers around the campfire before or after the hunt should appear in hunting articles.

• We should foster new hunting terminology e.g. instead of saying, “I killed the deer with just one shot to the head”, consider the alternative, “I took the animal cleanly”. This might seem pedantic to some, but in terms of its impact on the public’s sensibilities and their perception of hunting, the latter conveys the same message, while being far less challenging.

•  In all that we say and write we should strive to convey the thrill of the hunt, as opposed to the thrill of the kill. In doing so we could do worse than attempt to communicate something of the ‘spiritual’ association we feel for the bush and wildlife, especially native flora and fauna. It would not hurt to include the odd photograph of a waterfall, a native bird, a beautiful sunrise or a butterfly on our websites and in our hunting journals, and if we can depict them in the context of sharing such wonders responsibly with our kids, so much the better.

Assiduous self-regulation of public media
Again, this is tricky, simply because we often hold little sway over what appears in public. However, we can sometimes register our disapproval.

• If someone makes a comment in a thread that is clearly out of line, all the other contributors should express their resolute intolerance for statements of that kind. If the source refuses to withdraw the comment and adopt a more moderate and responsible line, the thread should be abandoned with a clear indication of why the discussion closed. The intemperate contributor should be reported to the website’s administrator, who should be in a position to issue a strong reprimand and, if warranted, withdraw access to the site or forum completely.

•  Youtube is seething with video evidence of the most appalling ‘hunter’ conduct, which brings responsible hunters into disrepute. When we find examples of mindless behaviour or senseless slaughter we should complain about it, resolutely and articulately. For instance, some months ago I came across a Youtube video entitled “Bustin’ Birds”. In it, an American youth proudly demonstrated his prowess with a compound bow by targeting the US equivalent of a Willy-Wagtail using arrows fitted with rubber blunts. The resulting explosion of feathers and bird remnants drew shrieks of hysterical laughter from the assassin’s mates, who considered ‘bustin’ birds’ great sport. I held an altogether different view, which I registered in the comments section below the video, and also expressed to Youtube via the ‘report this video’ link. The video was removed soon after.

These are just a few strategies we could employ in an effort to improve our public image. They are not the whole solution, by any stretch of the imagination, but nor are they complex or onerous activities. You will have more and much better ideas, and I encourage you to explore them with other hunters, with a view to implementing strategies that will help to counter the negative image fostered by our detractors.
Remember success is not stumbled upon; it is hunted with passionate action.

I’ll get outa ya way now...

OL' DADS AND THE AL DENTE PARADOX

Mervyn Walter Mallard (1923-2001) seen here
with his favourite beagle Cuvva in 1962

Ol’ dads can make their sons very proud sometimes. 

There are magic moments when something they say or do – sometimes both – can make an 11 year-old feel like he’s in the company of a superhero. 

These moments and the feelings they evoke will stay with us until we’re ol’ dads ourselves, recounting stories of the ‘olden days’ to our grandkids that will pass into family legend. 

My ol’ dad was one such man and he left me with a wealth of stories that I cherish and recount with great joy and pride to this day.

My ol’ dad was a toolmaker by trade, for whom precision was both a religion and in his hands, an art form. 

In his later years he turned his hand to the gunsmith’s arts and in doing so turned me off shooting and onto archery.

The thing is, by the time my ol’ dad got through bedding an action, floating a barrel, tweaking a trigger, loaded the shells, honing the mounts and mounted the scope, all of it had been done with such perfect precision that failing to hit a bullseye was 100% down to human error, and who wants a rifle that’s sole raison d’être is to make its owner look like a bloody idiot?

Bows, on the other-hand, are built with the obfuscation of incompetence in mind – traditional bows doubly so. 

There are all those wonderful vagaries associated with the myriad types of wood that arrow shafts are available in, and there’s the argy-bargy of conflicting opinion about what arrow spine is just perfect for what draw weight and so on.  

Then you need to decide what types of feathers you’ll use – left or right-wing – and whether it really matters as long as you don’t mix them.

Should you use parabolic or shield cut feathers and of what length, and should they be attached straight along the shaft with sinew, or are they best glued in place in a helical twist formation, and if the latter, should it be a left or right helical. 

Finally, if we ever manage to guess all that stuff right with such consummate precision that we’re in imminent peril of clevering ourselves right out of things to blame for the odd lousy shot, we archers can always rely on the ever-present mitigating companion know as the “Archer’s Paradox” as an excuse – hallelujah!

