What the duck?

This article was published in Eureka Street in February 2010

We're all sick of the duck shooting argument aren't we? Year after year we see the same old television footage — a misty lake at the crack of dawn, tough men with beards and John Deere caps living out their Rambo fantasies on one side, and crusty-looking agitators with beards and hemp trousers on the other; one small group of extremists versus another.


This would all be fine except that in reality the people opposing duck hunting aren't the radicals that the media would have us believe. The people opposed to duck hunting are you and me and most of the people you know — in fact, according to a 2007 Roy Morgan poll, it's 87 per cent of Victorians, a figure spread fairly evenly among supporters of all political parties.

Putting aside for a moment the arguments of cruelty and conservation, it seems simply like a bad political move for the Victorian government to announce that the duck hunting season in 2010 will not only be longer than in 2009, but the daily bag limit will increase from three to eight.

Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia Labor governments have all banned recreational duck shooting, so there is a precedent to ban this activity on both animal welfare and environmental grounds. With less than 20,000 duck shooters registered in Victoria, why does the Victorian government pander to the shooting lobby at the expense of the vast majority?

Along with expected scenes of the limp and pathetic bodies of swans and freckled duck being laid out on the steps of Parliament House, we can also anticipate the same old argument from shooters — a bizarre and counter-intuitive claim that they are actually the most passionate of conservationists.

Their argument goes something like this — 'We rely on high duck populations in order to shoot them out of the skies for our own pleasure, hence we actually care the most about preserving their numbers'. They claim, maybe truthfully, to do some good work funding wetland conservation. But any such positive contribution is more than outweighed by the harm they cause.

There is also the old chestnut about hunters 'controlling' duck numbers. One could assume that without their important knowledge of 'game management' we would be dangerously overrun by out-of-control duck populations. When a family of mountain duck has moved into your garage, don't say you weren't warned!

You can only feel sorry for Professor Richard Kingsford, the scientist responsible for surveying bird numbers since 1983, whose work has unwittingly become the justification for the government's decision. Professor Kingsford's research has shown that duck populations have declined by 70 per cent in the past 25 years. Between 2007 and 2008 alone, he found a dramatic 60 per cent decrease in numbers.

Professor Kingsford has pointed out that, although his most recent surveys of Eastern Australia might have shown a slight increase in overall bird populations across Victoria, South Australia, NSW and Queensland combined, Victorian numbers have not necessarily increased at all during the past year.

He is also at pains to point out that only half of the duck species targeted by Victorian hunters migrate. We cannot rely on higher populations in other states conveniently flying in to repopulate our own diminishing stock.

Although some of the reduction in numbers can be attributed to factors such as drought and habitat loss, those gun-toting conservationists only add further to the pressure by killing not only target duck species but other endangered and non-target species as well.

Sure, this is not the intention of the shooters. Field and Game Australia (FGA) openly 'deplore' the killing of protected species and attribute such mistakes to mistaken identity and vandalism. In 1990 in an attempt to reduce the kill of non-target species, the Waterfowl Identification Test was introduced. In 1993, half the freckled duck population in Victoria was shot and killed. This is just part and parcel of the game. To accept duck shooting is to accept the needless deaths of protected species, no matter how unintentional they are.

FGA literature also claims that the ducks they shoot might actually die a less painful death than those who die at the 'cruel hand' of nature. I am sure that deep down most hunters do not want birds to unduly suffer. But studies of hit rates have shown that it takes the average shooter six shots to bring down a bird, and that for every 100 birds bagged, between 60 and 120 are wounded.

No matter how good a marksman an individual might be, the reality of duck shooting is that there are as many birds painfully crippled and wounded as there are birds that are killed and retrieved.

Perhaps the most compelling argument though is a basic one of need. Do we really need to shoot and kill wild ducks? These birds aren't needed for food (although some are eaten). Unlike other environmental debates, unemployment figures will barely be influenced by the demise of the recreational hunting industry.

In the end it comes down to the simple desire of a small number of mainly men who get a thrill from the kill. And while they do so, we are all paying the price for those few hours of bloodlust — humans and animals alike.

Original article at: http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=18539