DEER AND THE NEW BIO-DIVERSITY

On January 22nd the Greens launched a policy, that, if successful, will see deer reclassified as a pest species.  At present in NSW, deer are classified as game animals and, as a result, enjoy certain ‘privileges’ denied other introduce species. These privileges aim to sustain deer populations for the purpose of recreational hunting e.g. seasons apply dependent on species and it is necessary for hunters to hold a Game Licence to hunt deer, whether on private or public lands (State Forests). 

The Fallow deer

As a hunter and amateur ecologist, my first reaction to news of the Greens’ proposal was mixed. I like to hunt deer; they present the greatest challenge amongst Australia’s relatively limited legal quarry and their flesh, when compared to other introduced species, is undeniably superior.

I also use deer by-products in a number of traditional craft endeavours – sinew, antler and even bone – some of which may be obtained from other introduced species, though all lacking certain attributes that are unique to deer.

On the other-hand, deer are undeniably an introduced species and all introduced species have some impact on the land. That impact is invariably considered detrimental to the ecology of a continent, the geographical isolation of which over millions of years resulted in a great many, very highly specialised inhabitants that have learned to eek-out a living in Australia’s harsh and often marginal environs.

This being the case we should surely strive to wipe them out, as we do species such as foxes, pigs, goats, feral cats and others that enjoy no special privileges to speak of under the law? 

You can see my dilemma and as a result, I challenged myself to think about the impact of deer in the landscape, objectively and from a ‘big picture’ perspective. What follows are a few thoughts on the subject, about which I would be very interested to know the readers’ opinions.

The first issue that comes to mind is the impact of deer on agriculture, mainly, I admit, because that was the perspective the media and the Greens were pushing with the most vigour to justify the eradication of deer. Yes, eradication, because it is to facilitate their total eradication that the change to the way we view and ultimately manage deer has been proposed.

NSW lists the damage caused by deer as a “key threatening process” and Victoria has listed Sambar impacts as a threatening process too. Yet both states, as well as Tasmania, protect deer as a hunting resource.

The most common impact cited is the deer’s competition with sheep and cattle for grazing land. Their impact on fencing is also high on the list of complaints, as is the perceived threat they pose to Australia’s bio-security, should we ever experience an outbreak of something like the dreaded Foot & Mouth disease. 

I must confess that I would not have thought deer competed for grazing land as much as, say, kangaroos and wallabies and while unlike deer both are native to Australia, kangaroos and wallabies have benefited greatly from our various efforts to drought-proof the land with dams and irrigation and so on. 

As a result, the common macropods are said to enjoy greater numbers today than at any other time in Australia’s history. It also bears remembering that sheep and cattle are themselves introduced, if not feral species. Surely then, the agricultural arguments against deer are not ecological, but rather a simple case of economic favouritism.

I believe the impact of deer on fences is also a somewhat opportunistic justification, unless the concern is that they add to fencing damage already wrought by roos and wombats. The question is surely whether they present a singular problem that cannot be countered in some clever manner, or whether it may be possible to offer incentives to farmers that would mitigate additional pressure from deer populations. Perhaps the answers lie in the US, where deer exist in great numbers alongside stock?

In the 35 years I've lived in the bush, I've heard farmers complain bitterly and with obvious justification, about the damage done to fences by kangaroos and I have certainly seen first-hand and up-close the devastating impact wombats have on fencing and farm structures, including homes, yet I cannot see the Greens pushing legislation to declare open season on Wally and Skip. In fact the Greens are (in)famous for their opposition to native animal culls in just about all circumstances. 

The threat deer may pose to our bio-security is not something I’m equipped to ponder in much depth, but I would have thought that in a country seething with pigs, goats, buffalo, banteng, feral cattle and horses; a country that boasts the world’s largest wild camel population estimated at something like 1.2 million head, deer represent the least of our troubles.

