THE DEER HUNTERS

Saturday, June 14th, 2014
By Stuart Rintoul
The Sydney Morning Herald

In Victoria, environmentalists and hunters have formed an uneasy alliance to eradicate an introduced pest.

Taking aim: Steve Garlick believes hunting is part of the “cultural imperative of man”. Photo: Colin Page

As he steps through the tangled brush of Victoria's Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve, picking his way around mountain swamp gum and manna gum, and thickets of manuka, melaleuca, pink heath, wattle and banksia, Bob Anderson says there is no doubt in his mind that the wild deer that graze in these hills need to be shot.

Anderson, 79, is a retired primary school teacher and passionate conservationist. He has devoted decades of his life to the preservation of Victoria's rarest bird, the small, yellow-tufted helmeted honeyeater, which is being bred back from the verge of extinction in the Yellingbo reserve, in the Yarra Ranges east of Melbourne. Deer, he believes, threaten its survival. "I don't have any antagonism towards the animal," he says. "They're just in the wrong place. It's just an inappropriate animal in a very delicate part of the world."

Targets: deer culling has inspired an uneasy alliance
between hunters and environmentalists. Photo: Colin Page

He walks from tree to tree, pointing out examples of damage and "devastation" where deer have scraped the velvet off their antlers, debarked young trees, trampled underbrush habitat. "Wherever you look, they're buggered," he says.

Yellingbo is a five-square kilometre stretch of remnant bushland reserved for wildlife conservation – in particular the critically endangered helmeted honeyeater and the tiny Leadbeater's possum, both of which are official state emblems of Victoria.

In March, Parks Victoria announced that deer numbers had reached such profusion and posed such a threat to indigenous wildlife that 220 sambar and fallow deer would be culled in three reserves not far from Melbourne: 130 at Yellingbo, 70 in Sherbrooke Forest in the Dandenong Ranges, and 20 at Warramate Hills Nature Conservation Reserve, about 20 kilometres north of Yellingbo.

The first shots were fired at Yellingbo on a cold and foggy night on May 13. With only one sambar hind brought down on that night, it will be many months before the last shots are fired.

The cull brings shooters and environmentalists together into an uncommon alliance, with environmentalists the more zealous of the two groups. Not only do they welcome the cull, but they are pressing for deer to be declared pests that can be shot at any time in all states and territories. (At present, deer are declared pests in Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory, but game in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania). Meanwhile, hunters want deer numbers preserved at sustainable levels for continued shooting.

Among environmental groups, only Animal Liberation has raised its voice in protest, with the group's Felicity Andersen describing the cull as "really sad". She questions the extent of damage caused by deer and says where the problem is significant, sterilisation or relocation should be tried.

But at Yellingbo, Bob Anderson describes the cull as "a good start" and "a godsend". Asked whether he would like to see wild deer eradicated from the Australian landscape, he replies, "Yes, I certainly would." He says relocation of deer is too hard and sterilisation would take too long, "and we can't afford to wait".

Steve Meacher, Forest Campaigner for the Friends of Leadbeater's Possum, also supports the cull. He says the habitat at Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve "is already so highly compromised that any further threat is automatically significant". Meacher recognises that deer are beautiful animals, "but at Yellingbo they are in the wrong place". In the Dandenongs, too, the Friends of Sherbrooke Forest are agitating for deer to be culled to protect the habitat of lyrebirds on the banks of mountain streams.

At the Invasive Species Council, chief executive Andrew Cox says deer are the most significant emerging pest on the eastern seaboard, pushing into bush and farmland, affecting habitat and crops. In Victoria, there are estimated to be several hundred thousand wild deer, mostly sambar – "the dominant transplant", as Arthur Bentley termed them in his 1967 book An Introduction to the Deer of Australia.

In 2012-13, Victorian hunters killed more than 50,000 deer. The animals have bred and spread, but are listed contradictorily in wildlife laws as a protected game species under the Wildlife Act, and a "potentially threatening process" under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.

At the Victorian National Parks Association, parks protection spokesperson Phil Ingamells says the association is "very pleased" about the cull and believes that deer should "absolutely" be declared a feral species across the nation. Eighteen deer species were introduced into Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most perished, but six – chital, red, rusa, fallow, hog and the asiatic sambar – survived to form viable wild populations. Ingamells dismisses, with brusque indifference, the colonial forces that brought deer to this country. "Time to move on, I reckon," he says.

