Pro
> Greg Little
Of course, Gannawarra has been a duck hunting mecca for an eternity and each duck season the shire benefits from the money coming into the community.
I’ve been coming to the region for the last 45 years with my family hunting ducks for the table, and my mob have been doing that for 40000 years before that.
Many of the wetlands wouldn’t exist now except for the foresight of hunters in the 1960s, and the work they still do today.
> Wayne Parkinson
A sustainable hunting season is the opportunity for Gannawarra to generate income for local business. Government figures say this is a rather large sum. I also eat the meat I harvest. It’s a renewable resource.
Duck hunters are required to successfully complete a game and non-game identification test.
There are restrictions placed on areas that contain threatened species. It is a heavily controlled activity.
> Dion Vella
Looking forward to supporting the local businesses and getting a feed of fresh, free range meat to share with my family and friends.
> Luke Sorensen
Do you eat meat? So what you’re telling me is that an animal that has lived its life in the wild until it is hunted and turned into food is worse than buying caged eggs, genetically modified chicken from the deli?
Grow up, people and animals alike have hunted since the dawn of time.
> Bat Robertson
Nothing wrong with having a sustainable and regulated recreational hunting season based on proper statistical analysis of duck numbers and projected harvest figures.
Anti
> Kimberley Whitcher-Wormald
As an internationally awarded wildlife photographer I am passionately opposed to duck shooting – not ‘hunting’.
Where’s the skill in dressing up in camo, placing decoys, making fake duck calls and then blasting a couple of hundred pellets in the general direction of the birds you’ve called in?
I’ve photographed dead and dying birds that have been shot and abandoned.
Ducks, raptors, pelicans, coots, cormorants, endangered species… it’s sickening.
This cruel, archaic and unnecessary ‘sport’ should be permanently banned in favour of nature-based tourism.
> Alyssa van Jaarsveld
What a stain on our reputation to be allowing people to kill and maim our native water birds whilst trashing wetlands! Unbelievable that it is still legal.
> Meg West
Why did it take so long for Peter Walsh to disclose his Field and Game Australia membership on the Parliamentary Register?
No “rights” come without impinging on others’ rights.
It is time that duck shooting was binned – to protect the ducks, to protect the ear-drums and to protect the tourism.
> K Michelle
It is very concerning that an MP paid by Victorians who mostly oppose bird shooting, continues to promote the interests of a minority hunting group whom he is a personal member of, when the pastime is known to deter tourism our regions desperately need. He should be paid by the shooters, not taxpayers.
> John Childs
Historically we allowed pigeon trap shooting, greyhounds racing with live animals as bait, dog fights etc. With a couple of exceptions we are a smidgeon more civilised in 2022.
