Let’s be clear about this and stop pussyfooting around, please: anyone who shoots a swan or an avocet – an avocet, for God’s sake! – in or out of duck shooting season doesn’t need more stringent ID testing; they need to be in the clink. Now, that might sound like an over-reaction – OK, it is an overreaction- but if half of what is supposed to have happened at Boort is true, the apologist rhetoric about birders and hunters working together for conservation doesn’t sit terribly well with me. Stop kidding yourselves folks; we’re not talking about a group that cares one whit about wildlife, we’re talking about a bunch of rednecks, plain and simple. I acknowledge that not all hunters are so indiscriminate, but the fact is if this had happened under the Bracks or even the Brumby governments a scandal such as this (and it is a scandal) would have probably been the tipping point that would have seen duck hunting finally banned in Victoria. As it is, the fact that it’s happened under a conservative regime at a time when the print media is either unwilling or unable to commit the required investigative resources to tell the full story will probably save it for a decade longer. More’s the pity.
Andrew
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