Almanac Memoir: Hunting and guns – A personal journey

As I write this piece I can visualise myself walking through the bush at the edge of the forested western side of the town I grew up in.  It’s another beautiful early winter’s day, like that day so many years ago. The sky is clear apart from a few wisps of cloud, and there’s just enough chill in the breeze to remind me that it’s winter.

 

Cockatoos are making a racket somewhere in the distance and now and then I hear a magpie. Oyster Bay is not far away, and I can hear the sounds of the rolling tide as I walk and reflect.  A dog barks somewhere, and from a nearby paddock come the familiar sounds of cattle and sheep. As I walk, from much further away, perhaps a half kilometre or so, a shot rings out.  It’s quickly followed by two more shots.  The three shots were loud, probably a shotgun. The sound rolls across the bush and then everything goes quiet. I stop for a moment and find myself thinking about years gone by. I wonder if the shooter is an old man, or a young man. These days it could just as easily be a woman. Perhaps it’s a first kill, a time of pride for bringing home some food for the family. I imagine what they might be feeling, much as I did when I was young. I remember and wonder if there had been a pause, a nervousness, a fleeting moment of doubt before that first shot.  I wonder if after the third shot the person had stopped for a moment; had heard the silence of the bush. Not a bird can be heard.

 

As I turn and walk away, the bush returns to normal.  Some birds resume their singing and in front of me a magpie flutters down a trunk to the leafy ground, looking for insects. The cockatoos are making a racket again, joined now by a few crows. It seems the gunshots are already forgotten. Within minutes you’d never know the shots had been fired. My memory of the trapped devil and the disabled kangaroo return.

 

I grew up in a small and beautiful seaside town in country Tasmania.  We didn’t live on a farm but in the town itself which was surrounded by mostly merino sheep properties (nowadays surrounded by some excellent wineries).  It was really a service town for the outlying properties and many of those living in it worked on the properties in a variety of farm occupations.  In a setting similar to the rest of Tasmania, there were large properties, small properties and smaller plots of land farmed by local townsfolk.  In all of these places, killing animals was a normal and regular activity. In the day my town was a hunting and fishing town.

 

Much of the population had guns and it was common practice to hunt rabbits and wallabies particularly, also ducks and swans when in season.  Snaring possums was also a seasonal activity.  While it did happen, the hunters in my town did not kill animals for sport or just for the sake of killing.  Being country people the primary reason for hunting animals was for food. Animal skins were sold to Neil Edwards and Co, a fur trader in Hobart, to make coats and hats and the like. Because we lived in the countryside where animals were raised for food, to shoot, say a rabbit or wallaby, seemed little different than processing sheep, cattle, pork or poultry for the table.

 

Not uncommon in the day, my father was one in a family of nine children; five boys and four girls.  He did not hunt animals very often even though he lived in a rural setting that did. His brothers, and his father (my grandfather), had guns which were kept in an unlocked shed at the back of my grandfather’s house. They were positioned and kept in place, very neatly, on the walls of the shed.  As a child, very keen on cowboys and Indians and cops and robbers, I used to sneak into the shed to hold the guns and take aim at objects in the shed.  Bullets and cartridges were also stored in the shed and easily obtainable.  It never entered my head once though, to load a gun and fire it.  I was taught not to and just knew it was wrong to do so.  So, I grew up in an environment where it was common practice to hunt and kill animals and where, in many houses, it was common to see guns and ammunition.

 

Killing can be a provocative word these days, so much so that society often seeks out other words in its stead.  Words like culling or processing.  Whatever the word though, at the end of the day, it is still killing. It is what society does for food production.  It is what occurs on farms. The cattle and sheep in lush fields, the hens wandering about, the pigs wallowing in the mud and slush. They are all mostly there for their milk, eggs and meat.

 

When you drove through my town and other towns throughout the Tasmanian countryside of my youth, you would often see signs on gates and fences advertising, apart from fruit and vegetables, chooks for sale, eggs, pairs of rabbits and wallaby meat.  While country people killed mostly for family consumption, on many occasions it was also to raise extra cash by on-selling to others.

 

Besides the proximity to food production, there’s also a traditional aspect to hunting.  In my day, if one lived in the country the chances were that you grew up in a hunting family and environment where hunting was primarily a male domain. In modern times there may be more female hunters than ever before but arguably, it is probably still mainly a male domain.  When I was growing up, to hunt was a male bonding exercise, like football or cricket – a rite of passage for us youngsters

 

I remember observing adult family members and friends prepare and depart for a hunt or ‘to go shooting’ as was the common term used.  When they returned from their hunt I can remember watching and listening to their stories as they prepared and readied their kill for our consumption.  At around age 10 I was allowed to tag along to observe and learn hunting techniques and the mysteries of the bush and the animals.  I gained familiarity with guns and was taught carefully and strictly about safety and the responsible handling of guns. Unlike many of my friends, I never owned a gun.  I didn’t need to as I was able to choose from a number of guns kept in my grandfather’s shed.  I remember vividly taking part in my first hunt, carrying a gun like an adult and becoming accepted in my hunting family and community. I had made it; I had bonded!

