DUCK HUNTING SEASON 2005: Confessions of a Unrepentant Duck-Shooter

By Claudette Vaughan

Q.    Are you looking forward to the 2005 Ducking Hunting season?

A.    Yeah.  Very much so.

Q.  Part of the community’s perception of duck shooting is there aren’t that many ducks left now on the Wetlands.   Has that been your experience?

A.    Well that’s not the communities’ perception.

Q.  Really?

A.  No.

Q.  It’s certainly the way the media has portrayed it.

A.  Only some members of the media have repeated those accusations from animal welfare/rights groups, or the RSPCA, or Animal Liberation.   But the general public doesn’t perceive that at all.   As a matter of fact,  in NSW  and Western Australia,  the permits that are issued for pest destruction on ducks are phenomenally more than the number of ducks that were ever shot during opening and closing season.   So that’s just not true.  There’s small sections of the media misrepresenting the truth by just repeating the claims of the anti-hunting lobby.

Q.  Do you think recreational duck shooting has an image crisis?

A.  No.  Overseas research has shown it doesn’t have an image crisis.  Again this is a tactic of anti-hunting groups to try and create or promote an image crisis.  The research we have done and certainly the research done by organisations overseas doesn’t indicate that.  E.g., the new campaign on the mulesing of sheep.  They continue to purport that that activity and the activity of live sheep export has a bad image but the research by farming organisations just don’t hold that up.  It’s just a media tactic.

Q.  How has gun control effected you the shooters and Feather and Fur magazine over the years?

A.  Not at all.  The gun control that took place was the abolition of two types of firearms and everyone just went out and brought brand new up-to-date guns.   The gun control that took place actually put better and more modern firearms in the hands of hunters.  They all got paid for the guns that were taken off them and some of these guns were invented in 1908, and they were able to get a cheque and replace them with brand new guns.

Q.  So this was the government buy back after the Port Arthur issue?

A.  Yeah.  The chap down there went crazy with a military rifle.  In the legislation that went through Australia wide,  and already existed in Victoria since 1986,  they banned military rifles.  Bureaucrats being what they were,  they left a couple of words off and they ended up banning all self-loading firearms including shotguns and 22’s.  Now those sporting shot-guns that they got banned, they got caught up in the attempt to ban military fire-arms Australia-wide, so self-loading had to be handed in by the duck and rabbit hunters, they all got paid for it, gratefully paid by the tax payers of Australia – and we were all able to order brand spanking new shot-guns by the very same tax payers.

Q.  What is the official perception of duck shooters from Steve Bracks?  Is he pro-duck shooting?   How have you found handling the political side of things?

A.  Mr Bracks and his government and his spokesperson has said they are not anti-hunting and they have no intention of banning  duck-hunting.  It’s a legitimate activity participated in rural Victoria so the evidence is there.  They have declared a season this year,  there was a season last year,  but there wasn’t one the year before and that’s because of the drought.  Every year that the Brack government has been in power, there has been a season, except that one time I mentioned due to drought.

Q.  Do you think Laurie Levy’s campaign against duck shooters has been successful?

A.  No because duck-hunting continues and Laurie Levy is a real no-where man sitting in a no-where land.  He’s yesterday’s story.  Just have to look past his press releases and even that the media that were there at his Duck Opening Demonstration.   If you look at their cars that are there half of them are interstate number plates.  They get a mini bus from South Australia,  for crying out loud,  to boost their numbers.  Mr Levy continues to say that the majority of the people want this banned and that’s just a lie and he’s going to have hundreds of demonstrators out there on the wetland.  Just have a look.  The man can’t raise 40 people anymore.

Q.  What about the shooters coming from afar for this years Victorian duck season?  Have they been turned off by anti-ducking shooting campaigns?  Are they heading to Tasmania instead?

A.  No.  Not in the least.  As a matter of fact we’ve got Tasmanians, Queenslanders and Western Australians coming to Victoria this year.  The drought has been a problem.  You can’t go fishing if there is no water in the river and we’ve had the situation where we have had the worse drought in history and people have not been able to hunt on their favourite wetlands.

We’ll all be heading over to South Australia then back to Victoria for the beginning of the season.  The licence uptake this year is greater but also the new applicants that have been doing their exams across the State is five–fold to what it was last year.  Duck shooting is a sport that’s actually increasing in numbers, not diminishing.

Q.  What is the appeal of duck-shooting.  Is it being at one with nature, or the camaraderie of being with like-minded people?