The archer’s paradox is complicated science and, woe is me, I was away they day they did science at school, but in a nutshell it goes something like this. 

When a wooden shaft is fired from a bow the stresses of acceleration around the bow stave and through the air itself, results in the rear-end impatiently trying to accelerate faster than the front-end. 

Unfortunately, because the rear-end’s blinkers are out, it can’t pull into the right-hand lane and overtake the front-end in an orderly manner.

Instead it tries to overtake the front-end by passing through it. 

Of course this is not possible because of.....more science, and the result is a sort of bumper-car effect without the bumps per se. 

The rear pushes, and the front, not being in any particular hurry to get out of its way, allows itself to be pushed ever so slightly slower, while the bit in the middle, trying its level best to maintain some semblance of decorum, bellies and twists as it takes the brunt of all the resulting.…science.  

The end result when viewed via the wonders of modern slow-motion cinematography, is an arrow that speeds determinedly towards its target in a sort of horizontal wriggling action reminiscent of a piece of spaghetti sneezed from the nose of the only animal with sinuses long enough to accommodate 28 inches of 5/16 diameter al dente pasta i.e. a bemused giraffe.

My point is this; it’s really hard to turn a traditional bow and arrow into a precision instrument in quite the same way one can tweak a riffle and scope to deliver minute-of-angle accuracy.

As a result, when I miss a target’s A-zone in competition, snagging a B-zone instead I simply examine the recovered arrow and say, in learned and considered tones, “I’m not certain I’m entirely satisfied with these new spruce shafts”.

This I could say safe in the knowledge that my buddies will reassure me that a B-zone shot in the field would mean fresh game on the table nonetheless, and that’s all that really counts. 

But the fact is, I know that were he still with us today, within a few hours of putting my bow and arrows in the hands of my ol’ dad, the two would be working in such perfect harmony the Archery Alliance of Australia would be holding crisis talks to institute a new zone in the centre of the A-zone, which they would no-doubt christen the “bloody Mallard!” zone.

There was one occasion I remember very clearly, when my ol’ dad’s skill at tuning a rifle not only made me proud, but also made me realise that, in the parlance of the 1960s, he was ‘way-cool’ too. 

 

We were living in the suburbs of what was then Sydney’s outskirts and we’d regularly pack-up the car and journey into dairy country to shoot a few conies in a little one-horse farming community known as Camden. 

My ol’ dad would carry one of his numerous .22s, while the trusty Browning .22-short was my rifle of choice and, coincidentally, the only rifle in my ‘collection’ at the time. 

I would come to refer to that old Browning as ‘Lightning’, not because it was fast, but because like lightning it rarely hit the same spot twice. That is, until my ol' dad got jack on me missin'!

One day we pulled up at the farmer’s gate in Camden and while preparing our gear for the day ahead, another car arrived. 

The driver saw that we were also shooters and came over to introduce himself. A brief conversation about which direction we were headed in and what time we planned to return to our cars ensued, and it was decided that in the interests of safety all shooting should cease promptly at 10am to allow both parties a safe return. 

OH&S issues sorted, off we went to bag a bunny or three.

As we wandered off into the field I happened to glance back to find the other hunter looking at us over his shoulder with a snug little grin on his face. 

I reported this observation to my ol’ dad who, completely unphased, told me it was known as the ‘shotgun smirk’.

Apparently the shotgun smirk comes with the purchase of expensive guns such as the Bentley centre-fire, and is pre-set to leap from the breach onto the new owner’s face where it surgically implants itself the very first time he manages to hit what he’d previously been unable to hit with “a proper gun”.

The day was very productive. My ol’ dad took ten young bunnies and as luck would have it, another two does whose Prozac scripts had run out, very accommodatingly leaped in front of Lightning with suicide-aforethought.

With the freezer topped-up and the dogs sorted with food for a few days, we headed back to the car to get stuck-into the business of dressing the day’s take. 

As prearranged we arrived back at the car just after 10am, as did the Smirk to his credit, and as we searched the car for our field kits the Smirk opened an old and bloodied sugar-bag and began laying out his day’s take on a nearby fallen tree that had been used by generations of hunters as a cleaning table.

Like my ol’ dad, the Smirk had taken a total of ten bunnies, which he proceeded to lay out at strategic intervals calculated to impress. 

Field kits retrieved from the car, we proceeded to the same fallen tree and began to set-up, and it was at this moment that the Smirk set in motion circumstances that were about to make a little boy very proud of his ol’ dad.

