Shooting Birds

[matt61]

Can anyone tell me if it is legal to shoot birds with a bow and arrow in Victoria. I have been going to have a go at the Indian miners and Starlings,them being ferals and eating my dogs food.
Thank
Matt

[jape]

Good question! We can't take ducks so I doubt it somehow.

[rossy]

it is just my opion, but i think you will find you can't hunt birds (the ones with feathers)in Vic.but you would be best asking the right people, like the DSE or Parks Victoria etc.forums aren't are always right, for the legal things .
Dickie

[gundy]

Hi Matt,

Sorry mate, thats a no no, as bad as they are at nicking the dogs food!

[jindydiver]

Hi Matt,

Sorry mate, thats a no no, as bad as they are at nicking the dogs food!

I haven't spent much time looking at Vic' law so could you guys tell me what law or regulation prohibits the taking of pest birds with a bow?

[longbowinfected]

Whilst I am not from Victoria, I am a licensed pest controller and trainer/assessor.
PROFESSIONALLY
We have major difficulty in specific trapping, baiting or shooting even if human health or OH&S issues are assessed.
Very difficult to get permits.

EVERYONE
You have a major problem in that all birds are protected/controlled by National Parks and Wildlife legislative requirements federally and I believe in mirrored legislation in each state and territory. You need permits to control birds.

The next major problem is that the RSPCA has power to act in a very serious way for what they consider to be cruel acts and if you go to court you will not win that one as they have a raft of veterinary science expertise.

If there is a public stink it tends to reflect very bad against archery in general and the person in particular.


Kevin

[gundy]

Jindy,

Victoria is very sketchy when it comes to shooting pest animals with a bow, particularly pest birds. There are no laws specifically tailored for hunting feral birds with a bow as far as I could ever ascertain, however, there are various laws and guidelines stipulating that pest birds must be taken with a specific type of gun (no bows mentioned within the tables) and there are also laws pertaining to the cruelty of animals etc and so on. A messy game.

Basically, if the law does not say that you can or can not , I would say dont do it!

I have spoken to my local DSE about such things long ago (I know one of the girls there) and when asked, she spoke to her regional manager about it. She came back and said that while the laws do not specifically outline rules for such, they would frown on it. Thats good enough for me not to do it...

[TEX]

A yowie suit and a tennis racket.

No really the best way might be an air riffle. Not sure on the laws there either.

I wonder if you can trap and relocate.

[gundy]

I like the yowie suit and racket idea

I wonder what law that would apply to?!

Our neighbor has had a MASSIVE problem with Currawongs (spelling?) and he has simply started to feed his dogs in the shed. Problem gone...and their left behinds....

[Buford]

A yowie suit and a tennis racket.

Gold!!

Indian mynahs are considered one of the most invasive pests in australia.
My fiancee used to work with a volunteer group that was running a program of trapping and euthanising these critters. It was run in conjunction with the EPA.
I would suspect that taking them with a bow, as others have said, would be out of the question.

[longbowinfected]

You need extra special licenses to trap birds, even pests.
If you want to use mist nets you need to get an even more difficult permit for breeding/collecting/professional sales and you effectively need animal handling quals / special justification......do not hold your breathe.
If you use a powered capture gun/ powered net it can come under prohibited weapons....even if powered by rubber or gas.
If you disturb not even harm any native birds you are in deep doo doo.

I have professionally shot sparrows, pigeons, mynas and sterlings as well as corellas etc under permits using a 0.25 calibre Theoban bolt action, rotary 7 shot magazine which is powered by gas. It has a laser sight. This weapon had to be specially imported from the UK. The RSPCA had to approve each site along with NPWS. If you did not take them out humanely, in one shot every time you were liable for prosecution upon complaint from any third party and people like to complain because they can.
The police cannot effectively give you permission to act in advance.
They can however act for public safety and use service ordinance to take out dive bombing Australian Ravens.
If anyone in a public place is concerned about what you might do or what you are doing it can be actionable.
If you discharge any firearm on or near a public place you are in doo doo. The old regs required you to be 2 kilometres away from public places or roads from memory in NSW [or similar].....does not allow such activity in many places in the outdoors.

I tried to get out of doing as many of these as I could. As soon as I had a doubt of any kind in my risk assessment the job was off.

Kevin

[jindydiver]

You need extra special licenses to trap birds, even pests.
Kevin

Tell me what laws these licences (to trap pest birds, not native) are issued under.
I am a member of CIMAC and we trap birds all over the ACT and have done consulting work in many places around NSW and there are no laws stopping us from trapping mynas and starlings. We have had (of course) dificulties with the RSPCA in NSW (it is run by AL people and is very militant) but there has never been any threat of procecution (for the trapping, more on that later).