The man co-ordinating the cull at Yellingbo is Steve Garlick, who provides advice on the management of wild deer and the maintenance of deer as a game species to the Australian Deer Association. A business analyst with the National Australia Bank, Garlick says that hunting provides "a level of calmness" in his life. He grew up hunting rabbit and hare, duck, quail, wallaby and fallow deer with his father in Tasmania. They are his best memories.

He quotes American environmentalist Aldo Leopold, one of the fathers of the wildlife conservation movement: "Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land", which the Australian Deer Association has adopted as its motto.

Hunters "participate" in nature, Garlick says. "We really understand the lower-level being in the environment, because you're part of the environment as a hunter. You're not a bushwalker, who just walks along and sniffs a few flowers and looks at things. You are participating in nature.

"Throughout the history of time, men have chased animals," he continues. "I think it just goes back to the general nature of man. Hunting is part of the cultural imperative of man."

Garlick talks about the solitude of hunting deer, alone or with a gun dog. "It is you and the deer. It is a pretty spiritual thing. Seeing a deer is a special thing." He talks about the difficulty of hunting sambar, whose natural predator is the tiger. And he talks about the elation of a good kill, the rush of dopamine, the heavy task of butchering and then hauling out the harvested animal, and "a certain element of sadness that you have taken a life", although it is a sadness excused by purpose. "It is a powerful thing to be able to take a life and you've got to do it with a level of respect for the animal and do it for the right reasons."

He tells a story about falling asleep under a tree one day when he was hunting and how, when he awoke, he startled four deer that had been grazing nearby, including a good stag. He had no shot to take, but waking among deer made it a "memorable hunt".

Garlick regards the cull as necessary management, although he is not looking forward to culling at night by spotlight. "It is not what we would call fair-chase hunting," he says. He expects the deer will quickly "wise up" and then they will have to hunt them, but it will be a long, highly controlled process.

Among the hunters taking part in the cull, these are common sentiments. John Mahoney is a fish researcher with Victoria's Department of Environment and Primary Industries, which he says gives him some insight into the battle between exotic and native species. He grew up hunting with his father in the hills and rivers of Alexandria, north-east of Melbourne. He started targeting deer 25 years ago, and says hunting "has always been about providing for the plate".

"I always feel sad taking an animal's life," he says. "I think you should always feel sad. It is a gracious animal and I've got heaps of respect for them. Taking any life, you've got to feel sad. If you don't feel sad, then there's a line you've crossed somewhere."

He talks about the way deer will lay up warming themselves on the northern faces of hillsides on warm autumn days. "The people that I hunt with, they love the bush," he says. "They love the birdlife and the animals. It's about ... I don't know ... connecting, or being a part of it."

Laurie Rees, 60, is a retired printer who started hunting seriously 28 years ago – long enough for him to recognise the musky scent of deer from a long distance away. He first hunted with his father when he was a boy, and says the experience taught him "the basics of life", and a connection with nature.

Rees's preference, he says, is to hunt for days at a time in the most remote areas, pursuing deer and solitude. "It's quiet, it's beautiful," he says. He recalls an occasion last year when he shook with adrenalin as he filmed a stag in a hollow, knowing that he could take the shot, but preferring instead to shoot with his camera.

Rees has 10 trophies on the wall of his home and another 26 antlers that he has found in the bush. Often, when people see the antlers, they ask, "How can you?" He tells them about the history of deer and that killing your own venison is no different to taking a fishing trip for dinner.

He insists the cull is sensible management, but also does not disguise his distaste for shooting a deer frozen in a spotlight. "There is no satisfaction at all in taking an animal under the light. I just feel sorry for the animal. There is no skill in it, there is no challenge, no enjoyment."

Mark Freeman is a quietly spoken 46-year-old teacher, a father of five who teaches design and technology, art and religious education at the Catholic school he attended as a boy. He says he is approaching the cull with "a sense of responsibility", to help manage deer numbers so that they can remain "a wonderful resource".

In his teenage years, he says, he was so much of a "greenie" that he refused to fish because he hated the idea of hurting them. "I had this real love of nature and I still do, but my perspective has changed completely and now I understand that we fit into nature as well, as a top-level predator. You still have this love for nature and you still have this love for the bush and you still love the animal. There is sort of a sadness at the demise of a wonderful animal. But I can see that it's not wrong. It's no different from a lion eating a deer.