 

As a boy, I had a rabbiting hoe which I used to hunt rabbits with my friends and their dogs.  We would walk many kilometres in the countryside with our dogs. The dogs would chase down rabbits we had spotted. They would circumnavigate the gorse bushes or undergrowth of dead trees, grab and bring them back to us. We would also have the dogs chase rabbits into warrens where we would dig them out with our hoes.  We would then hit them at the back of the head with a lump of wood – an instant and humane death – before gutting them.  We would make a slit in their back legs and hang the rabbits on our trouser belts.  I would often arrive home with several rabbits hanging from my waist.  After skinning them I would give the skins to my grandfather to peg out to dry and keep for the next visit of the fur trader from Hobart.  Should I have more rabbits than our family needed, I would sell them for 2 shillings a pair or give them away to family and friends. It was excellent pocket money.

 

I also used to set rabbit traps with my friend Peter “Spud” Hill as well as with my grandfather or my Uncle Gus.  Spud and I would set the traps in the evening after school and then meet in the morning before breakfast and school to check our success or otherwise.  It was my grandfather who taught me to how to set a trap and where and why one should be set in a particular location such as under a fence line where there was an obvious ‘rabbit run’.  I can remember walking around the countryside with my grandfather in the very early cold and frosty Tasmanian mornings to check the traps and simply loving it.  I didn’t realise then how awful I would regard these traps later on in life.  Even back then I used to wonder how the poor rabbit felt having its foot trapped for hours before we came along to release it and put it out of its misery.  Often a wild animal had beaten us to the trapped animal during the night leaving us to find its remains on our morning round. Sometimes too, we would find just the foot of a rabbit that had managed to break free of the trap by losing part of its leg.  There is one occasion that has always remained with me.  It was when a Tasmanian devil had unfortunately and sadly, fallen foul of one our traps during the night.  Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t get near the animal to release it so we had to shoot it to put it out of its misery.  I always felt that my grandfather was very sorry on this occasion.  Tasmanian devils were always revered by Tasmanian countryfolk as they still are. No one ever wanted to hurt one. To a Tasmanian they are close to family (note the name of the new Tasmanian AFL side: ‘The Devils’).

 

Cowboy pistols in holsters and toy cap pistols were among the first guns to come into my life.  They, of course, shot no projectiles, but the red cap rolls did provide a bang like a real gun. With every pull of the trigger I could be either Audie Murphy, Glenn Ford, Gary Cooper, Steve McQueen or Yul Brynner.  As a small child my friends and I protected our yards and homes from Indians, criminals and outlaws and dangerous animals.  When I was about 8 years old I had a water pistol which was lethal to ants and other creepy crawlies.  My first experience at actually shooting a creature other than an ant or similar tiny pest, was at around age 10 when I accompanied my cousin Bruce and his new daisy air rifle shooting blackbirds after school around the town’s hedges and paddocks.  Back then the local policeman used to pay us 2 shillings (or two bob) for every blackbird we killed as they were listed as an exotic pest.  Today we have blackbirds frequent our back garden and their melodic singing is a delight to hear. It is not in me these days to ever want to hurt one, but I do know that they are still a highly regarded pest by those in non-urban areas throughout the country, especially commercial growers. They help Lorelle in the garden by consuming snails and slugs although their foraging can be a problem.

 

Around this time, my friends and I also had pretty lethal slingshots which we used to hunt parrots for parrot pie.  The projectiles of solid lead were deadly. Thankfully, on reflection, parrots are smarter than the average small bird and were not easy to despatch unless one used an air rifle.  I now shudder at these memories.

 

I think I was about 11 or 12 years old when I was taught how to use and care for a .22 rifle by my Uncle Gus.  He lived in Launceston but visited our town regularly to see family and to hunt and fish.  His sons, my older cousins, didn’t like shooting or visiting the country that much, so Uncle Gus took me under his wing as his rabbit hunting accomplice.  I was the shooter and he was the spotter.  We would walk through the scrub during the warmth of the day when the rabbits were slovenly and resting in their squats.  Uncle Gus would point out a rabbit to me and I would shoot it.  We were a very successful duo and I always loved it when I heard Uncle Gus was coming to town.  Until the age of around 13-14 years I was only allowed to shoot the .22 rifle when accompanied by him.