“You were shooting rabbits, then” inquired the Smirk?

“Yes, rabbits, that’s right” replied my ol’ dad.

“Only, I don’t shoot rabbits with a rifle. Rifles is for foxes and pigs and such” the Smirk informed us.

“Oh really” said my ol’ dad with a wry note of incredulity in his voice, “and why’s that” he inquired?

“Well, .22s leave rabbits all bloody and bruised inside and no good for eating at all” said the smirk, and as my ol’ dad pulled his ten young rabbits from his bag and laid them out neatly on that fallen log, he calmly uttered the words that would burn themselves indelibly into an 11 year-olds memory for life:

“Well yes, a .22 can bruise them up a bit, you’ve got a point there…still, I don’t eat the heads!”

And there they were, ten bunnies every one of them taken cleanly with a single shot just behind the ears.

To this day I cannot walk past a fallen tree without harking back to the day my ol’ dad taught me two very important lessons; 

1) the importance of remaining calm when accosted by an idiot, and 

2) the effectiveness of understatement back-up by raw talent.

I miss my ol’ dad!

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

©gmallard2016 all rights reserved

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Hunting and the fight against truth decay

Responsible hunters continue to be assailed by irresponsible 'green' extremists, myopic social commentators and journalists who have little or no interest in exploring, in depth and objectively, why people in the 21st century still want to hunt.

It is difficult to get ‘equal time’ and even when time is offered hunters are challenged to justify their culture and practices in ways that the anti-hunting lobby is rarely, if ever, tasked to do.  For example, hunting’s detractors are fond of citing examples of extraordinary cruelty, which they claim are intrinsic to hunting practice. But have you ever heard an interviewer ask the very simple question, “Upon what expert and objective research is your accusation of extreme cruelty based?” Of course you haven’t. It is enough that there may be a perception of cruelty – albeit born of profound ignorance – an emotive statement and perhaps even tears to punctuate it.

If necessity is the mother of invention, the lack of necessity could be considered the mother of the perception of cruelty, and we should remember that of all the life-forms on planet earth the perception of cruelty is peculiar to human beings alone. The crocodile does not consider the welfare of its prey, nor does the lion, and even in the case of human predators the definition of cruelty is ever-evolving and highly subjective. Does the Green extremist protest the Amerindian’s use of the poison dart to paralyse his prey so that it will plummet 30 metres or more from its treetop refuge to the forest floor?  Does the Green extremist mourn the death of the poison dart frog that loses its life to give the dart its efficiency?  Of course not, there are no supermarkets or styrofoam trays of meat in the jungle, so what might be considered cruel in the developed world, becomes an acceptable necessity in the jungles of South America. Moreover, the practice is considered intrinsic to an ancient culture and therefore worthy of preservation.  Greens will in fact lobby worldwide for the preservation of rainforests because the Amerindians depend upon them for their food, and voila, hunting is suddenly kosher!

Open minded objective analysis is sorely lacking in the debate. We are plagued by reports of incidents of perceived cruelty and hunter wrongdoing, in which conclusions are drawn based on ‘evidence’ so flimsy as to be farcical. I recently read a report in which it was claimed that a hunter had shot a deer on a property adjoining a state forest. The inference was clear; hunters cannot be trusted to respect boundaries, and as this amounts to an accusation given voice in the vehicle of the media, I believe the driver of that vehicle had a responsibility to ask a very remedial, yet important question, “How do you know the deer was shot on private property?”

The deer may have been found dead on private property, but as everyone save non-hunters espousing half-baked theories knows, deer seldom fall exactly where they’d stood prior to being shot. They sometimes travel considerable distances before they succumb; they may even cross fence-lines in the process, so all the position of its carcass demonstrates is where the deer died, and not where the fatal shot was fired, which is surely the issue?

In another report, featuring a disturbing picture of a joey with an arrow piercing its lower leg, animal welfare workers claimed hunters were the culprits. The sole ‘evidence’ for this accusation was the fact that a nearby forest had recently been opened to bowhunting. “What chance do our native animals have?” a rescuer emoted. What chance indeed? I could commit reams to comparing the odds of joeys surviving licensed hunter encounters in a limited number of national parks, with, say, the odds of them surviving encounters with the cars that travel the roads surrounding and traversing them. But let’s stay on track and look at the evidence we have, and we have little evidence except that revealed by the picture which accompanied the story.

