BECAUSE IMAGE IS EVERYTHING

Those among us striving to portray hunting and hunters in an ethical, responsible and moderate light, know how quickly even the most rational and persuasive arguments can be unravelled by arrogance, naivety or just plain run-of-the-mill stupidity. 

If we continue to whine about what ‘should be’ but isn’t; if we complain about rights we’re being denied that we never actually enjoyed, while arrogantly refusing to acknowledge the impact of negative community perceptions, our own shortsightedness will be our undoing.

The way I see it, we have two primary enemies – their ignorance and our arrogance – only one of which we are prepared to address.  Guess which?

It is negative public perceptions that are doing us the most damage and they can be addressed, but not for so long as we choose to live in the state of resolute denial that has served us so very poorly to date.

Approximately 70% of Australians live in cities. Their experience of ‘wildlife’ extends to dogs, cats, budgies, pony-club on the weekends and perhaps the odd possum, all of which they would happily accommodate at the foot of their beds at night. 

While we often hear reports of the growing tree/sea-change movement, this phenomenon affects a tiny fraction of urbanites. The vast majority are more than happy to live in one-another’s pockets under lights so bright they need a weatherman to tell them the phases of the moon, and it’s likely this will always be the case.

Furthermore, the idea that more city-folk moving to the ‘bush’ equates to a gradual increase in general appreciation for rural living and associated pursuits, is a forlorn hope at best.  

As those of us who have lived in the migratory zones can attest, city-folk may relish abandoning the hustle and bustle of urban congestion with its heartless anonymity, but they do so only to spend the next 20 years lobbying rural councils to turn their quiet retreats into carbon copies of the urban nightmares they fled.

In short, they rarely integrate per se, but rather demand rural folk adopt their measures of necessity, morals, ethics and ‘civilisation’ in general.

With metropolitan mindsets dominating, it’s time to reassess our approach to re-normalising the hunters’ activities and the rural ethos in general. To do so successfully, some strategic sacrifices will need to be made over years to come, despite the inevitable resentment that will accompany the process.

Hunting has been an ‘Australian’ tradition for between 50,000 and 200 years, depending on the hunter’s cultural heritage. Yet it wasn’t so much as a blip on the collective Australian consciousness until around 10 years ago.

Sure, it may have been cause for concern among certain hardline animal rights/welfare activists, but in terms of broad public concern, a hunter divulging his weekend exploits in ‘mixed company’ was liable to be greeted with strains of “Oh, how could you!” and that’s about it.

This all changed about 10 years ago, before which time, people who didn’t like hunting, demonstrated their disapproval in a very traditional and appropriate manner – by not engaging in it and by not discussing it with those who did.

This begs the question, what happened a decade ago to make hunting a social and political issue worthy of the unprecedented media attention it ‘enjoys’ today?

• Facebook was launched on February 4, 2004 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States)

• Mobile-phone cameras of some quality and general affordability became readily available in 2005.

• Twitter was launched on March 21, 2006 (San Francisco, California, United States)

• Youtube was launched on February 14, 2005 (San Mateo, California, United States) 

And almost immediately, hunters began populating the above with literally millions of graphic accounts of the hunters’ trade, in full colour via totally unsecured media. 

Farewell the days when the anti-hunter was forced to infiltrate a hunting group, spy with a long lens from afar or trawl the hunting journals for a suspect shot that slipped past a dozy sub-editor. 

Welcome an era where millions of tasteless shots appear on social media every day, complete with a handy share or forward button. 

And let’s not forget Youtube where, thanks to GoPro and its ilk, tasteless moving images abound, replete with the sorts of moronic commentaries that add weight to inbred hillbilly stereotypes.  

Yes-yes, none of that should matter. After all, what we do is legal! But hunting would not be the first previously legal activity to be banned as a result of community outrage and associated opportunist political pressure. 

Just the other day, an email turned up in my inbox – again! It was from the kind folks at Twitter, eager to introduce me to new people they thought I might like. Among the examples of political aspirants, craft enthusiasts and media commentators’ there was a post from a fox hunter’s feed. 

Proud of his efficiency with firearms, he quite reasonable boasted he had just taken-out a fox with a single shot to the brain, occasioning instantaneous and therefore desirably humane death. All good! 

What was not so good was the photo that accompanied his prideful note - said dead fox, eyes bulging out of their sockets onto its muzzle resulting from the explosive expansion of brain-matter within. It is true the fox did appear to be smiling, but one doubts that had anything to do with gratitude for a swift ascendancy to the ethereal choir.  

Now, if I received that post from Twitter, just on spec, how many thousands of unsuspecting non-hunters also received it?  That it was circulated by offended recipients to the sorts of people who will make use of it for anti-hunting ends is a fait accompli. 