The Red deer stag

It seems to me the eradication of pest species is too often predicated on the notion that if we just get rid of them all, Australia will return to the Shangri-la it must once have been. But is that the case?  Perhaps the whole “it’s not 'native' so we must wipe it out” attitude needs to be reassessed for the naive philosophy it surely is?

Australia will never again be the continent it was prior to European settlement, unless of course European settlement itself is declared a pest, and I've no doubt there are those who’d applaud such a move. However, we are here and here to stay and our presence has changed the continent in many ways, in a very short time. Ways I believe can never be undone.  

We have cleared land, dammed rivers, drained swamps, created lakes where none existed to irrigate huge tracts of land that was once desert. We have felled native forests here and planted new forests of exotic timber there and we have altered the flow of once mighty rivers, destroying native river and wetland ecologies in the process. We have even replaced native fishes with new species, some intentionally, others not. And yes, we have introduced species that have precipitated a rate of extinction hitherto unsurpassed in the continent’s long history.

My point is this, for as long as we inhabit this continent and for as long as our population grows, no amount of eradicating so-called pest species will ever return Australia to the pristine system it once was. That Australia, free of rats, cane toads, rabbits, foxes, hare, sparrows, bulbuls, starlings, toads, European wasps, fire-ants, the Crown of Thorns starfish  and innumerable other illegal aliens, is gone forever! 

Perhaps, then, it is time to consider the place some of our "new natives" occupy and the roles they play in a changing Australian landscape? Some species will change that landscape less than others, but change it they have and continue to change it they all will. 

We can kid ourselves into believing it’s possible to turn the clock back and no doubt we’ll continue to toss huge amounts of money and resources into that forlorn objective, but perhaps deer eradication should not be identified as yet another major front in a war that may never be won.

Of all the introduced species, deer are perhaps the most useful. They are certainly one of the most prestigious and sought-after and it seems to me there is some as yet insufficiently tapped potential to exploit their numbers for economic, culinary and even cultural benefits. 

The Greens, with their dogmatic opposition to all forms of hunting, stand against all of these opportunities; hence their preferred strategy for the control of non-endemic species is total annihilation. 

Of course I would add to the list of exploitable resources, a number of native species such as the plentiful types of kangaroos and wallabies. Although natives, in terms of sheer numbers and pressure on the land, farming and agriculture, in some locations they are so plentiful that they easily meet the general criteria for 'pest' classification and could therefore be harvested with little or no detrimental effect. 

It is illegal to hunt all native mammalian sources of meat in Australia; in itself a rather unique state of affairs. Nowhere else in the world, so far as I'm aware, is it illegal to harvest plentiful native mammalian species from the wild in a sustainable manner.  In this environment, deer represent a significant public resource, whether people choose to avail themselves of it or not and I believe the capacity for every citizen to sustain him/herself through the responsible harvest of plentiful wild food sources should be a basic human right. At this point in time, that right is reserved only for those of aboriginal decent.

The more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that the Greens’ call to reclassify deer is based on a combination of their general disdain for all that is not endemic and their drive to find a soft target with the potential to return an ego-boosting victory to a moribund party desperately seeking relevance. Deer numbers are still relatively small and their herds comparatively isolated. Thus while it may not be possible to wipe-out other species that pose far greater threats, the Greens might at least succeed in wiping out deer, if only out of spite. 

Fallow deer doe with newborn fawn

The Greens' attempt to rob deer of their game status, thus facilitating their total eradication, has animal welfare implications I'm certain they'd rather the public was not made aware of.

The main benefit of game status is the identification and management of hunting seasons aimed at ensuring that the quarry is not hunted during its breeding season. Remove that status and hunters, cullers, exterminators, whatever the case, will be at liberty to kill deer while carrying or nursing their fawns.

Surely I cannot be the only person who thinks this a curious objective for the Greens, given their oft espoused animal welfare concerns?

