End of duck hunting?

W

Worth Mathewson

Active member
Some on this page might be aware that hunting is outlawed in the Australian states of New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and ACT. Sometime within the next month there will be a decision to outlaw duck and quail hunting in the states of Victoria and South Australia. The anti hunters have become more powerful during the past few years. I went down to Victoria to hunt ducks and quail almost every year from 2002 until 2013. Some of the best duck hunting I have had anywhere. And a great group of waterfowlers. I shipped one of my Barnegat boats down to use, which caught a lot of attention. Several of the guys I hunted with have emailed that things look very grim. In an attempt to protect the right to hunt the President of Delta Waterfowl went down to speak to the committee formed to make the decision. Don't know if he accomplished anything. We all need to hope for the best! And if it ends in a closure, we need to study how the anti hunters pulled it off. The same tactics could be used over here. Australia isn't the only place such actions are being taken. In the UK Wales is experiencing a very strong movement to end shooting.
 
Wow, thanks for that info.

I just looked at a news article from THE GUARDIAN newspaper, (dated 16 March 2022) which outlined some of the issue. The duck season was being debated at that time, and there were documented complaints and incidents of hunters shooting threatened duck species being highlighted in the article, along with the very low annual population predictions. Representatives from the Australian version of the SPCA made statements to the newspaper, along with politicians and some biologists.

The biologists cited very low waterfowl populations, even though the 2022 season was set to be one of the longer seasons (It looked like mid-March to Mid-June 2022 from what I could tell). That didn't seem to help the case to sustain a hunting season.

There were also complaints of sloppy hunting practices in the article. It seems like there are a lot of duck hunters in Australia who sky-bust and leave wounded birds, just like I've seen here in NC.

ugh...I hope they get things under control.
 
Joe, Unfortunately some of that is true. Or was several years back. There was a time, largely before I first went down in 2002, that many viewed duck hunting as a camp out, vast amount of beer drinking, and worst of all a "if it flies it dies" attitude. That meant some shooters would shoot any species of bird that happened by. Over the past 20 or so years, that sort of behavior has become isolated. Much of the reduction of the mindless actions was due to the hard work of Field & Game, the sportsman's organization. To a degree, the bad actors quit shooting and the rest that were left were core sportsmen, especially the duck hunters. As for reports of duck numbers, some government agencies have anti hunters in their ranks. A prime example is the current 2023 duck season in Victoria and South Australia. Due very wet conditions the duck hatches were very good. The various chapters of Field & Game always carry out pre-season duck counts. Their counts showed that the duck population was higher in Victoria than it has been in years. Yet the public was told that the numbers were low, an absolute lie. As a result the 2023 season in Victoria was the shortest on record, lasting only about a month and a half (it that.) The bag limit was four ducks per day, where it was generally 7. In summary, or at least from my view point, a lot of very good guys are facing a grim future. Those guys are exactly the same types that post on this page, like yourself. Best, Worth
 
It will happen in Canada first, when it happens there then we will still have some time.
 
tod osier said:
It will happen in Canada first, when it happens there then we will still have some time.
Click to expand...

I think Manitoba guides deserve it and should be entered into a restrictive lottery to hunt here :)

Eric
 
We must band together to preserve our hunting privileges. One way of doing this is to respect our natural resources. Pick up your spent shells and leave the area where you hunted free of your garbage. Try not to give the anti-hunters any ammunition to use against us.
 
Australia is a very different place with very different attitudes on many things. Look at how they handled covid, stayed in their homes for basically a couple of years, can't do this, and New Zealand also-much worse than the US, which was bad. That was indicative of the attitudes of their respective populations toward what freedom is to them. The societies in the US and Australia, while having much in common, are vastly different.
 
I completely agree, hard to compare attitudes and/or overall public opinion about certain "freedoms", conservation, hunting, etc.., in our two countries.
At this point in time, I see hunting in this country as overall more secure than I thought it would be 25 years ago.
Sure there are some instances and places where access restrictions, rules and urban (and rural) sprawl have impacted hunting.
But overall, as far as our right to hunt, we are still in a pretty good place.
 
I have seen videos of the harassment that the hunters have had to deal with in Australia. The loony karen crowd in full force.

I was always surprised that these dummies would go out and get into it physically with armed hunters. It seemed like a really stupid thing to do.

We haven't reached that level here in the States yet, but I can see it coming to that point in places that are close to blue cities.
 