The people they distribute it to will not see a fox that died instantly. They will only see a fox that died horribly, unlike their sweet little Sooty or Mr. Tinkles, who, after many happy years curled up snug at the foot of the bed, went peacefully to God with veterinary assistance.

How we portray what we do DOES matter. In fact, right now it matters more than just about anything else.

Yes, this snap has it all. Disrespectful objectification of "an innocent animal",
a clear view of the "instrument of torture and death" with a little blood for
added drama and, of course, "the feet of a coward". 

Hunting is not a universal public ‘right’ in this country. It is a privilege extended under licence. That licence can be revoked at the stroke of a pen and the way we’re going, it will be a pen we've provided.

We can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but we can stop rubbing the bloody bottle!

When the media needs content to illuminate a negative story, social media is their first port of call, so it stands to reason it should be our clean-up priority.

• Striving for 10,000 ‘Likes’ at any cost may serve the ego but it doesn’t serve the cause. Hunters’ Facebook accounts should have the tightest possible security settings to prevent casual browsing. The same goes for commercial pages, though it must be said, for the most part they are more discerning about the nature of posts they let through.

• Youtube footage of yobbos laughing hysterically while poorly shot animals struggle, or dogs tear pigs apart, are not just a curse, they’re pathetic and the source of much justification for the old yodel, “hunters just enjoy killing things”. Leave a reprimanding comment, identifying yourself as an ethical hunter, so the public at large can see we don’t like irresponsible idiots either.

• When editing GoPro footage of your hunt, freeze on your quarry at the instant of the riffle report. Cutting to a still shot immediately after, showing a hunter with his quarry, both of which should be in a clean and respectful pose, will convey the outcome just fine. We don’t need to see it staggering about a field or tumbling down a mountainside to know the shot was good.

• Cries of unity such as “Never-ever apologise for being a hunter” are inane and arrogant without the addition of one of two words – ethical or responsible. We should not appear to support any and all hunting activities for the same reason we wouldn't say, “Never-ever apologise for being a driver” i.e. because we do not stand united with drunks who get behind the wheel.
  
  "Never-ever apologise for being an ethical hunter” is a message I’ll wear with both pride and resolve.

• Many reading this article will want to shoot the messenger. For God’s sake, clean away some of the blood and gore before you post my picture on social media. The best hunter/quarry shots exhibit no signs of death whatsoever. It’s enough that you’re pictured sitting right next to your quarry, which should look like it’s the star attraction of a petting-zoo. We’re not stupid; we all know nothing lets you get that close unless it’s dead....or perhaps a Greens candidate.
  
  In fact, I would love to see the editors and producers of our journals and TV series etc., getting together around a table to develop a set of guidelines for publication. Given that so many people take hunting snaps with hopes of having them published, why not set guidelines and a basic standard they should all meet?

A pretty good example of how it can be done

• Finally, we need to work together to ensure the media starts calling so-called 'illegal hunting' by its proper name - poaching. The term is used world-wide, but not in Australia where the media is wedded to reporting on hunting only when it can be associated with illegality.
  
  Ergo, by exploiting this bias and with united insistence that 'poaching' is used where applicable, we can ensure that 'hunting' is never mentioned in the press at all, which is surely better than having it constantly associated with illegal activity?
  
  If those of us who are occasionally approached for interviews refuse to engage unless journalists adopt the correct language, they will soon find themselves short of respondents.  A basic rule of journalism runs along the lines of "without a talking head/respondent, there is no story". 

The sooner we begin to take some strategic ownership of our public image, the sooner the public will see, once again, that there is a place for responsible hunting practices in any society that strives for a low-impact, sustainable approach to resource management. 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

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INSULTS CLOSER TO HOME

You hunt because you’re a psychopath who likes killing things; it’s as simple as that!

You take the lives of other sentient creatures because you lack empathy and enjoy the thrill of killing.

You have a small penis resulting in doubts about your masculinity, thus you own big guns in compensation.

Then there’s my personal favourite, “real men shoot with cameras!” 

It seems even in this progressive era in which we're constantly told it’s wrong to impose gender stereotypes, or to call into question another’s character with thinly veiled homophobic taunts, it’s quite alright to do so as long as one’s hatred for the individual is deeply enough entrenched.

Journalist and author Peter Fitzsimons

In a February 2015 article in the Herald, columnist Peter Fitzsimons indulged his penchant for self-righteous outrage, claiming he’d been unable to draw hunters out on Twitter to justify their activities to him.

In his article, Fitzsimons levelled the usual ignorant accusations and belittling stereotypical insults at hunters and their motivations, such that one might expect to hear from any drunken barfly.