I, for one, would rather see the huge amount of additional money that will inevitably accompany the changed status of deer, ploughed into something more practical such as the development of species specific viruses to control feral cats, foxes or rats, all introduced species and all of them with a proven extinction track-record that deer simply cannot boast.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

For those wishing to leave comments under their own names (go-orn, I dares ya!), please select the 'Name/URL' option from the drop down menu beneath the comments section below. You do not need to enter a URL.

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.

S.A.F.E’S EACH-WAY BET ON COMMUNITY CONSULTATION

Having failed utterly in their bid to have the NSW Police Minister veto HuntFest’s event licence on the strength of a 900-signature petition, S.A.F.E is now crying about everyone’s failure to see reason...save their own of course.

See "Opposition Ignored", letters to the Editor, Bega District News (and doubtless elsewhere) January 16th, 2015.
The haters are off to a whining start in 2015!  

For those unfamiliar with S.A.F.E, it's a political *ginger group planted and nourished by the Greens. It's objective, which its members prosecute with Jihadist zeal, is to shut-down a south coast NSW hunting and outdoors expo on the grounds that, if not stopped immediately, it will increase the rate of domestic violence, cause widespread carnage among native wildlife populations, corrupt rural youth, peel the paint from the walls of the community centre in which it is held, increase carbon emissions, raise sea-levels, attract rogue comets  and quite probably precipitate a level of curtain fading hitherto unprecedented in the small seaside township of Narooma.

Perhaps the saddest thing about the entire HuntFest saga lies in the fact that the manifold deceptions perpetrated by Ms Cruttenden and her co-conspirators from S.A.F.E seem likely to continue.

To suggest it was wrong for Council to consider 'submissions' (emails of support mainly) from stakeholders outside the Eurobodalla's immediate ratepayer-base, demonstrates a level of hypocrisy of truly phenomenal proportions.

Was it not S.A.F.E that delivered the infamous Intergalactic Petition to Council, demanding that it should determine the outcome of deliberations about amendments to HuntFest's event licence, on the basis that it contained 40,000 signatures (the overwhelming majority of which belonged to non-residents of Australia) of potential international tourists who would never visit Narooma because of HuntFest?

If Council should be swayed by the statements of people who will not visit Narooma, ostensibly because of HuntFest, why is it wrong to consider the input of people who will visit because of HuntFest?

They're now whining because the Minister rejected their latest 900 signature petition. 900 signatures from a population in excess of 30,000 is a miserable effort in anyone's estimation. It would no-doubt be possible to find even more people in the Eurobodalla willing to sign a petition against building a Mosque in Narooma, gay marriage or asylum-seeker residency in the shire. I suspect you could round up thousands to sign a "Send all the Muslims home" petition right about now.

So you told the Minister 900 haters live in the district? I doubt somehow that was a surprise.

The single most relevant fact in the whole question of how much support S.A.F.E and the GREENS have amongst local people as they strive to sabotage the initiative of a small local community not-for-profit, which aims to bring people and money to the region in the off-season, is this:

Not a single protester has ever attended HuntFest. Not one, ever!

Police have pulled resources from the rest of the region based on claims of widespread community opposition and anger, potentially disadvantaging other communities and perhaps leaving our roads insufficiently protected from drink drivers and the like during the June long weekend, all because S.A.F.E and the Greens have claimed more than two-thirds of the population is outraged and opposed to the event, thus intimating hordes of angry protesters should be expected.

But not a single placard or march-past, nor even so much as a mildly miffed seagull spitting curses and making obscene wing gestures for the promise of free chips has ever protested HuntFest. Even calls for the public to paper nearby fences with anti-HuntFest messages have resulted in a grand total of zip support.

As for the latest petition, I can hazard a guess as to why it was possible to harvest 900 signatures. It's the same reason folks say yes to those people who go door-to-door selling cheap electricity, even signing contracts when asked, only to cancel the whole thing by phone during the cooling-off period.