"People ... say, 'Let animals live naturally', but how do you think they are going to die? There is no palliative care for wild animals. It would be a horrible way to die, alone in the bush. This notion of Bambi and that sort of stuff is all wrong. Shooting them, in a way, is humane."

He recalls hunting up a mountain one morning for several hours, shooting a sambar deer, butchering it, carrying out what he could, then hiking back down the mountain and bringing out the hindquarters on treacherous ground in fading light. "It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life," he says. "But that is what hunting is about, that's what gives it that really deep-seated satisfaction. It is like a primeval urge, that nature of ours, that is seeded in us. And from a practical side, we get meat for the family."

He recalls another day when three red deer trotted past him not much more than an arm's length away. "It was just wonderful," he says. "It was really special to be so close to them. That was just a wonderful experience, and I didn't want to shoot them at all."

-ends-

THOUGHTS ON FUTURE STRATEGIES

There is a danger - clear and present - that as hunting in NSW state forests returns more or less to normal, we will become increasingly complacent about the future of our hunting traditions. Now is the time to set in place simple, ongoing strategies as insurance against the opportunist who would exploit the occasional sad or illegal incident to portray all hunters in a negative light.

Whether members or not, we expect a lot of our political parties and peak bodies, and I suppose that’s as it should be.  After all, they have been formed to protect and advance our interests. But there is a great deal that we can do as individuals to lay a firm foundation upon which our representative bodies might build a robust future for us all.

It is the nature of that firm foundation that we’ll explore a little here.

A great deal of our time and energy is spent trying to make the antis 'see reason'; in efforts to bring them around to our way of thinking. It is time and energy wasted! The antis' views are as firmly held as our own. They are the stuff of ‘core-values’ and changing an individual’s core values is all but impossible. That is not to say that we should stop responding to their claims and charges, especially those made in the public sphere. Rather, we need to exploit the opportunities the antis afford us, in order to direct our arguments toward the people whose opinions really matter – the general public.

While the antis may claim to speak for a majority within “the community”, the fact is they do not. That’s not to say that the majority of the community thinks hunting is culturally relevant, humane or effective in the control of feral animals.  It simply means the majority of the community doesn’t care to prioritise hunting as an issue worthy of having a strident opinion about. In the vernacular, hunting is not on the community’s radar and the key to preserving our rights, and even to expanding them, lies in ensuring that hunting fails to form a blip in the future too.

Politicians are moved to change or introduce legislation (laws) for two main reasons; either because it serves some principle of an ideology close to their hearts, or because community sentiment suggests there are votes to be won. Because a person’s personal philosophies determine their political persuasion, it is next to impossible to alter the way a politician approaches an issue – it’s the core values thing.  Nor is it very likely that in the near future hunters will make up a large enough percentage of the community that politicians might genuinely fear a revolt at the polls.

We can fool ourselves otherwise but politicians are not stupid and they know that if we have been voting for them until now, chances are it’s because of more than one of their policies appeals to us.

No matter how you look at it, trying to change a politician’s or an antis mind is a waste of time and energy.  All is not lost, however, because despite having focused too much on it to date, convincing or winning-over politicians and antis is not what’s important.  In fact our most important objective, at least in the short term, should be to prevent people from being won-over or convinced at all, by either ‘side’, and this is completely achievable.

We simply need to redirect our attention, to become more considered and moderate in our presentation, and make optimum use of the networks we already have in place. Best of all, we need no campaign funds to achieve our goal. We simply need persistence and consistency.

Our new campaign should be aimed at the public at large; the millions of men, women, norries and children who don’t hunt, and probably don’t care much who does, because they make up the majority of the general public.  Our campaign should not focus on selling our product. It doesn’t have to. It need only concentrate on demonstrating that the antis’ products are not as advertised. You see much of the ground the antis make on the battlefield is won not by what they have said, but by what they have strategically left unsaid.

Take for example the recent "Animals in the Wild" photo competition that the Greens launched in opposition to Narooma’s HuntFest.  All the associated propaganda stated that the Green’s competition had been launched “in opposition to” or “in order to highlight the pro-gun, pro-killing HuntFest”, which is true. But members of the public already susceptible to the Greens’ world view assume that this statement also means the Greens are anti-gun and anti-killing. They are not! The public extrapolates the conclusion that support for the Greens means no “innocent animals” will have to die, which simply isn’t so.

