birding-aus
>birding-aus
>
>While the slaughter of wildlife should generally be deplored is there a
>positive side to duck killing?
>
----snip
I promise this will be my last contribution on the subject. Honest.
I have difficulty comprehending ANY positive side when I have seen groups of
yobs competing who can give a bird "the biggest kick up the arse". Not try
and kill it. The competition was to see who could get it to drop the
greatest distance without it coming down, in otherwords, purely target
practice. And if they missed giving a passing bird a "good kick up the
arse" the yobs 50 yards futher down wind would have their go. The birds
would have later died from blood loss, pellet injuries, broken legs etc.
Or the shooter throwing a still live bird in his boat to flap around for
over 5 minutes till it died because he couldn't be bothered doing the half
decent thing and wringing its neck as they are supposed to.
Or finding stashed dead birds hidden in logs or in submerged sacks as the
shooters had gone over bag limits and didn't want to end their 'fun' day.
Even a pile of plucked birds left to rot behind a tree (goodness knows why).
Finding a tree of young waterbirds huddled together surrounded by dead
parents. An otherwise healthy female duck being euthanased as both eyes had
been shot out by lead.
While some may think it is the odd bad apple - there were over 100 rescuers
at Lake Cowal where I last attended and they ALL had similar stories. Same
for other swamps/wetlands attended by others (it is all documented in
individual statutory declarations somewhere -it would make pretty gruelling
reading, I can assure you) -- I even heard that Victorians were far worse
than our NSW 'sportsmen' !
And in reply to Kim and his animal rightist theory, while I will admit their
were some animal rights rescuers present, as far as I was concerned it was
an animal welfare and environmental issue. Do you know how much lead
rains into the water from the shots fired for birds to later ingest (from
memory it was a water contamination report that helped get the anti-duck
shooting bill through parliament in NSW) , do you know how long it takes the
birds who manage to get away, who are often badly maimed, to die from their
injuries or blood loss? - do you know how many garbage bags of used shell
cartridges we carted out of the wetlands left by the shooters. It was a van
full - for one wetland, for one weekend.
Nothing could EVER justify what I've seen. Not all the tea in China.
Rgds
Karen
Hampton, Vic
>
>Harry Clarke
>
To unsubscribe from this list, please send a message to
Include "unsubscribe birding-aus" in the message body (without the quotes)
|