 

As already mentioned, country boys are taught early how to shoot guns properly, safely and how to care for them.  I was taught how to carry a shotgun and rifle safely through the paddocks and over and under fences and the like.  If I ever faulted my grandfather or Uncle Gus were right onto me.  I had to also make sure that after every use I cleaned and polished the guns that I used.  The guns in my grandfather’s shed were immaculate.

 

It was my grandfather who once explained to me how country folk were much better off than city folk during the two world wars and especially during the 1930’s depression years.  This was because they could grow their own fruit and vegetables and source a ready supply of rabbits and kangaroo for meat and catch plenty of fish in the Swan River and Oyster Bay. He said that most country people had very little money but plenty to eat.

 

At age 14 I considered myself a provider, and at least in my mind, I had become an adult – a man.  I was able to go out alone with a .22 rifle and bring home rabbits for the family table. My mother used to cook wonderful rabbit stews and curries.

 

My enthusiasm however, was about to change.  Not absolutely, but significantly.  I was 14 or 15 years of age when I accompanied a group from the local football club on a wallaby/kangaroo hunting trip to raise funds for the club. Cutting wood and selling wallaby or kangaroo meat was a normal fundraising activity for country football clubs.  Unlike most others, instead of a shotgun, the usual and preferred weapon for wallabies and kangaroos, I carried my grandfather’s .22 rifle much to the chagrin of some in the hunting party who considered hunting wallabies and kangaroos with a rifle instead of a shotgun to be dangerous.

 

I remember the day vividly.  It was a cool, but sunny early winter’s day.  There were lots of birds about letting the hunted animals know that strangers were in the vicinity.  As I trudged through the dry grass I saw it, a large kangaroo hopping quickly away from our group but only seen from my position and not from the position of the rest of the group.  I aimed the rifle quickly and fired.  It was a sharp, crisp crack with hardly an echo. The animal went down.  I was elated; my first kangaroo.  John, a fellow hunter, was first to the animal and said ‘well done, but you were lucky, to shoot him with that .22’.  The kangaroo was still alive but unable to move; it was not so lucky.  It quivered among the dry grass.  John finished it off.  I shall never forget that moment and my thinking then, of how I had crippled that poor animal.  I was at once happy but also felt, without wanting to show it, sorry for the ‘Roo’.  I finally picked up the Roo, put it in my sugar bag backpack and walked on.  Everything went back to normal as the birds once again continued their noisy ways.  After that experience I never shot another kangaroo.

 

Looking back, it would be easy to imagine that everything changed that day. The truth is, it didn’t, not straight away. I was young, naïve and impressionable. There were no outward changes, nothing visible.  I was who I was, nothing much was altered.  There was something though, that had changed, something I didn’t notice right away, or pay attention to.  At some point it occurred to me that I didn’t have so much enthusiasm for hunting anymore. The sense of purpose and the satisfaction I had known in hunting had cooled. In a vague and probably repressed way, I have never forgotten that moment in time in the bush, a brief happening that had lasted for less than a minute, but it has always remained with me.

 

Over 50 years have passed since I was that youngster trying to fulfil his rite of passage; to fit in as a hunter in his small town community – to be one of them; one of the boys.

 

The decision to hunt is a choice and comes with both positive and negative implications. When hunting is for true need, for food, for survival, there seems to be limited conflict.  It’s the hunting without need, the recreational hunting, that causes conflict. This conflict of choice and values stimulates argument and justifications on both sides of the equation. The annual duck hunting season controversy between hunters and non-hunters is a case in point. This hasn’t changed since my youth.

 

As I reflect once more on my younger self holding a .22 rifle or a double barrelled shotgun, I grimace. It is as if I am in a dream; a total imagining. Some of those I grew up with still reside in the small country town of my upbringing and still hunt. But, as they are quick to point out, only for food or eradicating exotic pests. I believe them. I know that in the country this is mostly true.

 

Wisdom and reflection comes with age and the accumulation of life’s experiences. This can cause a re-think of one’s own values. Matters that once were overlooked, ill-conceived or simply not considered at all due to youth and inexperience can, with age and maturity, be re-considered and influence mindset change. I have learnt to think more about issues that are outside the confines of the mindset and the small environment that I grew up in.

 

With this in mind, I question myself: ‘Could I kill again? My answer is well, yes, but the circumstances need to be compelling such as to protect family or friends and others in danger, for food as necessary, and to help a farmer or community eradicate exotic animal pests. Other than for these types of reasons, I could not.

 

 

Read more from Allan Barden HERE

 

To return to the www.footyalmanac.com.au  home page click HERE

 

Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

Do you enjoy the Almanac concept?
And want to ensure it continues in its current form, and better? To help keep things ticking over please consider making your own contribution.

Become an Almanac (annual) member –CLICK HERE