The Greens’ own policies on feral animals and introduced species call for their total annihilation. Their preferred methods include shooting by “professional hunters” and poisoning with 1080 poison baits, the latter being decried as inhumane by every animal welfare agency in Christendom.  And be it a bullet out of the riffle of a paid hunter (‘professional’) or an arrow out of the bow of a volunteer conservation hunter, in the final analysis the target will be no less dead.

Support for the Greens does not mean Bambi gets to frolic free and unmolested forevermore. It means all the Bambies get poisoned with 1080. Even worse, the death of all these animals will be absolutely in vain because if the Greens have their way all the wholesome free-range, organic meat will be left in the field to rot. Furthermore, in the case of 1080 contaminated carcasses, they may well result in collateral victims among the native animal populations which feed on carrion, not to mention the risk of contamination to the water-supply.

Telling the public what the Greens and the antis are not telling them may be all we need to do to ensure the future of our activities.  A T-shirt campaign selling Greens policies may be one approach: 

• “The Greens - Committed to the eradication of Australia’s 7 million red foxes”

• “The Greens – dedicated to the shooting and baiting of all deer in our National Parks”

• “Vote Greens for the eradication of all cats in the wild”

• "The Greens say yes to 1080 for control of pest animals"
  
  

Each of these statements is true, but the Greens don’t want the public to know that because they thrive on the misconception that a vote for the Greens means safety for all god’s creatures.

They cannot deny the truth of the statement above, because the facts are enshrined in Greens’ policy.  But if we promote them, they will be called upon to justify their pro-gun, pro-poison, pro-biological warfare, pro-killing policy position and once the truth is out, “the community” will simply decide that whether it’s hunters or the Greens who do the killing it's really a matter of six of one, a half-dozen of the other.

Social media such as Twitter and Instagram also offer opportunities for promoting Greens’ policies, always accurately and courteously of course. The objective is to promote the truth, and to do this efficiently we must do it without rancour or sarcasm. We must stick to the facts and allowing the facts to speak for themselves.  It would also be wise not to use accounts under names such as Aussiehunter or Pigslayer that might suggest that there is insincerity in the messages you're promoting.

Another valuable means of getting the message out is via written responses to letters or opinion pieces appearing in your local papers. I say written responses because they’re more likely to be published in a future edition of the paper than online comments, which are unlikely to be seen by many people in your community, tending rather to be seen only by those who have a special interest in the topic.  The mission is to put the facts before the people who don’t really want to know them, and the letters section of the local paper is a very popular read with a very wide audience.

No anti-hunting letter to the editor or opinion piece should be permitted to stand unchallenged.  But the manner of the challenge is very important. As I mentioned above, trying to win-over the public is futile, and so is trying to suggest that hunting is not ‘cruel’, which is invariably the emotive claim.  Rather, we should take a little time to explain that in the wild all death is cruel and this is a rule for which there are no exceptions. The perception that hunters mete-out a particularly cruel death is based on the average city-dwellers’ only experience of the natural world i.e. that which can be observed in the suburban garden, with its dogs, cats, guineapigs and goldfish.

I’ve gone into the cruelty furphy in detail in the "Gaping wound in the cruelty argument" so I’ll not address it in detail again here. Suffice to say that we should make an effort to logically and respectfully redress misconceptions about cruelty. We will not convert those who are committed to their hatred of hunters and hunting, but we may be successful in preventing the dedicated fence-sitter falling off on the antis’ side and that’s all we really need to do.

Another misconception is the belief that animals are noble hunters, and human-beings completely ignoble hunters. We’ve all heard the bleat – “If you were serious about hunting you’d be fair about it, and use only your bare hands” or “When animals have guns, then hunting will be fair!”  This line of thinking is fatally flawed, and again, pointing out exactly how may not win us any supporters, but it will certainly stop people automatically accepting the “nature is fair” argument.

The fact is all hunters exploit their advantages over their prey. If this were not so, the big cats would only prey on other animals of immense weight, speed and strength, with huge crushing jaws and teeth and claws 8cms long. In fact the ‘noble’ lion feeds on animals with very poor defences. Many of their prey have no teeth at all and of these they seek out the marginalised, the age-frail, the disabled and the newborn of the herd.

Nature is absolutely blind to suffering, as is evidenced by such things as the many billions of chicks that perish each year because their parents lay their eggs too late in the season, or the many millions of animals that do not survive annual migrations, dying slowly or hunger and/or thirst.