However, like the many angry people who support Fitzsimons’ pontificate, he gave absolutely no indication, whatsoever, that his motivation for engaging hunters on Twitter was the pursuit of respectful inquiry or intellectual debate.

What angered Fitzsimons was hunters’ refusal to make themselves the targets of puerile insult and ridicule for his personal amusement and professional gain.

He was angered because hunters saw nothing productive in giving oxygen to an aggressor who sought only to make a public spectacle of his ignorance and disdain.

He is not alone in his belief that ill-informed abuse equates somehow to reason and that the higher one’s platform and the louder one hurls insults, the more correct and noble one is.

So why have I chosen to focus on Fitzsimons, you ask...or perhaps you don’t - pfft?

After all, he’s just another angry middle-aged man whose opinions are given voice so his lack of restraint and simplistic tirades might sate the insatiable popular appetite for media witch-hunts.

It’s not as if he doesn’t give us fair warning of his penchant for righteous fury. He does, after all, wear a red cloth about his brain and as many will know attaching a red rag to an extremity has long been the traditional method of identifying a random threat to public safety.

No, his views on hunting are neither original nor, in and of themselves, any more offensive than those of his media colleagues. However, his authorship of various books exploring Australian military history adds an interesting dimension to his proudly avowed contempt for people who enjoy the hunters’ pursuits.

“So let's talk about hunters and let's talk about miserable bastards who get their jollies by stalking and killing defenceless animals. But I repeat myself” is an example of both his contempt for hunters and his willingness to rip-off the quotes of notable authors such as Mark Twain when stumped for original inspiration himself.

Later, in the same article, he claims “killing wild animals is in fact, appalling” and that being a hunter is something worthy of a public apology, which might just about win the reformed hunter a provisional indulgence under the Fitzsimons’ popular pontificate.

The notion of killing wild animals “makes me sick to the stomach” he waxes predictable, later drawing a parallel between hunting animals and the rape of women. 

On many other occasions Fitzsimons has spoken of his abiding contempt for the sorts of men who would participate in the practice of hunting “innocent wild animals” for enjoyment, making it very clear hunters are not the folks he’d be caught dead consorting with.

Yes, he loathes and detests the likes of those who hunt alrighty and he’s proud to say so, but here’s the rub...

Until very recently, hunting was a longstanding Aussie traditional and perfectly acceptable male occupation, enjoyed by almost every rural resident and not a few city-slickers too. Including those we know collectively as Anzacs, many thousands of whom were, apparently, miserable bastards who make Fitzsimons sick; men who get their jollies doing the appalling things he loathes, and gutless cowards akin to rapists etc.

It strikes me as odd that so many in the community can so easily and proudly take to social media and the press, expressing unmitigated contempt for the hunters of today, apparently unconcerned that what motivates us, is what motivated the men of yesteryear, among them their uncles, grandfathers and great-grandfather ad infinitum.

If what motivates us is hatred, a psychopathic lack of empathy, cowardice, blood lust, the thrill of killing for killing’s sake, small penises and our dark inner-rapists, surely they’re all defects that motivated pop, perhaps even nanna and a beloved uncle Bob or two also.

Born in the early 1960s, Fitzsimons is the 7th and last child of northern NSW citrus farmers. Hunting was common in the era, especially among men on the land who hunted for  both practical purposes and recreation. 

Who knows, perhaps Fitzsimons is himself the product of the very "miserable bastards" he finds so contemptible?   

It’s all too easy to forget that hunting is not some recently emerged ‘curse’ besetting an otherwise civilised society and that few Australians can claim to come from four generations of proud city-raised stock that enjoyed neither the opportunity nor the inclination to hunt.

It is all too easy to forget that if today’s hunters are motivated by latent perversions and murderous instincts, our fathers, grandfathers and uncles were the perverts and murderers of yesteryear.

Perhaps some people actually believe this is the case...perhaps they are comfortable levelling vile, irrational and self-serving accusations at their antecedents? 

Or perhaps folk should pause a moment to reflect on the impact their unrestrained, vengeful and highly offensive tirades may have on people who are not strangers to them at all. 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now....

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BRAVO BARNABY JOYCE

Yes, by all means, get Amber Heard back here, drag her into court with her partner in crime, Depp, and penalize the pair of them to the full extent of the applicable laws.

Let’s be abundantly clear for the intellectually impaired, most of them city folks who think Minister Joyce and the Australian government over-reacted in response to the illegal entry of Pistol and Boo. 

Various bio-security threats

The Minister's response was one of the most manifestly responsible and appropriate decisions made by an Aussie politician, with neither fear nor favour, in the past decade. 

Heard and Depp demonstrated the sort of elitist disregard and arrogant contempt for our bio-security laws that is synonymous with the self-important nouveau riche. 

