My personal submission to the Select Committee on Victoria's Recreational Native Bird Hunting ArrangementsThe Victorian government is holding an "inquiry" into game bird hunting and is presently seeking submissions from interested parties. I encourage anyone with a viewpoint to make a submission here. It doesn't have to be long. It just has to be heartfelt. My personal views are expressed below. My submission is in. Where's yours? ![]() I grew up in the UK and hunted ducks and geese and other gamebirds as a student to supplement my meagre diet. Emigrating to Australia in 1990, game bird hunting for ducks and quail are a huge part of my way of life still. I currently own two bird dogs, a retriever and a pointer, and have spent 100s of hours training them specifically to help me hunt game birds. My last three dogs were also bird dogs for the same purpose. My kids have hunted with me, making many happy memories. I own 4 boats of different types and sizes and a 4x4 vehicle. Three of these boats I often used for duck hunting. Hunting ducks and geese is in my cultural background. It is my family tradition. I have no doubt that my ancestors, although of Saxon/Norse/Norman/Celtic heritage, have hunted ducks, geese and other gamebirds for as many generations as you can count. I lived in NSW for six years and hunted ducks there until it was banned in 1995. Not being able to hunt ducks in NSW was a key factor in me relocating my family to Victoria in 1997. I have been a licensed recreational duck hunter for 26-years since I moved to Victoria in 1997, each year I have purchased a Game Licence, and every year I have hunted ducks. I have also occasionally purchased licences from the Northern Territory, Tasmania and South Australia and hunted ducks in those jurisdictions. In recent years it has been very difficult to plan holidays around duck-season. The lack of surety of having a season until the “last minute” means that family life is often disrupted, and plans put on hold. Purchases of new equipment for hunting have been delayed or abandoned this year and last year due to this uncertainty. In the last three State elections I have carefully voted “below the line” for candidates offering support for recreational hunting and refuse to vote for parties or candidates that won’t off that support. I generally hunt alone. Using a set of duck decoys and calls to lure game ducks into range. I speak ducklish, and can often persuade passing ducks to pay me a visit with a few well chosen “quacks”. My young dog, “Grizz”, is hunting her second season with me this year. She loves to go hunting and sits quietly with me while we wait for ducks. She has proudly and efficiently retrieved at least 20 ducks so far. My old dog, “Flo” is an expert at finding and pointing Stubble quail. She is a thirteen-year-old canine senior-citizen, yet to see her with quail scent in her nostrils she floats across the paddocks like liquid smoke. She lives for it—like me. I always have carried out my duck hunting by the rules, despite some of those rules recently being designed seemingly to persecute and frustrate the licensed recreational hunter with little apparent justification. The inconsistent, last-minute, overbearing nature of these regulations seems like a symptom of poor government to me and many others. Wildlife management should be driven by scientific principles of population management rather than emotional likes-and-dislikes of any sector of society. This includes management of the sustainable use of wildlife such as game ducks and quail, as well as management for control of pest wildlife. Wildlife science and game management have a proven record in managing the population recovery and ongoing management of many animal populations around the world, particularly in N. America Africa and Europe. Australia, including Victoria and South Australia should adopt these same principles. Let’s use the best available science to guide the sustainable use of wild game bird populations, as we do our wild fisheries resources. I have some experience with game bird hunting in South Australia and Tasmania where I enjoyed the hunting. Both these States offered more generous bag-limits and season durations than Victoria in the years I hunted there. I had also planned a goose and duck hunting holiday in the NT which was cancelled due to covid-19 restrictions in 2021. I have hunted ducks on the rice crops in NSW under a pest mitigation licence where there were effectively no bag-limits, and hunting could start as early and finish as late as you like (even under spotlights at night where the ducks are blinded and helpless). I felt however, that this de-valued the ducks. Treating them as “pests” made for lower personal satisfaction with my harvest. I estimate that I would typically spend $500-$2000 per year on the expenses associated with hunting ducks in Victoria. Perhaps more if interstate travel is involved. However, in the future I know I could rarely afford to travel overseas to hunt ducks if it was no-longer available in Australia. During a typical “full season” year I would probably hunt ducks once per week and quail, maybe 2-3 times a season, usually after the duck season finished. In recent years when Victorian duck season has been restricted in length I hunt more frequently. This year I have hunted three times per week so far, but I am forced to avoid weekends on my local wetland as I am fearful of meeting masked eco-terrorists, who will try to steal my ducks and vandalise my decoys and equipment. It sounds silly when you write that down, but it’s true and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I have been a Field & Game Australia (FGA) member for many years and have witnessed and been personally involved in conservation efforts by hunters such as revegetation and tree planting, litter collection, citizen science surveys and wildlife research such as duck banding. I am saddened and amazed by the apparent lack of participation in such activities by those who seek to “ban duck hunting”. Are they frightened there will be more ducks? FGA are passionate about habitat management for waterbirds and their duck nest-box and “hen-house” programs undoubtably contribute thousands of ducklings, as well as baby parrots and other birds each year. All around Victoria there are hundreds of wetlands where I have seen nest boxes stamped with the FGA logo. Its an outstanding effort for conservation. I have a small group of friends that I occasionally go duck and quail hunting with, or even just swap hunting stories with. Hunting is the only thing we have in common, and I feel that I would lose these social connections if hunting was no longer allowed. Like most 50+ year-old men, I would struggle to maintain these good friendships and probably become more socially isolated without game bird hunting. As we all know, social isolation has real physical and mental health consequences. Duck and quail hunting are activities that can be done with a moderate fitness level into a reasonable old age. Replacing duck and quail hunting with deer hunting has a limited appeal as I get older and fitness declines. I truly worry for the mental health consequences of 25,000 Victorians if duck and quail hunting is taken away from them. I wear camouflage when hunting ducks to ensure I can get within range and harvest them cleanly and efficiently. It’s an “honest deception” employed by most predators in the natural world. It seems clear to me that most of anti-duck hunting activists are also wearing camouflage. They wear the camouflage of concern for the welfare of individual “poor baby ducks” when underneath they are simply against any form of killing animals and against guns and maybe against 50+ year-old men. Well, in the real world—in my world; animals are killed in every corner of the planet in every moment of the day so that other animals, including humans, can live. It’s called ecology and this planet runs on it. Gun ownership is quite rightly, highly regulated in Australia, but as a licensed gun owner I am “certified” to be of good character, sane and have a no criminal record which is more than can be said for many. I hunt ducks and quail because I enjoy every aspect of the hunting. The challenge in finding them, the use of decoys and calls to fool ducks into coming close enough, the thrill of seeing a galloping pointing dog jam on the brakes and freeze in that posture with foot raised and snout stretching out to a quail hiding in the grass, then the marksmanship-skill in killing them, then the satisfaction in preparing them as delicious wild food for my family and friends to enjoy. At the end of the day, I don’t hunt ducks or quail to kill them, but I must kill them to have hunted them. If you don’t enjoy hunting, then you will never understand – but please don’t let that lack of understanding sour your opinion of the value of game bird hunting to those of us who do it. Long-live duck hunting everywhere, including Victoria!
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Paul brownI am a professional freshwater ecologist and principal of a consulting business Fisheries and Wetlands Consulting. Archives
April 2024
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