Recreational hunting causes inevitable pain and suffering to animals and is not an effective form of pest management. In the limited circumstances where shooting is carried out as part of a pest animal management program, professional marksmen have been shown to be more effective than recreational hunters. The RSPCA opposes recreational hunting, or the act of stalking or pursuing an animal and then killing it for sport, due to the inherent and inevitable pain and suffering caused.
Key differences between recreational hunting and pest animal management
Although pest animal management sometimes involves the ground shooting of animals as a control method, it is different to hunting in the following ways.
Motives
Pest animal management programs are carried out with the aim of reducing the negative impacts on agricultural production and natural resource systems, using the most humane, target specific, cost effective and efficacious techniques available. In contrast, most hunting is primarily done as a desire to kill pest or game animals as a recreational activity.
Effectiveness
Pest animal management programs must be carefully planned and coordinated to have a desired and lasting effect. Most recreational hunting is done on an ad-hoc basis. There is no defined objective, no planning, monitoring or assessment of effectiveness. The methods used by hunters are labour intensive, expensive and not effective in reducing populations of pest animals over large areas for the long term.
The following comparison reveals the ineffectiveness of recreational hunting of feral pigs compared with government coordinated pest animal management control programs:
- The NSW Game Council has reported that 73,000 game and feral animals, including 11,079 feral pigs, were removed through hunting activities from declared State forests across NSW in the 6 years from 2006-2012.
- In contrast, in 2012 in a single region in NSW, local livestock and catchment management authorities worked together to undertake three large-scale, integrated programs, conducted over several weeks and covering an area of approximately 1.6 million hectares, to kill almost 10,000 feral pigs.
This means that recreational hunting removed roughly the same amount of feral pigs over a 6-year period that were removed by a coordinated and planned feral pig management program conducted over a matter of weeks.
Another example, is management in the Gum Lagoon Conservation Park in South Australia, where 65 recreational hunters over 4 days were only able to kill 44 deer, while one professional marksman in a helicopter was able to kill 182 deer in 4 hours. Furthermore, in Tasmania, an investigation into wallaby shooting methods found that in two nights of shooting, a single professional marksman achieved the same level of population reduction as four recreational shooters were able to achieve in a year.
Animals targeted
Pest animal management programs target all animals including females and young. Whereas hunters will often target large trophy males and leave behind females and/or young to maintain a sustainable harvest for the future.
Methods used
Pest animal management programs take an integrated approach and use a variety of methods depending on the species targeted e.g. poison baiting, trapping, habitat manipulation, mustering, exclusion, biological control, etc. Ground shooting is sometimes used as a control method, but for most species and in most situations shooting by itself is not an effective way to significantly reduce animal numbers and is of limited use to achieve long-term control.
Hunters use ground shooting, bowhunting and ‘sticking’ (or stabbing) with a knife to kill animals. All of these methods are labour intensive, expensive and are inefficient for the long-term control of pest animals. They are used primarily because they are a test of the skills and technical competence of the hunter, not because they are useful for managing the impacts of pest animals.
Some of the methods used by professional pest animal controllers are more humane than those used by hunters. For example, in some situations aerial shooting has been assessed as being more humane than ground shooting since the distance from the shooter to the animal is much shorter and any wounded animals can be followed up quickly. Also, shooting of deer at night with the aid of a spotlight causes less stress to the deer compared with recreational hunting where deer are only permitted to be shot during daylight hours.
Competence of operators
Operators conducting pest animal management programs are highly skilled and experienced with firearms and hold the appropriate licences and accreditation. If they are shooting animals they must undergo shooting proficiency tests and must always act in a professional manner. For example, operators who participate in aerial shooting operations are competent marksmen who hold an appropriate licence and are specifically trained for the task (e.g. NSW Feral Animal Aerial Shooter Training (FAAST) course, NT Parks and Wildlife Advanced Firearms course, QLD Biosecurity Aerial Platform Marksmanship Course).
In contrast, hunters have highly variable skill levels and there is no shooting competency test required to acquire a hunting licence. In a survey of hunters carried out by the University of Queensland in 2012, 58% of 6,892 hunters said they had not done any accredited hunter training. Disturbingly, in some states, young children can hunt animals under a junior hunting licence. In Queensland the minimum age is only 11 years old, in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales it is 12 years of age. Junior licences are free in some jurisdictions and may have fewer conditions than adult licences.
The use of hunters to control pest animals should not be permitted unless they are competent shooters and under the direct supervision of a government program.
Ask five different people why they hunt, and you will get five different answers. It is hard to explain to non-hunters why do people hunt.
It is complex, yet it is very natural to us since we as a species evolved thanks to hunting skills.
Why Do People Hunt?
