Worth Mathewson
Active member
For those interested in how things are playing out after the anti-hunter was shot in Australia, the following is from an email I got from John Byers, the call and decoy maker in Victoria: "The uproar has certainly quietened down. Especially after the police exonerated the 14 year old boy when they found that he wasn't involved. The protestors and the newspapers have a lot of egg on their collective faces. Apparently the police (as is the standard police practice) immediately separated the boy and his uncle and took them in for interview. Their stories matched that the boy hadn't fired a shot in over an hour. They got three Greenie's in and all had different stories. They tried to get a statement from the woman who was shot and she hasn't been very forthcoming."
"As a result of the incident the DSE are now issuing Laurie Levy and another 20 or 30 protestors with summonses to go to court. Previously they just issued them with tickets, which the Coalition Against Duck Shooting just paid. Now it they get convicted at court they will end up with a criminal conviction. Seeing that a large part of the protestors are recruited by Laurie Levy from university kids, it is unlikely they will want a conviction, particularly if they are studing law or similar. It will also curtail their travel, because some countries won't let you in with a conviction. This tack should put a lot of pressure on Levy to recruit people to protest. It has all probably been a blessing in disguise as they are looking at harsher penalites for people illegally on private land or otherwise not following the rules set for protests. Field & Game has been saying for years that it is dangerous and someone (a protestor) will get hurt. I think now they are starting to listen."
All this is good news indeed. That Laurie Levy guy is a piece of work. For the past several years he has been very popular with the various TV stations and they gave him a lot of coverage. At least one broadcast I watched pictured him as some sort of hero. Also something that we all should be award of, is that Field & Game (the major sportsman group in Australia) is certain that The Humane Society of the United States has sent Levy a great deal of money to aid his efforts to ban duck hunting. We can sure hope that things are now turning around! Worth Mathewson
"As a result of the incident the DSE are now issuing Laurie Levy and another 20 or 30 protestors with summonses to go to court. Previously they just issued them with tickets, which the Coalition Against Duck Shooting just paid. Now it they get convicted at court they will end up with a criminal conviction. Seeing that a large part of the protestors are recruited by Laurie Levy from university kids, it is unlikely they will want a conviction, particularly if they are studing law or similar. It will also curtail their travel, because some countries won't let you in with a conviction. This tack should put a lot of pressure on Levy to recruit people to protest. It has all probably been a blessing in disguise as they are looking at harsher penalites for people illegally on private land or otherwise not following the rules set for protests. Field & Game has been saying for years that it is dangerous and someone (a protestor) will get hurt. I think now they are starting to listen."
All this is good news indeed. That Laurie Levy guy is a piece of work. For the past several years he has been very popular with the various TV stations and they gave him a lot of coverage. At least one broadcast I watched pictured him as some sort of hero. Also something that we all should be award of, is that Field & Game (the major sportsman group in Australia) is certain that The Humane Society of the United States has sent Levy a great deal of money to aid his efforts to ban duck hunting. We can sure hope that things are now turning around! Worth Mathewson