A.  It’s all of those things.   To answer that question,  you’d have to answer the question: What is the appeal of fishing?  It’s no different.  It’s away from home.  It’s in the out-doors.  It’s not staying in motels.  It’s out camping under the gum trees and sitting around the campfire talking with friends you haven’t seen for years.  You know we all went to school together 30 years ago and now we’re spread all over Australia.  This brings us all back together once a year.  The average bag of ducks is very small.

Q.  What’s the catch these days?

A.  The limit this year is 5 throughout the season plus an extra 5 wood duck on the first two days.  So on the first 2 days you can take 10.

Q.  Are they being cleanly shot because there is that perception from the public asking, Are they being cleanly shot?

A.  They certainly are.  As much as possible.  If you don’t try and cleanly shoot the bird,  you’re not going to get the bird.  The ammo and the firearms of today makes the job a heck of a lot easier.

Q.  I read a couple of years ago that more women are attracted to hunt ducks than ever before.  Is that true? 

A.  Without a doubt.   I’ve done classes this year, preparing people for their exams, and I’d say about 15% of them were women this year.   That’s up from what it was 10 years ago.

Q.  So I believe you have had a ballistic expert out there this year and his name is Tom Roster from America.   What did he have to say?

A.  Tom Roster conducts educational programs right across the world.

Q.  How does Australia compare to the other countries?

A. Well, he made the comment that the Australian shooters were well above average compared to the rest of the world.  That caused us a bit of pride.  We are above average shots and we can judge distances and we certainly have a above average knowledge of shot-gun ballistics and how to pick your types of ammunition and guns and type of ducks that you’re hunting.  So that was good.

Q.  What about America?  Are they looking at Australian performances to set the standard?

A.  The whole world, the hunters, farmers and fishing as well, is extremely concerned about the animal rights movement in Australia.  They are pouring tens of millions of dollars into Australia,  backing animal rights movements.  That’s why we’ve seen PETA move into Australia recently.  That’s why you’ve seen the Humane Society move into Australia.  These organisations  have big offices in Sydney and Brisbane.  That’s why Greenpeace is putting money behind it.  Australia has become a very urbanised,  pacifist, anti-rural community and the animal rights movement has made huge inroads into Australia.   Have a look at farming practices that have had to be changed because of animal rights.  Have a look at the “Cities”conventions of overseas Australia is regarded as the laughing stock.  I went to a seminar once with Dr Grahame Webb,  from Darwin.  He’s the world’s expert on crocodiles.  I remember him making the statement that when the Australian representative at these conventions and commissions gets up to speak everybody in the audience gets up and leaves.  We seem to be the only country in the world that sends Afghan-clad, crew-cut  women wearing a nose ring to talk about conservation in Australia.  To reiterate,  the whole world is looking at Australia on animal rights issues.  We really have become the leading loony tunes of the world.

Q.   Lastly, please give me some quotes about your feelings on the Green Movement and Greenies in general.

A.  I just regard them as dissatisfied, purple and orange pumpkin seed and lentil eaters.  They have no interest in life.  If you have a look at the boys they certainly have never played on the local school football team.   If you have a look at the girls, they certainly never won the school beauty pageant.  They find a togetherness when they are together.  They have found a Cause and these days,  if you have a  real good look at them – and we take photos of them,  they truly are the rent-a-crowd.   The entire Victorian situation now is based in Ballarat.  We haven’t got any people in Melbourne anymore.  Like I say,  have a look at how many people they have this year,  they’ll be lucky if they number 20 people.

Q.  Well, I’ll take a good look then.

Is there anything else you’d like to add? 

A.  Well Mr Levy’s famous quote in 1985  was “Duck-hunting had 2 years to go”.  Well,  here it is.   2005 and the rains are starting to come.   The one thing that needs to be pushed [in this interview] is the amount of money that is generated by duck shooting.   Duck-hunters are tourists and spend money.  In NSW they banned recreational duck hunting which was only a 3 month season but you can hunt 12 months of the year for crocodile protection now.  What that meant was the public wetlands weren’t hunted on anymore,  it was done on private land these days.  So you take a place like west Wyong.  It costs the town one and a half million dollars in the first weekend in lost revenue.  Now the DSE here in Victoria have done research on it, that duck hunting generates 30 million into Victoria and quail hunting brings in 8 million. 

         Now half a dozen orange-haired loonies buying their pumpkin seeds to eat on the side of the swamp, or while holding up a placard demonstrating, are not the sort of people that rural communities want to visit them.  And particularly the Rural Chamber of Commerce in the Shires better wake up very quickly and make a decision whether they wish to support hunters or they wish to turn a blind eye and run the risk that these metropolitan urban dwellers eventually get a rural activity banned that they will lose from.

Q.  The perception of duck shooters are that they are testosterone, pumped up, macho men who can’t distinguish between triggering their rifle and ejaculating.