It's because some folks don't like to say no when confronted by a zealot with a strange glint in his eye and cause to flog!

And thank the gods S.A.F.E has not been successful, for given a 'win' people such as they are seldom satisfied. 

That cruel sport of game fishing would have been next I suspect, followed no-doubt by whale watching for its potential to disturb fragile migratory paths.

Groups of haters do not simply dissolve when they accomplish their mission. Power over one's community is a drug far too seductive to allow that.

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

Author's note: The term *ginger-group is commonly used to describe a small unit of political activists who have a very narrow brief or focus. The term denotes great energy or liveliness and it's etymology is quite fascinating. 

It is derived from the all but forgotten practice of 'feaguing', wherein a horse-trader would insert a piece of freshly peeled ginger, or sometimes it is said, a live eel, into a horse's fundament before showing it to a potential buyer, to make the horse prance in a lively manner and hold its tail erect.

Would me!

For those wishing to leave comments under their own names (go-orn, I dares ya!), please select the 'Name/URL' option from the drop down menu beneath the comments section below. You do not need to enter a URL.

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.

FRED NILE AND THE INSPIRATION-PORN TRADE

I've just witnessed yet another rabid report on the tele featuring the evil Fred Nile and his mean-spirited refusal to recognise the bravery of the Lindt siege victims. While certain of his comments may have incensed some, Fred does raise an interesting philosophical question, at least for moi.

First let me say that I don’t know Fred. I have never met him, though I have seen him from time to time while making my way through the corridors of Parliament House. I don’t always agree with Fred's staunchly conservative view of the world, though I do agree a surprising amount of the time, as I suspect does an equally surprising percentage of the Australian community.

That said I was shocked by reports of some of the things Fred is quoted as saying with regard to the actions, or more precisely the apparent inactions of some of the Lindt siege victims. However, I have some small experience of dealing with a media that’s looking for a head to pike and I know from personal experience just how easy it is to walk headlong and hapless into the “are you still beating your wife” style of interrogation Fred has recently found himself facing from journalists in search of that Holy Grail of journalism, the self-perpetuating headline.

Journalism 101: when driving a hate campaign always choose a
picture guaranteed to nourish the public's disdain of your victim

For these reasons I am not as cynical as some when it comes to Fred’s claim that it was nothing more than a linguistic slip of the tongue that caused him to suggest the only man in the Lindt cafe that demonstrated any bravery on that fateful day was the man with the gun. I can accept that it was nothing more than a clumsy faux pas; that what he'd meant to say was “the only man in the Lindt cafe that demonstrated any bravery that day was the man who wrestled with the gun”, meaning cafe manager Tori Johnson.

In my opinion this is a very minor and entirely reasonable concession to offer Fred, under the circumstances.

All that aside, we are still left with the question of whether or not the victims of the siege qualify for bravery awards, and in fact whether it is legitimate to associate victim-hood and mere survival with bravery at all?

Surely there is no bravery intrinsic to falling victim to some violent act or tragic circumstance? Under certain conditions it is possible to demonstrate bravery in one's actions as a result of, or even after such an event, but is there anything genuinely brave involved in being at the wrong place at the wrong time and passively awaiting rescue?

Is it brave, for instance, to be knocked down by a hit & run driver and being left laying on the road?

Should the victims and survivors of the Port Arthur massacre be nominated for bravery awards? If so and given it was an outdoors event, how might we go about identifying the geographical boundaries within which people who ducked for cover will qualify as having acted bravely...everyone technically within range of the gunman’s rifle perhaps? Couldn't be more than a few thousand people, surely?

Is it an act of bravery to jump up and down on a beach calling for help while someone drowns in the surf?

For that matter, is it a genuine act of bravery for a child to call an ambulance to his home where his mother lays dying on the floor after a stroke? It is often hailed as bravery by the media, but is doing what one is taught to do in an emergency an act of bravery?