Nature has no regard for fair play or humaneness.  The notion that animals are nobler than their human counterparts is the stuff of romanticism born of pure ignorance.  One species dominates another by means of its superior physical resources or its ingenuity. Humans are no different in this regard. 

As responsible hunters we are obliged only to strive to ensure that the death we mete-out is no more inhumane than the inevitably inhumane demise  "Mother Nature" has in store for all her children.

Once again, bursting the public’s bubble might not win us any supporters, but it will certainly make people think twice before pitching their tents in Camp Warm-Fuzzy.

I cannot stress enough the importance of NOT looking or sounding the part. For years we have been quite successfully painted as hillbillies straight off the set of Deliverance....or worse, those bastions of intellect and good taste, Swamp People and Turtle Man.  While it should not matter how we speak or dress, we know that in the real world first impressions count. Who among us has not watched footage of forest protestors and thought to himself, “If only they’d comb their hair, wash occasionally, maybe throw an iron over that shirt and refrain from using ‘fuck’ as a comma, perhaps someone might actually listen to them?” Presentation matters and what matters most about presentation is civility and moderation.

It is possible to be courteous without being insipid, just as it is possible to be scathing without being rude or abusive, and knowing the difference is vitally important. For example, calling your adversary "a liar" is likely to make you appear to be confrontational or even abusive, while asking why he or she appears intent on deceiving the public, is not. 

The epithet “greenie” has also lost relevance as more and more responsible hunters count themselves as greenies, myself among them.  A whole new conservative, more moderate and perfectly reasonable class of greenie is emerging in vast numbers and it’s probably not a good idea to set out to offend them by tarring them with the same brush that one might quite reasonably use to paint The Greens.

Greenies grow evermore dissatisfied with the performance of the party and its appointed spokespersons, and many vote Greens today only for want of an environmentally focused alternative. It serves no purpose to offend these people. Rather we should concentrate our efforts on our common source of disappointment and frustration, the out of touch, the unreasonable and increasingly unaccountable party called The Greens.

If the strategies outlined above are explored and applied unremittingly they have the benefit of being difficult to counter. How do they complain about members of the public promoting their party’s policies? How do they deny facts that are enshrined in party policy? How do they complain about being treated with courtesy? How do they explain their silence when challenged to refute the seldom heard facts we will make known?

The success of this strategy can be seen to some extent in the ongoing HuntFest saga. HuntFest’s organisers have consistently met the immoderate accusations and illogical statements of the anti-HuntFest lobby-group ‘SAFE’ and its sponsors The Greens, with facts presented in a courteous yet uncompromising manner.  As a result the event has been constantly in the press, affording it free advertising of inestimable value.  Because HuntFest’s organisers and supporters have stuck strictly and un-emotively to the facts, those facts have been extremely difficult, if not impossible to refute.

Anti-HuntFest sentiment and defence of the event have developed into the equivalent of a serial in the Letters to the Editor section of the local papers. This has been good for both the papers’ advertisers and for HuntFest. The often misleading claims of SAFE and the Greens have been soundly refuted and comprehensively discredited. The end result has been a shift in the community’s perception of the event. While the folks of the Eurobodalla may not be pro-shooting or pro-hunting, they certainly don’t see what all the fuss is about re HuntFest. The event is slowly establishing a reputation for responsible management, and its economic value to the community becomes more evident with the passage of time.

Joe, Jane and Norrie Citizen are not against the responsible hunting of feral animals.  The public recognises that the hunting tradition is part of Australian culture reaching back at least 40,000 years, and the public sees no reason why recognition of hunting’s cultural significance should be restricted only to Aboriginal Australians, whose rights, incidentally, are also subject to covert undermining by The Greens.

This is why I say we need not aim to win-over the public. We need only strive to ensure that the Greens do not!

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now....

If you would like to receive notifications when new posts are uploaded to the Hunters' Stand, send your name and email address to thehunterstand@gmail.com  This service will not include notification of new comments. All information provided will be treated with the utmost confidentiality and discretion.

WHY BOTHER WITH FACTS WHEN YOU CAN BE 'SAFE'

As HuntFest nears, so too the activities of its detractors become darker.

HuntFest’s organisers have long been plagued by the most offensive anonymous late night phone calls wishing all manner of violence upon them. The most recent caller advised HuntFest organiser, Mr Dan Field, that he was the most “hated man in the entire Eurobodalla Shire.” The caller, a woman, went on to compare Dan and all hunters, with child molesters, assuring him that those who oppose HuntFest will not rest until he, and all others like him, "are driven from the community." 

