Fowl secrets: Duck hunting compliance report pulled from GMA website

The Game Management Authority deleted a list of hunter and protester offences from the first week of duck season from its website. See the recovered pictures.

Protesters at Lake Connewarre near Geelong at the opening of the 2023 duck season last week. Picture: Brad Fleet

Outdoor Recreation Minister Sonya Kilkenny has stepped in to censor the Game Management Authority, ordering the statutory body to pull down a compliance report that painted a few anti-duck hunting activists in a poor light.

The compliance report on the first five days of the season went up on the GMA’s website at about 10am yesterday, but by 11am had been pulled down.

Nationals MP Emma Kealy and a hunter used their phones to take snapshots of the site before the report was pulled, which showed six protesters committed offences ranging from failing to immediately kill game that is alive when recovered, to possessing game without a licence, banning notices and entering or remaining in hunting areas.

But overall the report showed the rates of noncompliance for hunters and protesters was relatively low, with just 3 per cent of each group committing offences.

Six of 197 protesters pulled up by GMA officers committed offences, while 29 out of 795 hunters were penalised for failing to leave wings attached to ducks (7) to littering, leaving a campfire unattended and using toxic (lead) shot (4), with one exceeding the four-bird daily bag limit.

Phone snapshot of Game Management Authority enforcement report (part 1).

Game Management Victoria compliance table (part 2) – Protester offences are marked with an asterisk.

Ms Kealy said the public had every right to know what was in the report.

“It’s just another example of the government hiding information,” she said.

Sporting Shooters Association of Australia spokesman Barry Howlett said it was a mystery as to why the report was pulled, but said the advocacy group did not condone illegal activity regardless of who did it.

However he said it was concerning that a protester did not immediately dispatch a wounded bird.

The GMA has also blacked out Victoria’s draft Waterfowl Wounding Reduction Action Plan 2022–2026, which formed part of its recommendations for the 2023 duck season.

The blacked out document can be found on slide 83 of the 2023 duck season recommendations report HERE.

The draft wounding reduction report was first lodged with Agriculture Minister Gayle Tierney in October last year.

But hunting groups say Ms Kilkenny has sat on the report since taking over responsibility for duck hunting in December.

Ms Kealy said if the Andrews Government was serious about wounding reduction “then they would have released it as a matter of urgency, before the hunting season”.

Premier Daniel Andrews has previously accused hunters of not following the rules and exceeding bag limits during the 2022 season, despite GMA finding just one hunter exceeded the bag limit last year.

The Weekly Times is awaiting a response from Ms Kilkenny.