Recreational hunting in national parks under fire after joey shot by stray arrow,  Sydney Morning Herald, August 6th, 2012

The joey has been shot through a part of the leg that lays flat on the ground when a macropod is at rest. This might suggest that the arrow skipped along the ground before penetration.  It is not a fatal injury, nor one that would prevent the animal from eating, and this makes it very difficult to ascertain how long ago the incident may have occurred. Its rescuers claim it took two nights – and presumably at least one full day – to catch the wallaby, which suggests that the injury did not catastrophically inhibit mobility. How far might the wallaby have travelled from the point of impact before coming to the notice of its rescuers, and from where…another private property some kilometres away perhaps?

Finally we have the clues surrendered by the arrow itself. It looks to be a very light, cheap & nasty arrow of the type readily available on eBay, but perhaps most importantly, it is a target arrow, not a hunting arrow. For the benefit of the non-hunter let me explain the difference.  A target arrow is fitted with a ‘point’ the tip of which is pointed, but in no way sharp. It is designed to enable the arrow to penetrate a paper, cardboard or a very soft plastic target only sufficient to hold the arrow in place long enough for a score to be recorded. A hunting arrow differs in that it carries a very large and often razor sharp head, intended to maximise penetration and cause as much internal damage as possible to ensure a swift kill. Whether you are pro or anti-hunting, there is one thing I’m sure we can agree on. The objective of hunting an animal is to kill it. By virtue of the point they are fitted with, target arrows are utterly inefficient and unsuitable for hunting and I know of no hunter – legal or otherwise – who would try to take game with a target arrow. So allow me to propose an alternative to the “bloodthirsty, irresponsible hunter shoots protected species in state forest” scenario, developed with due consideration to the limited evidence at hand.

A child, given a cheap archery set for Christmas or a birthday, enjoys shooting targets on private property owned by her mum and dad. One morning she spots a wallaby eating mum’s veggie patch and, grabbing her bow & arrow from her bedroom, she takes a pot-shot that is well outside the effective range of her little fibreglass kiddie-bow. The arrow falls short, but maintains enough momentum to skip across the ground, just managing to penetrate the joey’s leg at ground level. The wound, while painful, is not catastrophically debilitating, and mother and joey hop away. Joey is found some days and perhaps many kilometres later, by animal welfare activists. Because they believe that an end to hunting on public lands is an outcome devoutly to be wished, they have a stake in considering only one of a dozen possible scenarios; namely the one that suits their agenda. The rest is history.

Do I consider my scenario more likely that theirs? I do! Not because I believe it is correct, but because it is every bit as possible as the alternative, and because it was developed in consideration of the available evidence, or at least the lack of it, and that’s the basis upon which all guilt or innocence must be determined.

Where am I going with this? I’m glad you asked!

Put on the spot, often during a media ambush, we have become unnecessarily defensive in our responses to allegations of hunter cruelty and illegal practice. There is no need to be. Rather, it is essential that we become skilled at listening carefully to the allegations and, instead of expressing indignation we should adopt the approach of challenging the media and others to justify their manufactured scenarios and fanciful notions. We should calmly suggest considered and plausible alternatives and, based only on the available evidence, challenge our accusers to demonstrate why their assertions are more plausible than ours.

There is a well known maxim in legal circles, “he who seeks equity must do so with clean hands.” The hunting fraternity could do worse than to adopt this maxim in the struggle for hunters’ rights. In a nutshell it means, don’t whine about injustice if you’ve also been unjust, and I think this particularly applies to the intemperate statements some of us make in blogs and online discussion groups. This is where I get controversial.

I am both pro-hunting and pro-hunting on public lands and over the last few months I have become a frequent visitor to discussion fora. I have lost count of the compelling arguments I’ve seen lost, unnecessarily, by ill-considered, intemperate and totally self-indulgent comments lobbed like grenades into otherwise productive discussions. Make no mistake, the anti-hunting lobby and the media haunt blogs and threads looking for violent, inflammatory statements to justify their portrayal of hunters as gap-toothed, inbred, banjo-playing rednecks straight off the set of Deliverance. And all too often we accommodate them by reading from the script. We will lose the battle for as long as we believe that our only threat lies from without!

We should keep in mind at all times that our objective is to sell a product that a large percentage of the population doesn’t want to buy. This is a huge and complex responsibility that will take time and patience, and there is no room for self-indulgent outbursts that can only serve to undermine our hard-won progress.