Here in the ACT I trap them and I shoot them with my bow (mynas). I am not breaking any laws in doing so, but as you said, if I was to be breaking wings and having birds escape (to perhaps die some time later) I might be open to investigation and procecution from the RSPCA. Here in the ACT we can even take our trapped birds to the RSPCA depot and have them kill the birds for us, something that allows those with objection to taking personal control of the killing an avenue to still be part of the program. The RSPCA in NSW will not take the birds except at their main shelter, and have stated that if people use the method (gassing with car exhaust) used in the ACT (with RSPCA approval) then they risk being charged with cruelty to animals. It is the concidered opinion of lawyers for the group that the procecutions would likely go nowhere, but as we know the courts can be a lottery and an expensive one at that even if you walk away without a conviction.

We had some opposition to the program here in the ACT when it first started, from "bird lovers" of all people, but they soon came on board when it was made clear to them that if they support the current lack of controls on the mynas (call it being "for" mynas if you will) then they must be also supporting the local extinction of our native birds that compete with the myna for habitat. Every nest hollow used by mynas is a nest hollow denied to an Australian native.

One less myna

[matt61]

Whats CIMAC Jindy
Matt

[jindydiver]

Sorry typo

Canberra Indian Myna Action Group

http://www.indianmynaaction.org.au/

[longbowinfected]

Mick,
I think the challenge to what would and should be reasonable is werever a local species officer forms an opinion that other species might be at risk...not specifically the species you are after. It really comes from any officer's opinion as to whether harm or cruelty has happened or could happen. I think a lot of it is a scary bluff or over zealous interpretations. In most dealings I have found country officers quite different to deal with rather than city based officers.

A large number of birds can be damaged or even stressed during trapping but probably more so when handled by inexperienced people.
Why NSW NPWS tries to bait is beyond me because mynas for example are difficult to bait.
Shooting is species specific and specific to the actual pest bird in my opinion.
When you bait easy species you still have to observe and take care about non target uptake and if using soporific bait, prov.ide a warm recovery box.

it can be a nightmare and certainly not an area to be taken lightly. I expect NPWS would have a large legal section because of the inherent difficulties / huge minefield.
None of the companies that I worked for wanted to go all the way with this [live trapping]. The advice was given to them and to me via a couple of avenues. It just seemed to be too involved. The major lead was from the various people we dealt with at NPWS Hurstville head office. The section concerned dealt with vertebrate pest species [birds and possums]. On a regular basis when we wanted bird baiting permits using either narcotics or soporifics they sent out officers to assess each application at each site and they invariably gave us the same info. I stopped doing this work a fair while ago but I believe that these days the service give original permits but they get renewed via fax / rubberstamped...bit more streamlined. They seem to prefer soporifics rather than using distress inducing narcotic baits.
For a while I also acted in an advisory capacity on the ministers wildlife advisory panel and the same info was regularly presented in the same vein. The best solution would be to contact the service's senior or state pest species officer for advice.

One of the companies I worked for tried to get approval from RSPCA and NPWS to use a special pair of neck break pliers used in the UK to euthenase collected birds but they would not approve them...which I thought to be contrary to best common sense practice.
Public opinion can really turn up the heat on these issues. The number of times people [general public] get upset about bird managers pulling off heads [whilst breaking necks incorrectly or over vigorously] or head shooting birds and them falling to ground like upturned buckets of blood.

I think there is a further element with respects to collection of fauna [trapping] in international treaties as well. My wife just recently was involved in environmental / land survey aspects with bio surveys in Diploma courses at TAFE including capture, tagging of birds and the rules were very strict and involved and also required external audit and observers.

Sorry if this does not help.

Kevin

[jindydiver]

Thanks Kevin
I fully understand your frustration with the office in Hurstville, I have had dealings with Flemming and his cronies before and know well their zealotry in regards to their ideology.
I don't understand though what NPWS would have to do with the destruction of feral bird species on private property. I can fully understand the desire of NPWS head office to interfere in everything that everybody does, I have never dealt with a more officious or arrogant gov' department ever, but they have limited jurisdiction over what you do on private property and they most certainly do not have the power to prosecute someone for killing feral species.


Slightly off tangent...

