SWAMPHEN USED FOR TARGET PRACTICE....OR MAYBE NOT

Well, here’s another example of animal welfare folk jumping to conclusions, because, let’s face it, it’s easier to do that than tax their limited, over emotional and oh-so opportunistic minds.

Swamp hen used for target practice

 VICIOUS CRUELTY: the swamp hen - shot at with an arrow - could not be caught by

WIRES volunteers on Wednesday (click the image above to view the article)

Every morning I awaken and thank the good Lord that such people are not employed as motor accident investigators. If they were, every accident in which someone is injured would result in a charge of reckless endangerment occasioning murder with malice aforethought. By the way, the operative word here is accident!

Many accidents in our day to day lives result in harm, and not all are the result of malice or recklessness. That’s why reasonable folks refer to them as ‘accidents’...or at least they used to, before rampant social opportunism born of the promise of compensation dollars made every accident an ‘incident’ that someone must be held responsible for. 

The article covers an event in which a Purple Swamphen has been discovered impaled with an arrow. The evidence for this claim lies in eyewitness accounts of the fowl’s condition after the event and at least one photograph. That is every bit of evidentiary fact we have on the whole sorry episode right there. From that point on, everything is theory, and it’s simplistic theory born either of profound ignorance or vested opportunism at that. 

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for the claim (captioned above) that the event was either an act of "vicious cruelty" or that the swamphen was "used for target practice". Unless the Bay Post has evidence it is not sharing with the reader, both statements are pure speculation based on a preferred scenario, and one can only speculate as to what might motivate that preference.

So let’s look at the ‘evidence’ – the photo and the post-event eyewitness accounts, or quotes – and see if there isn’t an alternative scenario that fits the facts at least as well as the “despicably cruel hunter” line the public is being force-fed.

The Purple Swampsen (Porphyrio porphyrio melanotus) clearly exhibits an arrow penetration wound. No evidence of ‘hunter’ involvement there, just the involvement of an arrow no-longer in flight.

The arrow appears to be a green 11/32nd aluminium number, fitted with plastic vanes (‘feathers’ for the uninitiated) and a field point, which is just about visible when the picture is enlarged. All this tells me, as someone with a practical knowledge of archery that transcends that acquired through watching Arrow or Brave on the tele, that no hunter was involved in the event and 'target practice' was unlikely to have been the motivation.

Field Points are not used for hunting in the field as one might be forgiven for assuming, but rather for field archery – shooting at targets, either paper, or three dimensional plastic animal facsimiles.

They are used specifically because they a) do minimal damage to a target, thus facilitating some sustained use, and b) because they are easily withdrawn from the target due to the head having no barbs or blades to take a grip. Should one attempt to hunt with a field point, one gets exactly the result outlined in the story, to wit, the target walks or runs away.

This rather defeats the point of hunting, which is to bring an animal down as quickly and as decisively as possible.

The arrow appears to be one of a class that is stocked by sports stores that want to stock a little basic archery gear, without providing too much variety. In fact it looks very much like an aluminium arrow known as the Australian Bushmaster, which is heavy and prone to bending and therefore not favoured by hunters. In fact I have heard them referred to as “31 inches of wretched desperation”, but that might have just been me?

While not popular among hunters, they are popular among parents who are kitting-out the aspiring young archer in the family, and among new archers who tend to think, very naively, that an arrow is an arrow. This misconception lasts only until an experienced archer explains the terrifyingly intimidating facts of arrow performance and the various associated technologies. This advice, above all things ‘archery’, is most responsible for the great many brand new bows that lie dust-covered and forgotten under beds today.

Arrows are hard...really, really, hard! Just to be clear, any archer foolhardy enough to haplessly confront himself with the physics of the “archer’s paradox” in action on YouTube, will quickly conclude that arrows are, in fact, bloody impossible! 

What else can we glean from the report and the photograph?

Well, the angle of penetration is interesting. It suggests that the ‘shot’ was taken from above the swamphen, as from the top of a bank or even from a tree.  Or, perhaps to those who do not work with WIRES and are therefore not obsessed with opportunistically blaming a hunter in order to add weight to the call to ban all bows, it suggests that the wound did not result from a targeted attack at all, but rather from an arrow falling from flight. And this brings me to the scenario I’d like to offer in explanation for the whole sorry affair.

I readily admit that it is pure speculation. I also admit to the grievous sin of entertaining the possibility that not every archer is John Rambo, smeared with mud, a quiver full of grenade-tipped arrows on his back, laying in wait in a rice paddy for choppers to land in some remote reach of the Songka River...but hey, no-body’s perfect.

A very responsible youth – let’s call him ‘Keane’ – purchased some basic gear from the local sports store. Upon returning home, which, given the area the swamphen was found in, may be set on acreage, Keane set up a target. The target was mounted very responsibly on a back-stop of stacked straw-bales. Behind the bales there lies a little swampy ground or perhaps even a dam, and a clear view across it to the property boundary some hundred metres or so away, and well out of range of the very light (as in weak) bow that the new archer will invariably be kitted-out with.

With the supervision of his doting mum and/or dad, Keane sets about a little target practice. One, or more likely many of the shots, goes over the top of the target, coming to rest in the swamp/dam behind. When Keane sets out to retrieve his shot arrows he finds he is one short, and presumes that it buried itself in the mud, got lost in the long grass, or went to the bottom of the dam.

In fact one of his arrows slipped clean over the target with sufficient momentum to skewer a hapless swamphen that just happened to be browsing the swampy grassland at precisely the wrong moment.

Of course the Bay Post article provides us with one more vital piece of information that I’ve not addressed ‘til now. The impaled swamphen is ambulatory. In fact it is so ambulatory that it successfully defied the best efforts of sundry committed and highly experience [sic] wildlife rescuers obsessed with its capture and treatment. Why, then, could the swamphen not have walked hundreds of metres, or even a kilometre from the scene of the accident, to the location where its plight came to the attention of the public? 

Why is it not possible that Keane, who is now slapped with the ‘VICIOUS CRUELTY’ tag, is completely unaware of the injury he inadvertently caused? 

To further put this event into perspective, not to mention question the Bay Post's motivation - even if it were a case of an overzealous, and, yes, irresponsible archer taking a potshot at a swamphen, to think it worthy of reporting as 'news' is nothing short of bizarre.

One wonders if the Post chronicles every case of a fisher casting gang-hooks too close to the local pelican and cormorant populations, resulting in the birds swallowing the hooks and dying slow and painful deaths  through infection and malnutrition? Must be a hundred such events each year on the waterways around Batemans Bay, yet no talk of viciously cruel fishers who target helpless pelicans.

Why is that I wonder? Recreational fishing the lifeblood of the area perhaps? Archery a soft target maybe, and the reporter doing her bit to support the local Greens who would have bows banned because they're 'weapons'?  Jeez, one could have a lot of fun with this wild speculation and baseless allegation business if one were willing to descend to those depths, couldn't one.

I am tired of the flamboyant accusations hurled at archers by people who are completely unfamiliar with archery; by people who clearly have a one track mind leading to an account of events they have absolutely no evidence to support, and a whole bunch of self-interested motivation in disseminating to a naive and gullible public.

And I am absolutely fed up with the irresponsible unprofessionalism of those journalists who would print so much speculative drivel and think it ‘news’.

There was a very loud bang in Tumut NSW last night. Everyone heard it....shook all the houses it did....and they have Muslims there! Must have been one of them Mussies testing a bomb, ‘ey?

Of course a little patient, not to say rational thought and research reveals that a mild tectonic event was the culprit, but my scenario is better....if you hate Muslims, and if you want to sell papers.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now....

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