Todd, Many of the antis in Australia are very aggressive. In 2006 I had an encounter with a large bunch. A small group of us were going to shoot a red gum swamp. (very much like flooded oaks in Arkansas) When we arrived at the place we planned to park the rigs about 60 antis were waiting for us. As we put on chest waders etc. they screamed obscenities at us. (when we returned from hunting we found they had also written the obscenities on our cars and trucks) The bunch was largely comprised of teens and those in their early 20s, with women in the majority. Most had horns or drums in order to try to flair the ducks. They split into small bunches to follow us out into the swamp. I had one walking behind me, blowing horns or banging on drums. I found a clearing and floating log to sit on. About the time I sat down a mob of kangaroos came splashing past me. That was interesting because I didn't know that they lived in standing water areas. My bunch of antis found another log to sit on. I can't remember now, but think they weren't allowed to get within 50 yards of a shooter (?) It was a slow morning, with no ducks passing around me. So I tried to start a conversation with them. I told them about the work U.S. duck hunters did with waterfowl, and stressed it benefited scores of other wildlife species. Then I explained the work projects that Field & Game were engaged with in Australia. They showed little or no interest in this. Then a single gray teal came rocketing past. I made, for me, a remarkable snap shot and folded it. They erupted. One attractive young woman in particular screamed that I was a miserable bastard. When they sat down again they had their backs toward me. I tried to start a conversation again and they beat the drums and blew the horns. I gave up and we all sat for about 15 minutes or so in silence. After that time period I took the safety off, fired straight up in the air and yelled WATCH OUT! at the top of my lungs. It was wonderful. They all jumped up like frogs off a log and turned to me with very concerned looks on their faces. I had mention earlier that it wouldn't be wise to try what they were doing with duck hunters in the U.S. Perhaps because I was from the U.S. they decided to leave me alone, and walked away blowing horns and banging drums and calling me a long list of names. Later, after the morning was over, we were checked by a wildlife enforcement officer. Apparently the bunch had told him I shot in their direction. When I explained what had really happened and why I had done it, he just smiled. He even helped wipe off some of the trash written on our rigs. While my encounter was humorous, others have been far more serious. Such as slashed tires, sunken boats, fist fights etc. Our duck hunting buddies down there are facing some near nightmare happenings. Best, Worth
 
Well Worth, that doesn't sound much like a fun duck hunting outing. Is most of the hunting done in publicly delineated land for which there are limited access points? It seems your story describes a place that these people know people are likely to hunt in, unless they had a deep cover agent within your group. Which seems rather unlikely.
I have not heard near as much about that kind of thing for several years here in the states, but I do know it goes on. But it doesn't seem to resonate within a broad swath of the population here. Shoot, in NJ, and especially northern NJ, people are more concerned with deer eating their expensive landscaping jobs than with people hunting them. And our governor, Phil Murphy, part of whose original coalition was animal rights groups, recently dropped the prohibition on bear hunting he was able to get put into the game code when up for review right after he was originally elected. Perhaps the fact he was barely re-elected had something to do with it. There was never a big push against bear hunting here in NJ. But there was a big push against bear problems following the closing of the season. And so bear hunting is back in NJ without a whimper. As a matter of fact, I don't even remember any protests about it (although I am sure there was one somewhere) after bear hunting was re-instated.
But then there was the twisted teenager and went out and shot 3 cubs this past year. Those cubs were commonly at a friend of mines house prior to that. Incidents like that are the real threat that we face, and being compared to people like that.
I have found that people that don't hunt almost always ask me what I do with the ducks. The answer, of course, is that I eat them. People have no problem with that, they want to know the animal was used like the chicken they might have had recently. I also worried more about 25 years ago than I do now. But I'm not pollyannish about it either.
 

A very good friend and his wife were recruited while in college to go and teach in Australia. During the early 1970's, they did such things and the package offer to go was very attractive. Long story short. When they got there they sent me all things concerning waterfowl and waterfowl hunting. I still have the large poster they sent with all the waterfowl of Australia. A beautiful poster, it hung in my homes for many years.

Knowing that I was very waterfowl focused (obsessed) they did their best to try and entice me to move to Australia and teach as well. By then I had already been to Canada and some other flyways in the USA. My thought was why leave waterfowl to go find waterfowl so far away? Made no sense to me then, nor now. I'm mighty fine right here in North America.

Last fall they both came back to western PA where we grew up. We went back and forth by phone and text as he visited places that we both knew while growing up. " Can you come down and visit us for a few days?" I duuno, lots of hunting seasons in now and time to fill the freezer before deep snow time. "I understand you've not changed at all." Mentally no, physically yes... So I gotta make the best of it while I can. During his stay he would inform me of his relatives in PA, and their hunting success & failure and inquire about my success & failure.

We never got around to talking about hunting in Australia.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top