RaymondPierreL3 on Nostr: I am tooting this not as an endorsement, but as information for rational and ...

I am tooting this not as an endorsement, but as information for rational and respectful conversation and in the interest of transparency, yes, I am a member of SSAA. I have my own view on hunting, gun ownership and gun use in Australia. I’m happy to discuss but will not to be subjected to bigotry (that will just get you blocked and achieve nothing from both our perspectives).

#GunLaws #GunControl #Hunting #ConservationHunting #PestControl #AusPol

## What the Paddock Knows
A thread. — 2/2 [end of thread]

**What the farmer sees**

If you want to understand why this matters, the quickest route is to stand in a crop that pigs have been through.

Talk to a producer who has lost lambs to dogs, or watched a season’s work destroyed in a fortnight, and the abstract debate falls away very quickly. These are not people with a philosophical position on hunting. They have a problem, they need help with it, and the person who turns up to help is usually somebody’s member driving three hours on their own time.

That relationship, between hunters and the people who work the land, is one of the strongest things our sport has going for it. It is also, I suspect, the least understood by people who have never needed it.

**The obligations that come with it**

None of this case survives if we are not scrupulous about how we behave, so let me put the other half plainly.

*Permission*, every time. Written where you can get it. Nothing does more damage to every hunter in this state than one person on a property they were not invited onto.

*Clean, humane, appropriate*. The right calibre, a shot you are certain of, and the discipline to let one go when you are not. Our case rests on being better at this than the alternative, and that has to be true in the field, not just in a column.

*Follow the program*. In conservation hunting, the reporting and the conditions are the point. They are what turns a day out into evidence that the model works.

*Leave it as you found it*. Gates, tracks, rubbish, carcasses. Farmers talk to each other, and access is granted on reputation.
Be careful what you post. A photograph that makes perfect sense to another hunter can look very different on a stranger’s screen. That is not fair, but it is true, and it costs us.

**Making the argument**

When this comes up, resist the temptation to start with tradition or with rights. Both are real, and neither persuades anyone who is not already persuaded.

Start with the paddock. Start with what happens if nothing is done, because something always is done, and the alternatives are baiting programs and contract shooters funded by the taxpayer. Then explain what a licensed hunter operating under a plan actually contributes to that, at no public cost. Put that way, it is not a defence of hunting at all. It is a straightforward question about land management, and it is a question our members are already answering, quietly, most weekends, on properties across this state.

Jai Rowell
SSAA NSW