If we are to convince the voting public that we are not monsters, we must conduct ourselves in a moderate and responsible manner in all our activities, not just in the field. This includes ensuring that we leave no smoking guns of sadism or intolerance on the net that may be used against us.

Finally, we must guard against falling into the trap of commenting on topics we are not sufficiently familiar with to offer sage advice. This is particularly relevant to the debate about whether the public will be safe in NSW national parks that are opened to hunters.

It is tempting to make all sorts of assurances, but we cannot be drawn on the topic, simply because there is so much that is yet to be settled. We don’t know how many hunters will be permitted in a national park on any given day. We don’t know how many hunters might be permitted per x-hectares of bush. We don’t know how parks will be signposted or how their closure for hunting will be managed and conveyed to the public. The list goes on…  What we do know is that the bodies responsible for developing policies to ensure public safety are aware of the controversy surrounding hunting in parks, and they have everything to gain by ensuring that policy is robust and serviceable.

It is in our best interest to share our thoughts and ideas with bodies such as Game Council NSW and the National Parks and Wildlife Service, and to give them our full and active support as they strive to ensure that in the long term, hunting on public lands is revealed to be safe and therefore sustainable for many years to come.

I'll get outa ya way now...

The gaping wound in the cruelty argument

I’ve read many specious and offensive statements in the press recently, which paint hunters as vicious and cruel people, irresponsible and violent by nature, the despoilers of public safety. Green extremists and hard-core preservationists are particularly fond of playing-up what they portray as extraordinarily cruel and painful deaths suffered at the hands of wicked hunters. While I admit that save for the close-quarter headshot from a high-powered rifle it would be ridiculous to claim that hunted animals are dispatched painlessly, I do believe that responsible hunters can take steps to minimise pain and suffering, and I believe the vast majority do.

All that aside, the thing that strikes me as particularly non-sequitur, is the fact that the anti-hunting/cruelty lobby appears to premise its arguments on two very flawed beliefs: 1) that an animal that is not taken by a hunter will live forever, and 2) that an animal that proves to be mortal after all, will eventually die by nature’s hand, at a rare old age, quickly, without pain or distress, probably in its sleep.

In many years of hiking through some extraordinarily remote and pristine locations in Australia, and elsewhere too, I have come across a number of dead or dying animals in the bush. It has always struck me that many of these animals have suffered lingering, unpleasant, wasting declines, while waiting for nature to “take its course”. Indeed some have been so weak from illness or malnutrition that they’ve fallen prey to healthier predators that have shown no concern whatsoever for the comfort of their prey.  I’ve seen ancient deer nearing the end of their lives, too old and tired to defend themselves, being torn apart by wild dogs. I’ve witnessed pigs in a similar state, eaten by other pigs and I’ve witnessed buffalo, too old and weak to escape a marsh, die a slow and unpleasant death in the mud. I once came across a very old emaciated and tick infested Kangaroo, lying under a bush, and having been disturbed by my hiking group, it raised itself from its deathbed and took-off at a staggering hop, straight into a billabong where it drown, very slowly and in great distress. But of course I have described only the fate that may await animals that die of old age in a natural setting.

I have also seen the majestic wedge-tailed eagle taking rabbits, wallabies and lambs with no apparent concern for the pain felt by a prey that has been impaled on massive, needle-sharp raptor talons. I have seen pythons crushing the life out of bilbies and bandicoots, lizards and frogs, none of which appeared to expire painlessly. And I have witnessed the unique approach that Komodo dragons apply to the ‘hunt’; one where the prey – which can vary in size from that of a small child, to a fully grown water buffalo – is bitten with a mouth so rancid that the resulting bacteria-filled wound kills the victim slowly, days later. It’s not a pretty death! And of course there are crocodiles in some locations, which use massive jaws to take their unsuspecting prey by the head as it stoops to drink at a waterhole. Thanks to the marvels of modern wildlife photography we have all witnessed graphic hunter-prey images on the tele which demonstrate quite conclusively, how inhumane death in the wild is really likely to be.

As one who lives in the bush, I have seen literally thousands of dead kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, possums, bandicoots, potoroos, foxes, rabbits, cats, dogs, raptors, ducks, moorhens etc. ad nauseam, all mown down by cars. And this tally only accounts for the animals that ended their lives on the roadside after their encounters with cars. It does not include the many thousands more that, after being ‘clipped’, continue into the undergrowth, only to die lingering deaths along with any young they may harbour in a pouch.  As I understand it, Greens and preservationists, while concerned about how their cars are powered, drive cars nonetheless, often in the country and even into National Parks. I suppose they must consider that the risk they pose is an acceptable one, as assessed against principles that determine that the impact of a car is less painful, more humane and therefore more acceptable than the impact of, say, an arrow. I’d dearly love to see the objective research supporting that belief.

