Thanks, fellows, I'm glad you liked the photos. As you said, there are huge cultural differences even though we speak English and shoot the same bows. I'll try to address a few of these differences; the "When in Rome..." proverb is indeed applicable.
Donkeys as trophies: I suppose you could get them taxidermised if you wanted. I've never taken the hide, but they do look good, especially with the cross on their back. Some of our Mission-educated indigenous folk don't allow them to be shot on their land for that reason (tradition has it that the cross appeared on donkeys' backs after the Good Lord rode into Jerusalem on one). Most of our animals don't end-up hanging on the wall in any form, but they are trophies of memory. As far as donkeys go, we're just happy to get any mature adult regardless of gender. And if it was an immature donkey that was the only one to present, well, it would be in trouble.
Donkeys as meat: Yes, they can certainly be eaten, although I've not eaten them. Station people in the outcamps would shoot a donkey for meat if they ran out of beef. It's fine.
Not taking meat or trophies is understandably foreign to most people here. In the USA and in Africa, hunting is done to manage responsiblly a natural resource, a resource that actually belongs there. Not so in Australia, where hunting is done to eradicate feral animals that are responsible for much environmental damage, and with it loss of life for native species which are now endangered or vulnerable due to this excessive competition. These animals that we hunt are not simply a novelty, they are a massive ecological disaster. They cost agriculture billions of dollars each year. And that's just the finance side of it, as you can't put a value on habitat / food-source destruction for the native marsupials. Remember, the biggest animal that should be here is the red kangaroo. So, we're not hunting native animals - only the "bad" ones. We view what we do as being similar to what we'd do as school kids on "Clean-up Australia Day", where we'd all get gloves on and cart rubbish bags around to pick-up the litter that thoughtless folks drop. When I shoot a donkey, it is just like picking up someone's carelessly-dropped Coke bottle and popping it into the bin.
Because of this, there are no laws saying we have to use meat from animals we kill. Of course, you can if you need to, and we occasionally do (goat, buffalo, feral cattle). But it isn't that necessary to us. Also, it is usually so hot that the last thing we want to do is butcher a beast. It quite literally gets to the stage of having to survive one step at a time for the walk back to the vehicle, even if it is only 800 metres or a kilometre away. And then there's the distance to home, usually too far to keep the meat from spoiling before you get there.
I hope this sheds some light on the unique hunting endeavour in Australia. I read a great article in TBM about situational ethics, the mere mention of which will be unacceptable to some. At teachers' college, one of our lecturers (he was a cool lecturer to have, very keen on his pig hunting, and helped rebuild schools in former Yugoslavia for the UN) gave us a pearl of wisdom for when we encounter the various people on our planet: "We need to ask ourselves, 'Are they different or deficient?' And mostly they'll be just different."
Cheers, and good hunting to all!
Ben
Topic: A Grizzly 160 broadhead anecdote... (Read 721 times)
