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....

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