EXPLOITING THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

“If you really loved the bush, you’d leave the guns (and bows) at home and enjoy it like the rest of us, without killing things!”

This is a challenge often aimed at hunters, and it is one that betrays a number of misconceptions, the following being principal among them:

1. Hunting and killing animals is the same thing

2. A hunters’ singular interest lies in killing animals, and 

3. Hunting is the same as bush-walking, sans the killing animals bit.

Hunting is not intrinsically harmful to the quarry; a fact both my car keys and my children have, in their turn, drawn great solace from over the years.

Hunting is a process involving the identification and pursuit of a quarry and it is from this process that hunters derive the major component of their pleasure.

The kill accounts for a nanosecond of the hunting experience. It is the culmination of a successful hunt, but it is not what draws hunters to the wild, nor does every hunt result in the taking of quarry. 

If killing animals was the primary objective many believe it to be, there are far less costly, less time consuming ways in which that desire might be slaked; volunteering for the RSPCA or PETA among them.

The hunter is driven by an urge as old as humanity itself, a need to subject him/herself to the most fundamental processes of self-reliance, observation, instinct and stealth, known collectively as ‘survival’.

The fact that some believe bush-walking provides the same outdoors experience as hunting, but without the weapons, is an indication of just how naive and ill-informed hunting's critics can be.

  

The vast majority of bush-walkers will avail themselves of the designated trail from a car-park to some feature of human visual impact – a waterfall, a quasi-phallic rock formation or a really cool old tree.

The hunter, on the other hand, is focused exclusively on what peaks his quarry’s interest. 

It is primarily for this reason that, despite Australian forests playing host to record numbers of hunters, they are rarely seen by the public except perhaps relaxing at camp sites after a day in the field.

The hunter follows trails too, but not those created with accessibility and a tour schedule in mind.  In fact the trails we follow are often all but indistinguishable from their surroundings and may not appear as beaten ground at all.

‘Trails’ are often marked by things as subtle as vague footprints on soft ground, grasses pushed over in a specific direction by the belly of a deer, bark rubbed from a tree at a height that betrays the nature of a specific traveller, a few hairs clinging to the end of a fallen branch, a rock that has recently shifted position and so on.

All these signs are most often found on the roads less travelled, and such signs are apt to place the hunter in locations seldom seen by the average member of the public.

The hunters’ mind and instincts are focused on the observation and recognition of minutiae in ways few other outdoors enthusiasts will be, and these skills are often brought to bear in extraordinarily remote and inaccessible locations. 

Of course as a child of the 60s I am a bona fide Luddite when it comes to 21st century technologies. Even so, I find myself wondering why the scientific community doesn’t routinely avail itself of the resource hunters represent.

Surely it would not be a costly proposition for perhaps the Department of Primary Industry and the Forestry Corporation, in partnership with a university research centre, to develop a system whereby hunters booking a hunt could check a box indicating their willingness to participate in research activities.

Almost every hunter carries a smart phone as a matter of course these days, equipped with camera, GPS and so on. If researchers would send them information such as a picture and detailed description of the subject species, a photo of its scats, tracks and so on, along with an outline of its preferred habitat, many hunters would be more than happy to keep an eye out for evidence of habitation.

Such evidence would likely come from locations seldom travelled by members of the community participating in a koala count for example, and of course pictures taken these days can include a GPS tag identifying the subject’s exact location no matter how remote.

A website might be developed where hunters were encouraged to upload photographs of interesting finds for identification e.g. birds, reptiles, plants, fungi, orchids and all manner of things, some of which may be rarely seen on the beaten path.

This may help to bring the hunting and environmental communities together as laymen and experts alike are challenged to name that fungi, identify that track or reveal the owner of this skull, while potentially increasing the sum of knowledge about species and their ranges.

With telecommunications coverage rapidly increasing, a dialogue between hunter and researcher might take place in real time, so that specimens could be recovered under instruction from those who know exactly what they need for detailed research purposes.

It may even be possible to develop a 'kit' containing slides, phials for specimen collection, plaster for casting and other basic field recovery gear that's unlikely to prove a burden to the hunter. 

Not only could such a system be a practical research tool, it might actually be a fun way to bridge the gap between hunters and those who presently and incorrectly see us as nothing more than environmental plunderers.  

Indeed, given time, hunters’ participation and contributions to various research efforts would become enshrined in the ‘acknowledgments’ of research papers and the like.

This is just a kernel of an idea, but one I think worthy of exploration by those far better equipped than I to consider all its possibilities and ramifications. 

Perhaps most importantly it has the potential to put our various skills to use in a way that isn’t just about killing unpopular species, which, while a valid contribution to environmental protection in itself, is not a contribution the public easily warms to.

It is my belief that for too long we have rested on the "we're ridding the landscape of ferals" mantra, while the potential for cooperative scientific partnerships has remained largely unexplored.

If you have any ideas about how a resource such as I've outlined might be developed, or how it might be used to maximum effect, please share your ideas in the comments section below.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

©gmallard2016 all rights reserved

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