The havoc those two darling little puppy-dogs might have wrought on the Australian economy and the suffering and death they might have facilitated among Australia’s fragile and unique ecology cannot be overstated.

But did the Australian public and the media rally behind a man who strove to protect the nation from diseases like rabies that kill people as well as wildlife and is all but impossible to eradicate once established? 

Not on your nelly!  

“Bugger Australian, we love Johnny!” was the cowardly, shallow response from the media and populous.

Yet should a dentist shoot a lion on the other side of the world, the pitchforks are sharpened ‘til they gleam in the moonlight, torches are lit, scaffolds erected and pacifists across the globe indulge their propensity for hatred with a billion violent threats via social media.

Perhaps had the dentist worn a pirate costume and pranced about like he had a kilo tub of MeadowLea melting in his underwear things might have been different, ‘eh?

If I have any criticism of Barnaby Joyce, it’s that he gave Depp and Heard time to decide if they wanted to abide by Australian law. Way too much time...time they had no right to...time you and I would not have been given! 

The two dogs involved should have been impounded immediately and quarantined. If the nation was intent on sucking-up to the famous Yank, it would have been sufficient that we didn’t euthanize the dogs, giving their owners the option of flying them home immediately and contained in something other than an urn.

The irresponsible attitudes we’re developing in this country, harboured to a large extent by city folk increasingly remote from basic realities, are truly frightening. 

The public outcry from the fundamentally ignorant resulting from a recent call for the identification of a season during which, in times of over abundance (so-called ‘plagues’) kangaroos might be responsibly harvested by hunters,  is a case in point.

“Oh no, we mustn’t hunt kangaroos.  If they must be culled (heaven forefend!), it should be done by professionals and in the most humane way possible” says the various ‘expert’ social commentators assembled by such bastions of the emoting intellectualism as 7’s “The Morning Show”.

NEWSFLASH – Professional roo shooters do not ‘hunt’, they harvest. The difference lies in the need to take the animals as economically as possible. 

On the ground, this means shooting them where they can be found in the open and in mobs, usually under spotlights. Once a mob has dispersed to cover, the roo shooter does not follow and it doesn’t take long for a mob to disperse once the action commences.

The commercial roo meat industry demands animals of a certain size and age are taken in order to meet consumer demand for flavour and texture and the price per kilo a roo shooter gets for his efforts is abysmal.   

Professional cullers do not harvest or hunt, they simply kill. The carcass is left where it drops, unless the corpses are likely to offend delicate sensibilities that is, in which case they may be shifted out of sight but not consumed in any manner. 

The key to keeping numbers down consistently is the introduction of hunters into the equation. Licensed hunters are more likely to ‘hunt’, which is to say to pursue an individual animal, away from open paddocks and off the beaten track. 

They are not driven by economies of scale, so they can perhaps be a little more discerning in their choice of a quarry and this in turn helps to minimize the shooting of jills carrying developed joeys.

Hunters are also more likely to use their quarry efficiently. Meat unsuitable for the restaurant or supermarket will be taken by the hunter and once the prime cuts are removed for human consumption, the remainder will be harvested for pets. 

Fur and sinew may also be harvested for tanning and various crafts.

But as we are so often told by the likes of The Greens and the National Parks Association, "hunting is not an efficient means of controlling animal populations!"  Which strikes me as an odd claim, given they're also quick to claim hunting puts pressure on species that may lead to extinctions.

Ah, there's nothing like an each-way bet is there?

Kangaroos and wallabies are not in decline. Claims of declining populations are manufactured by the likes of The Greens to influence the views of our increasingly city-centric population, which is increasingly remote from rural realities.

One way or another, two-centuries of European farming practice has all but drought proofed the land from the macropods' perspective. 

We’ve built dams, sunk bores, opened up millions of acres of pasture. We’ve irrigated and managed the land in countless other ways to ensure the survival of domestic herds. 

All of it results in food and water security for kangaroos and wallabies and the population explosions, unchecked by natural disaster, such as we see in parts of Victoria and NSW.

Rural folk see the plagues and the impact they have, not only on the environment, but on the macropods themselves. Unfortunately and ever-increasingly, the vast majority of Australia’s live in cities far removed from the harsh realities of life and this makes them easy and willing stooges for the lies fed them by those with an extremist, often irrational, animal rights agenda.

Sadly, as a result of our increasing gravitation towards city-living and the associated hive mind, it is these gullible stooges who account for the vast majority of voting Australians who influence decisions about all manner of rural issues they have no knowledge of whatsoever.

This is the flaw in the democratic process. It works just fine when everyone is looking at issues from more or less the same knowledge-base and sphere of experience...which of course they don’t. 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...   

Follow the blog on Twitter @Hunters_Stand

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