My point is this – any suggestion that denying hunters access to public lands will in some way guarantee that all wildlife will live long and fruitful lives, followed by a swift and painless death surrounded by family and friends, is anthropomorphic and non-sequitur at best. Anthropomorphic because animals are not people and do not share human expectations of life and death. Non-sequitur because there is an abundance of available evidence that clearly demonstrates that life in the wild is highly unlikely to culminate in a surgically swift and painless conclusion as if by divine right.

As hunters we have a responsibility and the capacity to ensure that when taking animals, we do so ethically, taking all precautions to ensure that the death we aim to cause is not unusually slow, painful or otherwise unusually cruel. This is a responsibility that must underpin each and every hunting expedition and, in my experience, for the vast majority of hunters it does.

The key to promoting a culture of responsible ethical and ‘humane’ hunting is a combination of education, peer-example, the diligent reporting of bad practice, and penalties for breaching the rules, whether they are the rules of the State, or a club’s rules.  There will always be a minority who will not want to abide by the rules. Responsible hunters and politicians can no more ensure 100% compliance with sensible, ethical hunting rules, than Greens can ensure that 100% of the people they encourage to attend a ‘peaceful and non-violent demonstrations’ will behave in a peaceful and non-violent manner.

Hunters cannot guarantee that hunting accidents will not occur, anymore than National Parks & Wildlife staff can guarantee that no camper will ever be hit by a falling limb, and no Ranger will ever be bitten by a snake in the course of his/her duties. Life, outside the bubble, is not safe and when the inevitable happens we must remember that fact, and try not to overreact.

I am both a bushwalker and a hunter, and I believe there is scope for all to enjoy our public lands for myriad purposes – walking, camping, horse and bike riding, 4-wheel driving and hunting. If a hunter breaks the rules, he/she should be prosecuted and not every hunter banned. We accept that there are certain risks associated with driving on Australian roads. When someone breaks the rules in such a way as to make the risks unacceptable – people who drink and drive for instance –  we prosecute the irresponsible party, we do not ban all driving on suburban streets. I believe that opposition to this cooperative philosophy of land use and social responsibility is often born of what is nothing more complex than cultural intolerance. Many people who call hunting excessively cruel and dangerous, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, do so simply because they have no interest in hunting themselves, and do not respect hunting as a cultural practice of many thousands of years. Yet, many anthropologists believe that the invention of the bow & arrow, as a reliable means of taking game, was as important an epoch in human development as the discovery of fire on demand, the invention of the wheel and the development of language.

For those of us who make bows and arrows, who enjoy the hunt and strive to use the game we take to the fullest, the preservation of the cultural aspect of what we do is our driving force. Some would have you believe that this is in fact the preservation and proliferation of a weapons culture, but that’s a shallow and deceptive argument. Many assaults and murders are committed by assailants wielding screwdrivers and hammers. Are carpenters and electricians responsible for surreptitiously fostering a weapons culture?  After all, hammers are very effective weapons, and every household harbours at least one. Sneaky antisocial carpenters!

I think the passage of cars on Australian roads is an astonishingly clear and graphic example of what can be accomplished in the spirit of tolerance and mutually beneficial cooperation. There are 15 million vehicles registered to drive on Australian roads, many of which will, at times, do so at speeds in excess of 100 kph. Yet all that separates me travelling south at 100 kph, from you travelling north at 100 kph, is a 4 inch wide white line painted on the road, a set of constantly evolving rules, and an appreciation for the fact that as we pass each-other, it is mutually beneficial to abide by those rules and remain on the correct side of that line. I think that by comparison with the risks associated with driving on the highway or in the suburbs, the risks associated with sharing the bush with a very limited number of licensed, responsible hunters, simply pales into insignificance.

I encourage opponents of hunting to redirect their efforts towards developing the rules, principles and systems that will allow us all to enjoy the use of our public lands. I also encourage Greens, preservationists and anti-hunting lobbyists to consider carefully the statements they make publicly; statements that are often highly offensive to law-abiding hunters, and disrespectful to a culture thousands of years in the making and one of the oldest traditional practices still practiced today.


Anyway, I'll get outaya way now...