To me at least, bravery and heroism tend to go hand in hand and both generally involve some element of self-sacrifice.  It's bad enough that today's kids worship football players as heroes without the warm-fuzzy set elevating people who flee a crisis in terror to those same dizzying heights of mediocrity.

It is important to objectively consider why sportspersons are so often hailed as heroes these days and when one does, one finds it’s not so much for what they have done that we worship them and hold them up as heroic role models, but rather for what they have not done e.g. not turned to drugs or alcohol as a result of their new-found wealth and privilege, not engaged in drunken hotel romps and associated sexual assault activities, not being filmed in the act of giving a competitor a sly elbow to the face will make you a hero too, as will not turning to a life of crime despite being raised in Redfern.

I think what Fred was trying to say was that which the media now insists we recognise as ‘bravery’ the Australian people once considered to be nothing more that their ‘duty’ and in an era when it seems all sense of duty is being stripped from the Aussie ethos; an era where no-one does anything unless there’s something clear and immediate in it for them, it is hardly surprising we might now consider our basic human duties to be noteworthy.

In a recent media release, NSW Greens MLC Dr. John Kaye said Fred's failure to recognise the bravery of the Lindt siege victims amounts to a failure to recognise their suffering and the suffering of their families for years to come. I say the victims of the siege had a duty to survive in order to spare their families the years of anguish Dr. Kaye speaks of and it was this sense of duty, along with the innate human instinct for self-preservation that likely sustained them and perhaps even motivated them to flee the scene at their earliest opportunity.

Duty is something sadly missing in today's society and rebranding it ‘bravery’ in an attempt to manufacture inspiration-porn to nourish a society increasingly driven by a “it’s not my problem” approach to crises seems a strikingly shallow motivational stratagem.

If the powers that be do decide to bestow bravery awards on the survivors of the Lindt siege, where will it all end and what of the equity issues?

For instance, what of the bravery shown by the many children who 'survived' various abuses at the hands of the Christian Brothers over the years, or the thousands of Aboriginal children who 'survived' Australia’s assimilation policies, just to name a few we might want to consider while minting all those shiny medals?

Meanwhile, should it transpire in the fullness of time that reports of Tori Johnson’s bravery and heroism are well founded, I’d be surprised if Fred Nile’s wasn't among the very first nominations for Tori's recognition to hit the Honours Secretariat’s desk!  

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...


For those wishing to leave comments under their own names (go-orn, I dares ya!), please select the 'Name/URL' option from the drop down menu beneath the comments section below. You do not need to enter a URL.

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.

EMBRACING 'ISLAMIC VIOLENCE'

'Islamic violence' - thinking about it a bit lately, as one is want to do given recent events here and overseas, it occurs to me that the real issue is not so much who is responsible for recent acts of terrorism – we know that and cannot or will not take the only certain logical course to address it. No, the real issue is how much of it will we have to experience before we stop whining and acting all shocked and disconcerted about it.

Australia has a growing Islamic community.

Islam’s teachings contain much violence, especially the teachings of the Prophet’s later career, along with many reasons why the violence is permissible and even required.

What stops all Muslims being violent ‘extremists’ is their personal choice not to follow certain directives to the letter. Forget this rubbish about Islam being a religion of peace. It is only a religion of peace extended to other Muslims in an Islamic society. 

If you doubt this, it is clear you're familiar only with the Greens' expurgated overview of Islam....the one without the exploding gannets. 

People seem to think that some Muslims choose to be hard core jihadists. In fact all Muslims are required to be Jihadists and all are called upon to prosecute their law violently if required. 

2000 feared dead in Boko Haram slaughter, Nigeria, January 2015

What keeps us moderately safe is surely the fact that most Muslims are reasonable, rational folk who choose to be moderates by judiciously cherry-picking the teachings of the Prophet. And believe me, there's rarely a day goes by that I am not sincerely grateful for this small concession, right down to my Jewish roots.

