A quick Rant...

[stickslinger]

I was at the archery club (target) the other day and talking with a few guys who are just starting out, We got to talking about bows and one guy was very keen to hear about my hunting bow.
We got to talking about what species there are locally to hunt, and I explained that while I live in Perth most of my hunting will happen when I go home annually to the States on Whitetail and Moose.
Then the conversation turned a bit sour as this guy told me his plans to take his new 24# bow out to shoot a few Roo’s.
Hey was “only at the club to get a handle on the basics” and then it was Roo hunting season as far as he was concerned.
I tried in vain to explain that his poundage bow would likely only wound a Roo that would hop off and die a terrible death…and why a Roo anyway? Do you intent to eat it?
No, he simply felt like shooting stuff.
It quickly became apparent that its people like this that have given hunting a bad name.
Personally I only intent to hunt animals that I have every intention of eating, and further after i've mastered my shot, and i'm confident that "if" i take a shot..it will be a humane kill shot from an appropriate poundage bow.; I’m totally against animal cruelty (that includes “manufactured meat” i.e. confining critters to a tiny cage for their entire life.)
Hunting to me is a “fair way” to put meat on the table, and its ethics are more important to me then the kill. For me, pitting skill against nature is the closest thing to how our ancestors lived and thrived and I’m proud of that heritage.
The point being that while we can teach people to shoot a bow, perhaps we ought to be teaching them “hunting ethics” first…before they ruin this for the rest of us who are trying to do the right thing.

[bigbob]

Have to agree with every thing you say.And the worst of it is one bit of bad publicity from idiots like that can undo years of trying to educate the general public to ethical hunting and the absolute need for discretionary culling of feral animals.

[stickslinger]

I grew up in Minnesota, which was very hunter friendly. I started Deer hunting at twelve.
A major part in getting to do this, was the education we went through. both on ethics and marksmanship.
We do have more restricions over there, Hunting has a "Season", weapons have to be registered, and you have to pass a marksmanship test before getting the "Okay" to Hunt.
for the most part people respect these laws and in turn the "general public" respect the hunter. We know fair well that if you hunt out of season, or you do the wrong thing, you stand to lose you hunting lic. all together.

In Australia its already on its way to being banned so Average Joe, does not care if he ruins it for everyone...what has he got to lose?

I truly think that if Australia could adopt the "American model" of hunting, with full training required before getting a licence both ethically and in weapon proficency, we might have a chance. but as long as we give a bow to anyone to do as they please...we are on borrowed time.

Just my opinion.

[bigbob]

NSW already has a game licence before one can hunt and the applicant has to pass certain requirements before it is issued. also they have a very active game council which liaises with Government desk jockies to hopefully protect our rights. That state is well ahead of others. ABA as an archery body also has a proficiency certificate which must be attained before archers can claim game , but I totally agree with you regards the very Superior system operating in the States.Fred Bear had a big hand in what you have today there as many years ago he petitioned Governments to include a levy on all archery items sold to go toward the management of game animals. He copped a heck of a lot of flack at the time but the result is now you have an enviable and demonstrable game management in operation there.

[stickslinger]

NSW already has a game licence before one can hunt and the applicant has to pass certain requirements before it is issued. also they have a very active game council which liaises with Government desk jockies to hopefully protect our rights. That state is well ahead of others. ABA as an archery body also has a proficiency certificate which must be attained before archers can claim game , but I totally agree with you regards the very Superior system operating in the States.Fred Bear had a big hand in what you have today there as many years ago he petitioned Governments to include a levy on all archery items sold to go toward the management of game animals. He copped a heck of a lot of flack at the time but the result is now you have an enviable and demonstrable game management in operation there.

Thats good to hear,
I wish WA was as proactive as NSW, over here they reckon bowhunting is in-humane...but thet are happy to leave 1080 everywhere. a good buddy of mine lost his dog to 1080 last week after swallowing a bait. and i can tell you it's a lot more in-humane the a well placed arrow, but thats another story...

And on Fred Bear: that guy's my hero!!

[Fanto]

what a knucklehead. aside from the fact that its illegal, its immoral with a 24lb bow I would be very very careful shooting a rabbit with that poundage its borderline for bunnies in my book.

give his name to national parks and wildlife or the relevant authority in WA so that when they catch him with his toy bow in a national park they will have a prior record of his intention to use it to illegally poach native wildlife.

cheers

[Dennis La Varenne]

I agree with your sentiments entirely stickslinger, My first inclination would be to tell that coot to clear off elsewhere, but with his attitude, archery and bowhunting would morally be partly responsible for not doing its utmost to change his mind in the direction of something more aligned to common decency and respect for other life forms. Sadly, when confronted with borderline psychopaths like this, we have a real struggle on our hands and even if we teach them the correct way, there is no guarantee that he will still behave decently in the field. This kind of problem is a real hard one - harder than at first seems.

