Thread: Summer hunting .....a question of ethics??

Yep, I get it guys. And let's just all agree that we don't know each other from an Arab, so passing any judgement over just a few words is foolish on this issue.
One of you said something about hearing a fawn bleating while looking for mum for days on end... So why didn't you capture or shoot it?
I guess it is a case of out of sight out of mind for me. Rightly or wrongly, I don't class wild introduced game animals in quite the same way I would a domestic or even farm animal. So their plight is perhaps doomed in my mind. I have been happy to trap possums for a job once, and I've enjoyed hunting pigs with dogs on occasion too. Both are absolutely barbaric and arguably inhumane, but I can easily justify each as they are introduced and arguably 'pests'. Sometimes the methods aren't ideal. Neither is the knowledge of a starving and traumatised fawn running around in the bush.
As for my six deer in 24years... I've shot dead 6, all the rest are probably still running! At least one of those animals which I haven't claimed was a good stag which copped a .308 somewhere in his front end. I only hope he didn't suffer for long or that it was only a flesh wound. And it is no secret that deer numbers everywhere have increased dramatically over the past 5-10 years. I get onto deer every trip anywhere worth going these days, but it was a very different story in the 80s & 90s on public land in the central north.
So, I believe we are indeed on the brink of overpopulation on some areas of the central north, and if we don't do our bit to knock those numbers back, DoC, F&B and the AHB will all be saying to the Govt that the Game Animal Council has failed and the best policy is to eradicate deer using seek & destroy helicopters and widespread aerial1080. Back to square one