So as the Australian Islamic population grows and given they will all be reading the same scriptures, the percentage of people choosing the hardcore path must surely grow, if only gradually, with the overall population and with it the percentage of actions we associate with the naughty Muslims. 

If you believe this to be flawed logic, believe me I'm all ears.

Ergo it seems to me the simple solution for the problem is to accept it’s going to get worse and without surrendering all our beloved civil liberties, which of course no-one wants to do save for one, there is no way to stop more and more people doing increasingly evil stuff.

We need to accept that in this day and age, stuff explodes, people get shot randomly from rooftops or while drinking coffee and buying chocolate and perhaps the odd building will tumble and plane fall from the sky, all because we value religious freedom and as the price of that freedom, stoically accept and weather all the violence and oppression likely to accompany it.

We need to seek solace in the fact that because we've made gun ownership illegal all the evil doers will hand in their AK47s and rocket launchers just like they did in France, so the very worst we have to worry about is the threat of a group of crazed killers wearing balaclavas yelling Allahu Akbar while chopping away feverishly at the pylons of the Harbour bridge with axes...and we'll be able to reason with those guys!

Welcome to the future as the Greens would have you live it.

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

For those wishing to leave comments under their own names (go-orn, I dares ya!), please select the 'Name/URL' option from the drop down menu beneath the comments section below. You do not need to enter a URL.

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.

AUSSIE PRIDE: LEST WE FORGET

Good old Aussie pride; the nation had it once. 

Every now and then we see it still, revived briefly on cue for a few annual dates on a calendar, at which point we dutifully wheel out our Aussie pride, if only for a few hours, before packing it away again to make room for the new improved and infinitely more enlightened (?), 3rd millennium Australian spirit.

As a kid born a generation after WWll I was familiar with the stories of the war and its hardships familiar to all kids of that generation. 

I was fiercely proud of my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, whom it seemed had been to hell and back and lived not only to tell the tale, but given the opportunity, to roundly take the piss out of their adversities in true Aussie tradition.

At school I was taught to be proud of fellow countrymen of days gone by. I learned about great Australian explorers, their triumphs over hardship, their acts of bravery and self-sacrifice and their follies too.

I was taught that mine was a proud lineage reaching back, however tenuously, to the days of Pict and Scot, the Battle of Hastings, Runnymede and Magna Carta.

I was taught about the great mariners of history, of battles won by the likes of Nelson and of a globe circumnavigated by Francis Drake on his (pirate)ship the Pelican or Golden Hinde.

In those days school kids were taught that Cook was a great explorer and Phillip the father of a new and far-flung outpost of European ‘civilisation’.  Colonisation, yet to be pronounced a dirty word, gave rise to even more stories of exploration, of hardships endured and triumphs celebrated around the world and immortalised in poetry and song.

And of course there was Gallipoli.

Diggers were still about in those days, some of them family members, though many more would never again be present at the family gatherings I remember so fondly today, where stories of their adventures in distant lands were recounted and their great bravery and heroism extolled to eager young ears.

Then, as now, most Australians lived in suburbia surrounding the state and territory capitals but somehow there didn't seem to be the gulf between city and country life that exists today.

Growing up in Sydney I remember, very fondly, weekend hunting trips to rural areas such as Campbelltown and Camden where my dad taught me how to ‘ferret’, shoot bunnies and set snares.

The topic of conversation on these trips to "the bush" would invariably turn to the days of the Great Depression or the war years, when knowing how to hunt, whether by gun, ferret, dog or by trap, quite literally meant the difference between life and death.

Many a household relied on plentiful supplies of free “underground mutton” as rabbit was know, and the rabbit skins, hooped in the backyard to dry in the sun, were sold to a furrier for the felt trade, providing a pittance that nonetheless kept the wolf from the door.

