The case for duck hunting

For Mr Dean, duck hunting has long been a family activity.

As a youngster he would go out hunting with his grandfather and his father, and now he continues the tradition by going out with his daughters, as well his brother and his son.

“It’s a tradition, to put it in a nutshell,” Mr Dean said.

“That duck opening morning for me as a kid growing up was spent with grandfather, my father, my brother and in latter years my dad, myself and my kids.”

Mr Dean has been the president at the Echuca Clay Target Club for two years, and was previously the vice-president at Echuca Moama Field and Game club for six years.

When duck hunting season officially opened this month on March 16, Mr Dean and his family were out there once again.

“For people that are not duck hunters and haven’t experienced a duck opening, the best way to describe it the excitement the night before is a little like Christmas,” he said.

He recalled how his family would get ready for the season when he was younger.

“We would spend weeks canvassing the local area to see where the duck population was most concentrated, and we would be out the night before setting up camp to be ready to go.

“When duck opening morning came, hat morning you’d rise early before daylight and be out on the creek or on the swamp ready to go, and as soon as the opening started you’d be ready.

“As a kid we would be standing alongside a parent or a grandparent learning.”

While he first became involved with duck hunting when he was six, Mr Dean did not being shooting until he was 12.

Those early years out on hunts were spent learning the ethics of duck hunting, something that is still at the forefront for shooters today, with target shooting playing an important role.

“Part of that is to practice on clay targets to improve your accuracy and reduce wounding rates,” he said.

“The ethics of hunting state when you down a bird, that bird is to be dispatched immediately.

“So if I have wounded a bird, rather than continuing for half an hour, my main aim is to locate that bird and dispatch it humanely.

“That comes down to the ethics of hunting. That’s what we’re taught from a young age, are those ethics and the safe hunting.”

While duck hunting and clay target shooting were similar, he said the two activities served very different purposes.

“The clay target shooting is something we do all year round and that’s a sport, it’s like football, netball, tennis, cricket,” Mr Dean said.

“That helps with the duck hunting because you become a better marksman, so that when you are hunting you increase your kill rate and ethically you’re a better shot.

“I do enjoy pitting my skills against the bird and that’s why I practice on clay targets to make me a more effective shooter with a more lethal aim so that the birds that I do shoot are dispatched humanely and quickly.”

He said for him the purpose of duck hunting is more about food and sustenance.

“It’s more for the food, knowing where my meal is coming from,” he said.

“Duck hunting is no different to deer hunting or to fishing. To use the phrase hunter-gatherer, we are out providing for the table.

“I often say to people, where do you think the food comes from at the supermarket?

“That lamb roast that you’re having for Sunday lunch was a baby lamb running around the paddock at some point.

“It’s food, and that’s why we’re out there doing it because we enjoy eating wild duck. We waste nothing. We take breast meat and make kabana, we’ll pluck out the whole duck and roast it.”

Mr Dean said duck hunters provided more benefits to the environment than people might initially think, and Field and Game Australia describe themselves as “Australia's most surprising conservationists”.

“As duck shooters, we spend a lot of time building duck boxes and positioning them in wetlands for the birds when they breed to keep them up and away from pest animals — cats, dogs and foxes,“ Mr Dean said.

“We also do a lot of vermin eradication. We get rid of foxes, which are a natural predator to ducks, especially in breeding and nesting season, that’s always an environmental benefit.”

Alongside that, Mr Dean said there were other misconceptions the public had about duck hunting.

“The biggest misconception is that people think that we are this gung-ho, bloodthirsty group that is out shooting birds and animals whilly-nilly and that isn’t the case at all.

“As a hunting community, duck shooters are one of the most highly regulated in the world so far as the licensing and the testing we have to do, a restricted season.

“We’re highly regulated — we have all had to sit waterfowl identification tests, we all have to be gun licensed.

“Over the years it has gotten rid of the cowboys out of it that give it a bad name. If anything, you get the people that give sports or pastimes a bad name.

“Your everyday gun-licensed adult here in Australia is a responsible citizen. We are not perpetrators of gun crime.”

As a family tradition, Mr Dean said duck hunting helps bring families together and also builds a sense of camaraderie.

Alongside that and the environmental actions that hunters take, Mr Dean said hunting also provided a boost to regional economies.

"I’m putting fuel in the car to go away duck hunting, I’m buying food and provisions while I’m away,” he said.

“Then there’s the ammunition that I go into the local gun shop and buy. There is the hunting paraphernalia that goes along with it, I might need something from the camp shop — all that is bought locally.

“That money is spent in regional Victoria. All the duck shooters come out of Melbourne and come up for the duck opening and weekends thereafter and all that money is spent in regional Victoria.

“We’re painting silos to get people to drive around and visit regional Victoria, well this just naturally brings them to regional Victoria.

“There is millions of dollars a year spent in region communities by duck shooters.”

For more information on duck hunting, people can visit Field and Game Australia’s website www.fieldandgame.com.au or head to the Echuca Moama Field and Game Facebook page.