As a hunter, you will be confronted many times to explain why you enjoy killing animals. Those situations can get a bit messy and tricky since people can’t understand, and they won’t stop “attacking” you.
But for all those who want to understand maybe what makes us love hunting, I recommend reading this post.
- 1. Close Connection With The Wilderness:
Hunting brings you close to the wild in multiple ways. Sitting in a stand for hours while you hunt for your prey usually leads us to interesting encounters with far more animals than you can imagine.
Hunting provides us with experiences that others may never get to live.
Imagine the adrenaline when you walk to the stand in the pitch black. Imagine how many beautiful sunrises and sunsets we witnessed while we patiently waited up in a tree stand.
You might not understand that we develop a close connection with an animal we ultimately want to harvest.
That is a very special thing and one of the hardest things to explain.
Let’s be honest; most hunters consume the meat from the animals that they harvest.
I thought of bringing this up first, but I figured out that the hunting cause of meat is not the main reason I do it.
I can’t lie; I get excited about preparing and eating the meat from my prey.
It is really important to me that my family, friends, and I consume the meat that we know from exactly where it comes from, considering meat nowadays is mostly GMO and nutritionally changed and unfortunately very poor.
- 4. It’s Good For The Species:
I already mentioned the adrenaline rush is high when you are out in the dark woods hunting.
I get that most of you can’t understand the amount of the adrenaline rush that overwhelms you when you encounter an animal that you are trying to harvest.
Imagine the feeling when you are out in the woods, and you hear branch snaps, and anxiously waiting to see what will come out.
Usually, when I am out deer hunting, I don’t care if I encountered the giant buck or a doe as long as I feel that adrenaline rush that makes this game so addictive.
I get that this sounds cruel and harsh, but that feeling when your heart races fast, hands shaking, and shortness of breath when you are about to shoot your prey is unexplainable.
This is the feeling that most hunters crave to feel and one of the main reasons why we all go so crazy about it.
Adrenaline Rush:As agriculture thrives with each day, a natural habitat for many animals is lost, which erodes the animal population’s natural range.
This means the population must be managed, or else they will die of starvation or diseases.
It might sound cruel, but it is way better for them to be hunted by us than to die from starvation slowly.
Remember we take a lot of their land each day to expend our living area. This directly affects the quality of their life and food supplies.
It always surprises me how my friends and family get shocked when I come home from hunting empty-handed.
It is funny how people always expect you to shoot something every time you go out for the kill. But that is not possible.
Hunting is a challenge for us, and when we overcome our goals, we set new ones.
For example, the first time you succeed in killing a young buck, you will increase the challenge and start hunting for a mature buck.
You can as well increase the challenge by changing the weapon for hunting from rifle to bow and choose from a variety of hunting apparel for better concealment.
That is one of the things that drive us. Hunters like to set new goals, so they have something to strive for and challenge them all the time.
This almost does not require any explanation. We all are very well aware of that amazing feeling when we went out to complete some task, and we finished it.
It takes great skill and a lot of patience to hunt animals considering they are very smart.
When you finally succeed in doing that, you can only see that as a great achievement. Coming home with meat or protecting your crops also provide the same feeling.
Hunting always brings like-minded people together, no matter if they are introverts or extroverts.
Simply put two strangers that both love to deer hunt and watch the magic. They can go on and on about whitetails or hours, believe me.
For example, when I look at who I associate with, almost 80% of them love and practice hunting as I do.
So one of the main answers from hunters you can expect to get is that they hunt because of the camaraderie and the time they spent with friends.
Thanks to hunting, my life is full of great friends and long-lasting memories that we’ve created together. Those kinds of memories will stick with me throughout my life.
I will never forget that moment when I first walked to a tree stand in the dark on my own
Or sitting all day waiting for my prey and then re-grouping with other hunters at night to talk about our day.
We hunt through the year no matter if it is +40 or -40 degrees we love to share our experience and learn from each other.
Hunters hunt for the adventures for those crazy situations that we end up in, and all those amazing things help us fill blank pages in our memory.
- 9. A Place To Escape The Reality:
Hunting is much more than a simple shoot to kill. Hunting is a stress relief for many hunters since it allows you to isolate yourself from reality and stress.
It helps us clear the foggy mind and relax. When we escape from the “life” and problems, we deal with them the best way possible – in peace and quiet.
Everyone has something that helps them relieve the stress, so why would we hunters be any different.
For us hunters, a day spent in the woods is precious, and we love to live in that moment. That is where we feel like home.
Long Story Short
The reasons why people hunt remain many or better say unknown since different urges drive everyone.
The only reasonable thing I can say now is that it is clear that more and more people are returning to the same reason humans started to hunt in the first place, and that is for sustenance.