In defence of the bloodthirsty bogans

A bunch of bloodthirsty bogans who are just looking for a live target to kill and don’t care for wildlife and the environment beyond that.

That’s the box that too many people with an interest in wild deer put us in as hunters.

Before we get too precious about it, we need to be honest about the fact that we do the same thing to others — environment groups are rabid ideologues hell-bent on social engineering, researchers are more interested in finding questions which will attract funding than in finding answers, bureaucrats are simply interested in the status quo, politicians are only interested in votes …

As humans we all generalise. It’ a kind of psychological shorthand; it allows us to put the various players in issues into a neat little box without having to deep dive into the nuances and complexities. As humans we also dislike being generalised about — it invariably sells us short. We don’t fit well into neat little boxes. 

As hunters with a deep interest in wild deer our motivations are often misunderstood, misinterpreted and pigeonholed. The fact that using firearms and killing is confronting and challenging in modern society makes it easier for people to do this with us. Our place in the discussion is complex and nuanced. In general terms we do like deer, we like hunting them and we want to see them well managed. When hunters talk about well managed deer herds, that typically means having fewer deer in the landscape. When densities get low it can then mean being selective about which deer remain; when deer populations are at high levels the imperative is simply fewer deer. 

We are not the only people or even the most important people in the conversations about wild deer in Australia. There are a range of stakeholders, each with their own interests, motivations, skills and limitations. It is important to identify the inherent limitations and biases, particularly because certain groups have an amplified voice in these conversations. 

Academics can come to the conversation with a learned tendency to catastrophise. It would be easy to dismiss this as mere rent-seeking (talking up damage and risks does drive research funding) to do that, however that would do the same disservice to the academic community as is done to the hunting community.

Academics do see some real damage and real threats as a result of the presence of wild deer in the environment; some of these can or already have led to extinctions. 

There is a political reality that the most effective way to get action is to have the community believe that it is indeed “one minute to midnight” — tell people that there is less than 25 per cent of the population of ‘species X’ left and they will hit the proverbial snooze button, tell them that there is less than one per cent left and you might get some action.

You can’t blame people who live and breathe a narrow interest, and care deeply for the flora and fauna they study, for discarding context.

What is critical is that our politicians and the bureaucracy who advise them are not allowed to fall into the same trap.

When academia teams up with lobby groups in obfuscation things take a different turn. It ought to be a problem for academia — they are loaning their credibility and losing some of it in the process. In the eyes of many of these lobby groups the end absolutely justifies the means, they have no problem misrepresenting research or legislation or the realities on the ground as long as it drives the attention (and the funding) that they need. When you believe that what you are doing is righteous, the truth is, sadly, a minor casualty in pursuit of your aims.

One of these groups is actually advertising for someone now whose role will be to lobby for a change of what deer are called in Victoria — not for more effective management, practical research etc. etc. — for an ideological win. It would be laughable were it not destined to simply further set back the cause of deer management and of stakeholders collaborating on common ground.

This is the point at which the media often fails the public interest, too; “black vs white” issues make good copy, whereas checking easily debunkable claims and diving into the nuance of issues tends to be far less entertaining. 

That’s a precis of the sins of others, so what are ours? One is that we do see the world from a relatively narrow perspective (albeit far broader than some would have you believe), another is that we do tend to overfocus on the role that hunters can and do play in deer management. We also contribute to the contested nature of conversations about deer simply by the virtue of pushing back against what we view as misinformation. Whether that makes us as guilty of perpetuating the problem or not is for others to judge — it certainly doesn’t help the level of mistrust and polarisation, but exiting the field would not be an honest or viable response either.  

It really is on the policy makers to help to find the common ground here. This can be done by setting the terms on which the conversations will be held and on which decisions will be made, by (as much as possible) rejecting ideology and by embracing the complexity and the nuance of the situation and rejecting the neat little boxes that we bloodthirsty bogans are presented to them in.