I have just returned from a few weeks out in western NSW and northern Victoria to find the hunting in NSW National Parks and Nature Reserves to be a well ploughed field on B-A. Two anecdotes from my own sojourn may be apposite.
While drifting around Nombinnie/Round Hill I chanced upon a Malleefowl crossing a road. I eased up to the birds crossing point and struggled through the mud following its tracks for a short distance. Its long low form and plumage blends well with the mallee and triodia and at a short range would make a tempting proxy for a medium size mammal. Nombinnie is one of the seventy six parks and reserves scheduled for hunting.
In Barmah Forest NP in Victoria on the Friday before the long weekend I stopped to follow a few robins on the side of a dirt road – binoculars in hand. A 4×4 tray top cruised slowly by replete with hunting dogs in cage and armory. The passenger yelled “Ya alright, (it clearly wasn’t a question)if ya lookin’ for possums there’s three back there with bullets in their heads (expletives deleted)”. This was followed with the requisite spinning of wheels followed by a slow cruise off maintaining visual in the rearview/gun sights. Three o’clock in the afternoon is an unusual time to be possum spotting/shooting I thought but maybe things are different in Mexico. I saw literally hundreds of such vehicles streaming out of Melbourne the following day.
Chris Lloyd
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Hmmm… There’s certainly not supposed to be any recreational shooting in National Parks in Victoria – so your rednecks in the ute were definitely rogues. I suspect the reason you saw so many hunter-types streaming from Melbourne last Friday is that this long weekend just gone was the closing weekend of duck-hunting season in Victoria (thankfully).
Paul Dodd Docklands, Victoria
Didn’t someone say recently that most recreational hunters “have an environmental conscience and know the animals of the bush far better than most city greenies”? The originator of the above statement still hasn’t responded to us with a statistical proof for that.
Yes, my cynicism here is intended.
Nikolas
P.S. … and yes, I personally believe (but have no statistical proof either) that most recreational hunters cannot tell a Malleefowl from a Feral Pig.
Would these permits then be termed as Ferals hunting Ferals………….?!! Peter Madvig
I’ve managed to stay out of this debate until now. Chris’ anecdote reminds me of a similar experience that a few us from the Australian National University had in Namadgi NP, Brindabella Range in 1988. The same sort of setup – hunting dogs and armory in the back of the ute, hunters and beer cans in the vehicle’s cabin. The ANU group was in the national park mist-netting birds as part of a long-term banding project at Moonlight Hollow. Some of you will know the site and have participated in the bird banding project. After a brief interchange between the hunters and bird banders (similar in nature to Chris’ encounter), the ute sped off down the track (yes, wheels spinning too), clipping the guy ropes of the mist net poles, bringing down every single mist net (400 m of mist nets) along the side of the track. The ute continued without stopping (I’m not sure the driver was even aware of what he had done), the bird banding group spent the next few days untangling the twigs, leaves and other garbage from the nets and, where possible, repairing the nets.
Let’s hope that the hunters that Chris and I have experienced are not representative of those who will be let loose in our national parks.
Stephen Ambrose Ryde NSW