In the Bay Post/Moruya Examiner (14/11/12), both Don Burns and Diana Gillies were quick to let their hysterical arrows fly, feathers first. Hits from these feathery heads barely rate a ticklish chuckle.

Both writers offer no real practical solutions for feral animal control in our forests.

Don Burns missed the mark when he got muddled up about the veracity of the published numbers of ferals destroyed. The important point here is that these numbers are likely to be a minimum and this is the important fact you can rely on. 

Hunters do make a real difference. And the tasty pork pies prove it.

Diana Gillies should learn the craft of arming her points with well-researched facts. 

Instead she fires off with her backward assumption that some expensive army of professional shooters would be better at shot placement than volunteer hunters. Often to the contrary, as the professional is working under the pressure of getting timely results, often at night or in other difficult conditions, where as it is imperative that the volunteer hunter accurately place their first shot, because in heavy bush it may well be their only shot.

Professional hunters would rarely go into heavily forested areas for this reason. In heavily forested areas baiting and trapping programs best control feral predators. Or by haplessly wandering into the crosshairs of a volunteer hunter, who is mainly there to help control the numbers of Diana Gillies precious “passive” habitat destroying ferals. And some of these targets are quite tasty too!

Hunting in our forests is a legal reality. Get with the program. It works. Help us.

Find out the facts, study the Game Council licence test manual and get a game licence. 

Only then can you fully appreciate the regulatory controls and conditions placed on the volunteer conservation hunter.

If you cannot come up with any realistic solutions, why knock the doers, we are out there having a go. 

We are all doers, mostly from working classes, out there just trying to make ends “meat”. We have little time to sit on some boring retirement plan and preach to the masses.

One cannot help but conclude that the real agenda of the hunting knockers is not about the care of our environment, but to push the anti-gun and animal rights ideology. 

Don’t worry about sharing the bush with hunters, they are very careful not to waste a bullet.

John Butcher, President Nelligen Hunting Club