This kind of attitude always brings back to mind an article published in a now defunct bowhunting magazine where the main protagonist who was the author quite happily declared as if it was perfectly normal and reasonable to spine shoot feral pigs and go out to collect them later BECAUSE IT WAS TOO HOT TO GO AFTER EACH ONE OF THEM. The monstrousness of his behaviour arises from the fact that he was marksman enough to have humanely dispatched each of these pigs quite easily. He was marksman enough spine shoot them accurately. His clear intention was to keep them wounded and alive for his convenience until it suited him to put them down.

When myself and some others protested to the editor about his monstrous behaviour which he cooly described in his article, he defended him, and the author had somebody write in against out complaints claiming he was a Veterinary Surgeon who found no cruelty in this man's actions, never mind what the Animal Cruelty Acts of all the Eastern seaboard States said to the contrary in very clear and unequivocal terms.

That author, like your protagonist, was every bit as uncaring and completely unaffected by his deliberate wounding of those pigs which he premeditatedly intended should remain alive and crippled until he could be bothered going out to dispatch them at a more convenient (to him) time.

The monstrousness of the behaviour and unrepentant, unfeeling and uncaring attitute just took my breath away.

In Australia, it is not legal to kill kangaroos using a bow and arrows in any jurisdiction. That is something I have gone into quite deeply on another project. As Fanto suggests, if he remains unrepentant and stupidly stubborn in his attitude, I would certainly pass his details on to the National Parks people or more importantly, the Police. If he will not listen to reason, then our only self-interested and protective recourse is to lag the mongrel in. We Australians despise lagging and it is only a very last resort when all else fails. That coot must be brought to understand that he WILL be held accountable if he proceeds.

None of us deserves the consequences of his behaviour and we must not allow it to happen if we possibly can.

[stickslinger]

Thanks all for your comments.

I left the club feeling sick after that conversation at the weekend.
It's good to know i'm not alone in my thinking.

[wishsong]

a turd like that declaring openly his intention not only to break the law but to do so so inhumanely ... ?

I'd call the cops on him .....

I say this purely in self preservation and self interest ... I love archery and have a lifelong passionate love of the outdoors that combined with bowhunting keeps me sane ....... and idiots like that will have it taken away from me ...

another photo in the paper of a native species with an arrow hanging out of his neck bouncing through the local shopping centre , alongside the inherent lack of respect for the animal ?

I'd call the cops , tell everyone at the club etc etc .......

Dickheads .

[stickslinger]

I’m going to have another chat to this guy this weekend.
In his case, I think “ignorance” had a big part to play. I do accept that a minority are out there deliberately doing the wrong thing.
But the fact that “information” and “hunting” experience are so hard to come by over here, I think people are trying to "work things out for themselves"... (sometimes missing the mark).
I don’t want to put this guys off just yet until I can try to show him things from another angle and get to the root of his intentions. If you're “killing things for the sake of killing things” Then if got a real issue with it.
But I don’t want to lose a potential newbie to this lifestyle because he’s trying to work it out for himself and is not informed on hunting etiquette.

Will post my progress next week.

[Dennis La Varenne]

Stickslinger,

Most decent of you. I hope you do get somewhere with this bloke. If not, then notify Police with his vehicle rego. The rest of us will end up wearing his slung mud.

[looseplucker]

Stickslinger

I endorse what Dennis has said - When the balloon went up in WA a couple of years ago about the bloke being prosecuted for shooting the horse out at Norseman (and filmed himself kicking it) the WA Police Minister started making a lot of noise about licencing. As part of the lobbying process I got in touch with the Minister's office and spoke to his Senior Advisor about the issues. He said that while the footage was bad enough, the major problem they were having at the time were people fanging around on quad-bikes and shooting at kangaroos with bows - and they were under a lot of pressure to do something about that.

So apart from the fact that targetting natives with a bow is illegal, it was a hot button topic in WA (and has been in a lot of other places around Australia).

For the good of the majority, do whatever you can to stop this bloke and if it means dobbing him in, then go for it.

[Fanto]

There seem to be two camps of extremists in australia. The first lot are idoits who take pot shots at roo's:

http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/articl ... -news.html

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victor ... 5713801707

the second mob are the self procalimed environmentalists (even though they dont seem to have a clue whats in our environment or how to protect it) they actually seem to believe Kangaroo numbers have crashed.

http://destinationaustralia-nothanks.com/Bad_News.html

We have good laws in this country and, in a strange way, are fortunate that we are able to devote our hunting to feral pest species.

The important thing is to bring the idiots into line, into the fold- or else ostricise them and as a last resort , alert the authorities to them. If they act like mongrels then we are all a bunch of mongrels in the publics eyes.