It seems funny to me to hear today’s opponents to firearms ownership referring to “Australia’s emerging guns and hunting culture”. Australia has long been a nation of gun owners and hunters and while it’s possible some city kids weren't aware of it growing up, it was a rare Australian household that didn't have a bolt action .22 on top of dad’s wardrobe, just in case it might come in handy.

In fact in those days the old .22 and the .303 were a little like rhubarb plants – every household felt better for having at least one, even if no one actually ate rhubarb.

Aussies were a very proud, incredibly capable and fiercely self-reliant mob and this spirit of resilience was further reinforced by the contributions of the many cultures from around the world that came to call Australia their home.

I remember warmly, the local fruiterer, Nic, who in his heavily accented Italian-Aussie would call out to my mum as she passed his shop – “Bloody cheap spuds today, Missus. Cheap as the bloody ten bob tart, Missus, my bloody oath!”

Mum would just smile and maybe pick up a pound or two of bloody cheap spuds while taking the opportunity to chat quietly with Nic’s ‘Missus’, Maria, about her husband’s use of colourful metaphors and the hazards inherent in learning English from the blokes at the Sydney produce markets.

I even recall mum sending dad to have a quiet word with Nic one day, Aussie bloke to Aussie bloke, to suggest he not make a habit of telling women they should come back on Wednesday for nice tomatoes because “the bloody tomatoes today they are not much chop, all fuckin’ bruised shit!”

It would never have occurred to us to take offence. Nic was just trying to be Australian and thanks to the contributions of people like Nic and Maria and many thousands of others, who emigrated in the first decades after WWII, Australian society was hugely enriched for their presence and along with it, what it means to be Aussie.

History looks back on that period as the time of the “White Australia Policy” and perhaps that’s true, technically. It always seemed to me to be a time when people who’d suffered the deprivations, the hardships and the losses of war came together in a free and welcoming land to start life anew, far from the likelihood of any resurgence of aggression in Europe.

Whatever the case, I remember it as a time when folk were staunchly proud to be Australian.

I don’t know when that changed; when the pride we once had in our culture and accomplishments, our history and our diverse lineages turned to shame.

I suspect it had something to do with the way we view history and teach it in our schools. We no-longer talk about "first settlement" as it was known back then, referring to it instead as the "invasion of a continent" and the oppression and wholesale slaughter of its indigenous inhabitants.

The heroes I learned about at school; brave men, who conquered geographical barriers to open up new frontiers, have their achievements played down today because of their impact on indigenous folk.

Today Captain Cook is considered little more than the forward scout for an invasion force and the first settlers are considered thieves, murderers and spreaders of foul disease.

Indeed we are assured the results of their evil influence on a free and peace-loving people can still be seen today.

Children are taught they have no right to be here, that they are invaders and all the accomplishments of their forbears are therefore invalid and their culture cause for shame.

Recent generations, especially those populating suburbia, don’t appear to believe in a distinctly Aussie culture at all. Rather, they adopt the latest fashionable TV-sitcom pop-culture as their own while marvelling at and even venerating the exotic cultures found among more recent settlers of Australia’s shores. It’s as though they've been convinced we've nothing that merits celebration...that our culture is vacant and bland requiring external enrichment.

And we can always count on the metro-centric Greens and their various allies to take every opportunity to undermine and denigrate the Australian culture, promoting a black armband attitude toward our history and Australian influences.

There is no doubt that the history of this nation since the discovery of ‘New Holland’ nearly 250 years ago is strewn with events and practices that were unconscionable by today’s standards, but for an enlightened society to raise new generations of children to embrace a culture of guilt and shame is just a socially acceptable form of abuse.

To raise well adjusted children one must imbue them with a sense of pride in who they are and where they have come from. If you doubt this just ask a German friend what it was like to be raised with all the guilt poured into that small nation after the Great War and again after WWll.

