Duck Duck Duck

All this week, I’ve been thinking about duck hunters. Doubtless they've been readying their gear: their shotguns and ammunition, camouflage clothes, small hunting boats, decoy (fake) ducks. Everything checked off for duck season 2024.

My friends have been preparing, too - surveying wetlands and counting the ducks.

They’ve arranged their own kit: fluorescent vests, ballistic safety goggles, flags on tall poles, binoculars and whistles. Duck rescuers are prepared for the season, too.

The carnage begins at 8 am today, Wednesday 10 April when across Victoria, hunters begin their deadly fun, shooting ducks out of the sky.

This year’s is the most controversial season in living memory. The 2023 Upper House Parliamentary Inquiry gave animal advocates – and the public – hope that the cruelty would be banned. It wasn’t to be.

After the Inquiry evaluated more than 10,000 submissions and recommended an immediate ban, in January, the Minister for Environment told the Press that duck hunting – a “legitimate activity” – would continue.

This despite several other states banning it – most recently, Queensland in 2006.

It was a crushing blow for everyone who’s worked to end duck hunting, especially veteran campaigner Laurie Levy, a fervent opponent since 1986.

Even Inquiry chair, Ryan Batchelor MP, expressed his disappointment with the decision in a post on Facebook.

In Victoria, hunting licence holders number around 26,000 or just 0.2 percent of the population. Active hunters are much fewer – around 11,000 per year. With so few people hunting, it’s staggering to comprehend the blow they strike against native ducks; over 300,000 were shot in just five weeks last year.

We know about our duck populations. Yearly University of New South Wales surveys in Eastern Australia since 1983 show them in long-term decline. Partly, this is due to habitat loss; partly, climate change.

Recreational hunting is a factor, too. And as BirdLife Australia told the Inquiry, it’s the only one that’s easily addressed. With a stroke of the pen, duck hunting could be banned and one threat to their future stopped.

I’ve been on wetlands at the opening of duck seasons. I have many friends in the duck rescue fraternity. They’re brave, fit and principled people who attend shooting wetlands to help what Levy calls the “innocent victims” of shooting – the waterbirds.

This week, on some of Victoria’s 20,000 wetlands, they’ll be at work for the birds, and will continue for the rest of the eight-week season.

People’s presence alone disturbs the ducks. Rescuers aim also to legally disrupt shooting, waving flags and wearing bright colours (ducks are nervous of bright, moving things).

Rescuers collect the dead. They fish out wounded birds that have managed to hide (one in four ducks shot is not killed). They deliver these suffering creatures to an on-site veterinarian. They collect discarded shotgun shells, beer bottles and assorted litter.

According to Lynn Trakell, Coalition Against Duck Shooting’s Assistant to the Director: “It’s not much fun.

“Rescuers drive for hours after work to get to the wetlands. They get little sleep and rise before dawn to wade through stinking, freezing sludge.

“They put up with the sight of dead and wounded birds and atrocious cruelty everywhere.

“Some people need counselling afterwards. It’s a big ask and many people can’t cope,” she says.

This year, I’m one of those people. After a recent mental health relapse, I don’t have the inner resources to handle it this year. Duck Season Opening is a harrowing event I wish no one had to attend.

The public responded with anger and disbelief to the announcement of a duck season. The community demands that native wildlife be respected and the killing stopped.

Last week, I travelled to a regional wetland to count waterbirds. Groups of threatened Blue-winged Shoveler bobbed on the water, easily identified by their blue/grey heads and big bills. These beautiful ducks were safe, for the moment.

At one point, we noticed a fox trotting out of the bush. It waded into the shallows and crouched. It was relieving itself!

This seemed apt. Like duck shooters, the fox defiled this place and left a mess behind. It headed back to where it came from, a predator with all the time in the world.