And of course because I have dared to speak out about the deception associated with anti-HuntFest sentiment and activity, I too have been targeted. Offensive signs have been hung on my front fence, just metres from a school bus-stop. My car has been keyed in the area surrounding a HuntFest sticker, and each time a letter to the Editor appears in the local papers, I’m treated to a predictable influx of hate calls, often expressing the callers’ desire to see me shot through the head, along with my children of course, before they can pass-on the evils of hunting I condone and visit upon an 'innocent' animal kingdom.

Facebook is host to many sites that exist solely to celebrate hunting accidents. Such sites allow animal rights campaigners to bask in the warm fuzzy glow derived from news of serious injury to men, women and even children. Who can forget the young ‘lady’ who expressed her wish to see rusty saws inserted in the orifices of a hunter’s children so they could be torn out while the children were filmed being clubbed to death, “so I can watch and laugh all the way through!”, she said.

Closer to home there was the anti-HuntFest facebook community that featured the photograph of a HuntFest organiser as the focus of community scorn. Dan Field’s photograph was permitted to host comments suggesting that he looked like a paedophile. And of course they trotted out a golden oldie, suggesting that his big gun was an indication of a small penis.

Even after Dan's teenage daughters discovered the page and begged its administrators to remove the childish and offensive snipes about their dad, a high-profile member of the local chapter of the Greens sought to justify the comments on the grounds of freedom of speech about a very emotive issue. 

The comments, and indeed the cause page itself, were finally removed but only after a concerted effort by hunters who stood in support of Dan's daughters in their aguish and public humiliation at the hands of the community’s anti-HuntFest lobby.

It was no doubt coincidental that on the same night that the anti-HuntFest facebook page was pulled down, the Eurobodalla Greens facebook presence also went missing. It has been suggested this was done in an effort to ensure that no link between the two sites could ever be established. It is fortuitous then, that both sites were saved as stand-alone files before they went AWOL.

The hatred and bile expressed against hunters by “more enlightened people”, both locally and in the wider community, is extraordinary, to the point where it becomes very clear why such people hate hunting and guns in particular. It’s because they are deeply concerned that guns might fall into the hands of angry, intolerant and hateful people just like themselves!

And why does all this divisive animus suddenly exist in the once sleepy little community of Narooma? It’s because a very small minority of people hate hunting, guns and people who do not feel about them as they do.

Such people speak about the evils of “an emerging hunting culture” in NSW and the development of a US-style guns culture in Australia. They express their concerns that HuntFest will attract hunters to the Eurobodalla and the Bega Valley. They manipulate the community through the propagation of emotive terminology constructed to create anxiety. They will even brazenly admit that supplying the community with facts is the least of their concerns.

Take the “Stop Arms Fairs in Eurobodalla” (SAFE) website for example (here). Right at the bottom of the home page, in ant-print one quarter the size of the other text on the page, the following advice appears:

“It is hard to know what is 'absolute truth'. For this reason, we quote our sources.” 

This statement sums up the lengths local anti-hunting campaigners will go to in order to deceive the community. Forget the facts, we'll report rumour as fact, just so long as it furthers our agenda.

One can only guess at the cost to ratepayers so far, of the constant stream of complaints about HuntFest which Council continues to receive from a tiny minority of fanatical Eurobodalla residents, for whom facts are not so important. One can only speculate as to the amount and nature of important Council business that has been delayed as the result of vexatious complaints about the size of HuntFest signs and whether or not a not-for-profit community group has the right to hold a community event in a community facility.

 
Their latest bleat is “community consultation”. There has not been enough of it, claims SAFE and the NPA. This is both a lie and a deception perpetrated against their fellow citizens. There has in fact been a great deal of community consultation, all of it engaged in without concern for the principles of objective consultative processes.

SAFE, the NPA and the Greens have blitzed Eurobodalla mailboxes with their bias brand of ‘consultation’, aimed at promoting outrage about HuntFest in an effort to rally support to their cause. They failed, miserably, despite running complementary media campaigns via email, Facebook, via radio (ABC South East has been particularly sympathetic to their cause) and in the local papers. Their bias self-serving and often offensive consultation revealed that the overwhelming majority of their fellow citizens do not share SAFE’s, the NPA’s or the Greens’ hatred of hunting nor their zealous opposition to responsible weapons ownership.