History cites resentment for the burden of shame and outrageous war reparations forced upon the German people as principle reasons for the Nazi Party’s rise to power. Was it really any wonder, given the Nazi’s emphasis on restoring national pride?

We live in an age where technology has vastly increased the range of human hatred, hypocrisy and intolerance, while facilitating the individual’s abuse of power. Add to this the fact that we have far more free time than ever before in human history and the stage is set for otherwise ineffectual people to flex their underdeveloped muscles by engaging in the sport of hating and banning.

Hunting is cruel, they claim, and MUST be STOPPED!

Fishing is cruel, they claim, and MUST be STOPPED!

Fail to bow to their will and you will be abused, denigrated, threatened and subjected to more hatred than most soldiers in active service will ever face on the battlefield.  And all of it expressed by people who see themselves as beacons of enlightenment and compassion.

But should you happen to belong to one of the world’s community of first nations peoples, the attitude is altogether different.

It is only white Anglo-Saxon, European hunting and fishing that must be stopped.  All other hunters and fishers are simply struggling to preserve traditional and often highly spiritual aspects of their culture.  This must be preserved at all costs!

I have never known a hunter or fisher who claimed he “kills for the joy of killing”, as the Greens are so fond of claiming. Nor have I ever known a hunter or fisher to kill a creature because he hated it.  But visit any number of pro-hunting sites on the internet and it will take but a moment to identify who in our community is really driven by malice to kill and maim.

It is most often women and those who consider themselves the nurturers of the community, the teachers, the nurses, the welfare workers and the grannies. 

The depth of bile and evil these people can draw on to wish hunters, fishers and their families the most graphic forms of misfortune, is truly breathtaking in scope and imagination.

Yet they believe me primitive and themselves enlightened.

They believe it is my lack of respect for other living creatures that makes me a ‘killer’, while their enlightened appreciation for the beauty of nature’s wondrous diversity justifies their wish to see someone blow my children’s heads off with a shotgun or stick an arrow in my grandkid’s ribs to see how it makes me feel.

And while this attitude is all too often attributed to only a very small minority of lunatics, the fact is increasing numbers of them are finding their way into positions of influence and power.

There is more hatred and intolerance in the world today than ever before. Where once people might show their opposition to a practice by not engaging in it, in this age of enlightened intolerance they will settle for nothing less than absolute prohibition of all they do not approve of.

And of course the facilitators of hate, organisations such as Get-up and Change.org, where people can create a petition to STOP anything their dark hearts desire, exist to help the haters explore and perfect bullying to a fine art.

Meanwhile, folk who are more in tune with what it really means to be Australian are gravitating to rural areas where they are apt to find more down to earth, tolerant, peace-loving people with similar views and interests. 

And rest assured that whether here at home or on the other side of the globe, it is images of these folk and not a race of angry Vegans, Greens or animal rights activists the world conjures-up when it thinks about Aussies and Australia.

The world thinks with envy of an Australia populated by capable resilient outdoors folk who will wade half the night up to their groins in freezing water to catch the ‘shrimp’ they put on the barbie.

They think of people who would rather drop a line in to catch only the fish they can eat, rather than buying fish from Coles or Woollies caught by super-trawlers along with thousands of tons of wasted bycatch.

They think of people who take responsibility for hunting, or for raising and killing their own meat rather than paying a professional assassin at an abattoir to do it for them and disguise the meat as sausages. And most of all, they think of the spirit of Aussie mateship forged between capable men and women engaged in all these earthy, practical endeavors. Endeavors that made our durability, resilience and self-sufficiency in hostile environments such as Kokoda and Gallipoli, legendary.

They think of a proud nation of strong and healthy outdoors folk wearing driza-bones and Akubra hats and we should be proud of that image, lest we forget.   

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

For those wishing to leave comments under their own names (go-orn, I dares ya!), please select the 'Name/URL' option from the drop down menu beneath the comments section below. You do not need to enter a URL.

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.