Forget thrill killing, hunting is all about the food

A connection to food is essential to modern society, writes Russell Edwards.

Anti-hunting activists protest during the duck hunting season. Picture: Peter Ristevski

WHO in their right mind would argue against an ethical food practice?

Especially one that involves people in every step of where their food comes from, and has tens of thousands of years of proven sustainability backing it up?

Those who oppose hunting need to think it over.

Like most keen hunters, I also fish. And grow fruit and vegies. And keep chooks. And forage wild plants and mushrooms. And do home preserving, bottling, pressure canning, pickling, curing and smoking. And spend countless hours in the kitchen making the most of nature’s bounty.

People like me are part of a broader movement towards food connectedness over the past 20 years.

Perhaps as a reaction against the TV dinners and microwave cookery of the 1970s and ’80s, people like me want to be involved in our food.

Just check out how much of each episode of Gardening Australia is devoted to food gardening.

Or look at the rise of farmers’ markets. Or the booming popularity of good old Fowlers Vacola, which all but disappeared in the 1980s.

Hunting is absolutely a part of that push to recover our connectedness with food.

It’s a precious opportunity for personal involvement in our food, that must be protected from the efforts of anti-hunting activists like Kerrie Allen (“Bird shooting doesn’t fly in a modern society,” WT Mar 24).

Ms Allen’s vision of a “modern society” where all our food comes from the supermarket, wrapped in plastic, is 20 years out of date. It’s not the best way forward.

Duck hunting is ultimately about food, and always has been. That’s why we have such a thing as a “bag limit”.

The very wording indicates the ducks we shoot are taken home. And in fact, it’s the law. Surveys over recent years show that food is now the No.1 motivation of people taking up hunting.

Anti-hunting activists don’t want you to know that duck hunting is for food. The more brazen among them, like authoritarian vegan and Animal Justice Party MP Andy Meddick, falsely portray hunting as mere “thrill killing” for “sport”.

Ms Allen’s more measured terminology of “recreational shooting” still paints the same false picture — killing for fun.

Hunting is more than shooting. It’s a process that begins hours, days, weeks before shots are fired, and finishes when the last morsel is cleaned from the dinner plate.

Exactly like fishing, foraging and gardening, the satisfaction and fulfilment derived from that runs far deeper than mere thrills or recreation.

That’s something to cherish and foster, not something we should consign to history.

● Russell Edwards runs We Eat Ducks Australia, a social media project to showcase wild duck cookery

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