Now SAFE and the Greens are crying foul, claiming there has been no community consultation, and in so doing they conspire to spring yet another unethical trap on the community.

You see consultation is only a valid tool when those engaging in it are willing to abide by the outcome of an ethical, unbiased process.  Neither SAFE or the Greens or even the NPA for that matter, can enter into such a process in a spirit of cooperation with Council and goodwill toward the community’s wishes. They harbour a deep, all-abiding and zealous hatred of hunting, bows and firearms that will permit them to accept no outcome that doesn’t support their philosophy and satisfy their demands.

In fact, it is my view that no such consultation could be undertaken in the first place, simply because identifying its terms of reference would require a level of commitment to an unbiased process that SAFE, the NPA and the Greens are utterly incapable of.

Any consultation entered into on the topic of HuntFest can only serve to waste huge amounts of ratepayers’ money while occupying Council staff in a pointless process for which the outcome is already known i.e. while the vast majority of the Eurobodalla’s population does not object to HuntFest, they do object to being played for fools by SAFE, the NPA and the Greens.

SAFE’s latest poster-bombing of the local area is a prime example. Said poster, depicting Shooters & Fishers MP Robert Borsak looming over a trophy elephant, bears the caption, “Is this what you want for the Eurobodalla?” 

Yep, if HuntFest goes ahead the Eurobodalla’s remaining wild elephant population won’t stand a chance!

There is no “emerging” hunting or guns culture in NSW, the Eurobodalla or the Bega Valley.  The hunting culture in NSW and indeed the rest of Australia can be traced back at least 40,000 years. The Bega Valley and the Eurobodalla share a very strong and proud hunting culture among non-Aboriginal people too, extending back to settlement.

People in the Bega Valley and the Eurobodalla have always had guns. They have always hunted. In fact were it not for the good ol’ dependable .22 riffle that rested atop dad's wardrobe for many decades before Port Arthur, tens of thousands  of Australian families would have perished during the Great Depression, when all that stood between life and death was the meat of the humble bunny and the modest income derived from the sale of pelts to the felt trade.

Hunting has always been a part of Australian culture. If anything is “emerging” it is the hatred associated with the rhetoric and activities of the anti-hunting campaigner. That hate runs deep, it is vindictive, unwholesome and extremely  troubling.

The use of deliberately manipulative, sensational terminology is a hallmark of the anti-hunting, anti-HuntFest strategy. HuntFest isn’t an outdoors expo with some guns and bows on display, oh no. It’s an ARMS FAIR! 

Hunters can’t possibly engage in their activities as a legitimate cultural pursuit with conservation benefits, heaven forfend. They hunt for the THRILL OF THE KILL! 

In this era which extols the benefits and ethics of free-range organic harvest, the hunters’ only motivation lies in CRUELTY AND CARNAGE! 

And of course there’s my favourite generalisation, everyone who strives to kill an animal illegally is a hunter. Every other country draws the distinction between ethical legal hunting activities and the illegal, unethical activities of the poacher, but not in Australia, and certainly not SAFE, the NPA or the Greens. If one owns a bow or a gun; if one is a hunter, one is beneath contempt and has only mayhem in mind.

As a pro-hunting member of the public I have often been challenged to put myself in the shoes of the victims of the “Port Arthur massacre”. I usually decline to do so because milking another’s tragedy for political advantage seems rather tasteless, however, I am willing to share my views about another event.

Many years ago, a 10 year-old boy was violently assaulted, raped and shot by a serial killer – Rodney Francis Cameron – known as the “lonely hearts killer”.  So far as he is aware, he is the only survivor of Cameron’s attentions. In his teens, the boy moved with his family to the Bega Valley, where he has lived ever since. 

Despite having been the victim of fairly extreme violence, he does not visit the sins of one psychopath on the blameless men and women of his community who hunt and use arms responsibly. 

He does not own guns, but nor does he blame the availability of guns for what happened to him.

He does not use his personal circumstances to justify deceptive campaigns that peddle intolerance and nurture hatred.

He does not milk human tragedy to foster a climate of fear and loathing that serves a political agenda.

And having said all that, he’s gonna get outaya way now....    

If you would like to receive notifications when new posts are uploaded to the Hunters' Stand, send your name and email address to thehunterstand@gmail.com  This service will not include notification of new comments. All information provided will be treated with the utmost confidentiality and discretion.