I was hoping that now that Flemming has left NPWS we might see some shift in the ideology of the service and see some more moderate views emerge (read, friendlier to hunters), but it looks like the service over the years has institutionalised the Flemming ideology. Just a couple of weeks ago I was chatting to a district manager (I know him from my climbing days) about access for hunters to management programs within National Park lands. Terms like "hunters aren't efficient" (which of course disregards the fact hunters don't cost NPWS one red cent) and "user conflicts" (a non-issue as we know from Victoria, NZ, USA, Canada and now NSW SF's) came up to rebut every argument I made in favour of hunters. His most telling comment though was "Many of us working for NPWS would have to be dead and buried before hunters would be allowed in NSW NP's".
The Flemming years were all about grabbing land and expanding power and I fear that not much has changed

[longbowinfected]

Jindydiver,

the silly thing is an example like NPWS people when they shot brumbies...yeah that was well done by them.
I have also seen their species officers at Jenolan carrying lever action unsighted [non scoped] lever action 30/30 s to control dingoes and wild dogs in hilly country where you would not get as close as 50 metres uphill or downhill...amateurs.

Kevin

[jindydiver]

Yes, the old "opportunistic shooting"
The SOE reports have opportunistic shooting as the only control method for deer in something like 90% of NPWS lands, never mind that their OHS rules prevent most rangers from carrying a gun, and those that do would be lucky to see a deer let alone shoot one.

[jape]

There is nothing gets me angrier faster than all this nonsense from 'officials', of any breed, walking roughshod over commonsense, courtesy and freedom. Imagine the power trip they must get being allowed to carry a rifle or pistol! I know they have a job to do, and humans are often mongrels so they need rules about weaker beings and creatures, I understand that, but there is a limit!

I was interrupted early one morning to voices as some tosser in a suit and a sheila offsider in high heels wandered around my place with a notebook. When I called out the window they wouldn't tell me what they were doing, just said they were from the Council. I told them to eff off, they responded by telling me they had a legal right. I said 'not without notice and by prior arrangement'. They ignored me after telling me they would report my language. I walked stark naked across my lawn, parked a car back and front of theirs so they couldn't move, went in, rang some mates, had a looong shower and shave and a BBQ and some beers with the mates while the tossers walked in city clothes a couple of miles to where mobile phones work and got a taxi. The police came up but wouldn't get involved, had a beer and went away, and I made the Council CEO ring me and apologise and then made a three day onwards appointment to collect the vehicle, which unfortunately had flat tyres, no fuel and a flat battery by that time so they had to call a tow truck. Unfortunately I then had to 'go out' that day by mischance so I gave them four hours notice and locked the gate. Apart from the first shock of hearing people outside my window while I was 'otherwise occupied', and what that did to my heart rate, and the ensuing few justified curses at them, I carefully behaved with modesty, decorum, politeness and offered any one who came on the block a beer.
Petty, but powerful.
btw I would take a dog at up to 100 metres with a good rifle without a scope. 30/30 should be adequate for that? I always used .762 at a distance so I don't know the characteristics of a 30/30.

[jindydiver]

My 30-30 (Win' 94) has peep sights on it and I am a pretty fair shot, but I wouldn't make it my first choice for shooting animals as small as a wild dog.

[longbowinfected]

For mine it is about treating the animal with respect.
I have shot pigs with a .222 at 70 metres but to be fair to the beast a .243, .308 or 6.5 mm with appropriate pills treats the animal with respect and compassion.
We can all shoot well with low powered or underperforming rifles but it really is better to use the best you can.... lever action 30/30s are really handy in thick scrub and you can get a lot of shots off. However I feel that for mine the trajectory makes using them at distances a bit tricky in hill country. My son and I own a few of them but for mine the groups aren't fantastic and I sort of feel that is sort of a strategy where you plan to cover up for a lot of misses. I normally use a single shot breech lock scoped .223 for small game and a .243 for goats and pigs. Both are set up as heavy barrelled varmint rifles and I prefer to use ballistic tips with pretty warm loads. Each has a very flat trajectory which makes shooting groups on target a lot easier. Each rifle is capable of shooting matchbox sized groups. If you are relying upon a rifle to deal with pests as a professional such as the NPWS guys you really should have equipment set up to be able to head shoot up to 70-100 metres at least if you are working in extremely high angled mountains because you cannot always get in close to check the animal. Having said that I prefer not to head shoot pigs. The ability to put the pill straight into the heart lung region with pigs is very useful, for mine. Off course everyone out there will have their favourite rigs/setups/calibres. Give me an accurate rifle with the flattest possible trajectory and give me more calibre than less....works for me.

Kevin