Yet another duck shooting season has been called in Victoria – but some truth-telling changes have been made.
Pacific Black Duck (Anas superciliosa)
1/1000, f/5.6, ISO 800
Pacific Black Ducks are the iconic ducks that frequent ponds, lakes and wetlands. Just this week I watched young children feeding blackies at a local park, and they were all using proper duck food pellets. It was a blissful childhood scene, the kind that I’m sure many of us remember. It is far from the scenes that will mar our waterways in the coming months.
The length of the 2018 season (twelve weeks) and the bag limit (ten birds per shooter, per day) have remained the same. As in some previous years, the Australasian Shoveler (Blue-winged Shoveler) is not supposed to be shot. Seven native species can legally be shot, Pacific Black Duck, Australian Wood Duck (Maned Duck), Australian Shelduck (Mountain Duck), Chestnut Teal, Grey Teal, Pink-eared Duck and Hardhead – no non-native species are on the list.
Opening day is on Saturday 17th March, and the changes begin here. The Game Management Authority (GMA) announced that shooting will commence at 9am on opening Saturday and 8am on the Sunday. During the season shooting usually starts half an hour before sunrise and continues until half an hour after sunset. It’s obvious that identifying birds in such low light is ridiculously difficult, and that identifying specific species in a mixed flock of waterbirds would be virtually impossible – no wonder so many protected species are killed and maimed.
Opening weekend gets more publicity than other days in the season and last year the public got to hear about the blatant disregard for rules and the wanton killing perpetuated by many shooters – they behaved this way with the press and enforcement agencies on site so one can only imagine how they behave on multitudes of isolated wetlands across the state. The massacre at Koorangie State Game Reserve was sickening. Shooting began well before sunrise and many hundreds of dead and injured birds were left floating in the water and hiding among the reeds. Brian Hine, GMA Chairperson, said, ‘Last year’s opening weekend saw some hunters engage in entirely unacceptable behaviour including early shooting, shooting protected species and failing to retrieve shot birds.’
Truth-telling changes: birds cannot be properly identified in the dark, many shooters aren’t ‘responsible’, protected species are shot, many ducks are shot and wasted.
Pacific Black Duck (Anas superciliosa)
1/640, f/7.1, ISO 400
I had to share the image above as it looks as though this blackie is shedding a tear. I’ve heard a lot over the years about it being inappropriate to think about animals anthropomorphically but the more time I spend with nature the more appropriate it becomes. Animals want the same as us, food and shelter, and often company. I’ve seen them fight fiercely to protect their young and grieve when a partner loses its life. Though having said that, I’m not suggesting that this bird is actually crying (just in case any shooters accidentally read this post and give me a hard time about it).
Under the heading ‘New regulations’ the GMA says that ‘Hunters will now be required to retrieve all game ducks they shoot and harvest and will be required to at least salvage the breast meat from a duck to ensure that harvested game is not wasted’. Duck rescuers found more than 1200 dead birds abandoned at Koorangie.
Truth-telling changes: official acknowledgement that shooters don’t always retrieve birds they shoot and some ducks are shot and ‘wasted’ and that others are killed for a minuscule amount of breast meat.
The pass mark for the Waterfowl Identification Test will be increased to 85% from next month but as the test continuing to be totally unrepresentative of conditions in the field, it’s hardly reassuring.
The Field and Game Association chairperson, Bill Paterson, is upset about the changes and thinks that Australasian Shovelers should still be on the list. This is despite Professor Kingsford’s aerial survey results showing that, ‘Most game species abundances were well below long term averages, in some cases by an order of magnitude’.
Sigh. How can we be so cruel to our wildlife?
Australian Wood Duck (Maned Duck) (Chenonetta jubata)
1/640, f/5.6, ISO 3200
To finish on a happier note, many thanks to everyone who speaks out against this abhorrence. Over the past few years I’ve noticed that many more people are willing to be heard. I was blocked from a major birding facebook page for sharing one of the Season of Shame posts – I don’t understand how people can profess to love nature but condone the shooting of 100,000s of native waterbirds. Now I’m seeing it discussed much more openly in social media.
So, thank you for caring
Happy birding
Kim
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