At last - someone with a real name.

What is the obsession with the stock photos that are usually added by the editors of The Conversation?

Did you miss the link that Siobhan gave to the images of ducks outside Parliament.

I assume that the focus on the stock photos is in lieu of any substantive argument.

Mike, I don't know where you looked but my account is definitely still active. I would think that you might be barking up the wrong tree there as CADS spends it's whole time hiding behind pseudonyms. I say that if you can't take the time to at least research your subject properly you probably should not write an article about it. Given her catalogue of articles, Siobhan is clearly an animal rights activist with a point to push regardless of the truth. It is not Laurie's job to police hunting. That responsibility lies with DPI,DSE and Parks Victoria as well as Vic Pol. Unfortunately these services are usually tied up chasing the law breaking protesters rather than spending their time on hunter compliance. The best result for the ducks would be to let the authorities do their job and stay out of water as the law requires.

Ross.

I can certainly understand how someone such as yourself who bravely confronts the might duck and its fearsome quack barehanded except of course for the shotgun would disagree with my assertion that Mr Troll Bait's anonymous post is cowardly.

Geoff, the answer to your concerns is simple: don't go duck hunting. But don't think you've got the right to try and prevent duck (and other) hunters from making that immediate connection with their food. We live in a sanitised and 'distanced' society where most people obtain their nutrition from a shop. Duck hunters need to be allowed to hunt for the same reasons that indiginous hunters are permitted to hunt - to maintain cultural heritage. On this point, it is fantastic to see a younger generation being able to access their heritage in this way.

Joe, I do lots of work with indigenous communities, and many of them have themselves ceased hunting endangered species. Of course I don't agree that European duck shooting is "cultural". But please let me point out that most Australians (even Indigenous Aussies) do not agree with killing wildlife for sport, or even for a perceived cultural benefit.

Where the future is for Indigenous culture is in their wonderful art and storytelling, not killing the last of our wildlife.

I believe they have that right to hunt, but in this day and age its just not appropriate. This is the 21st Century, after all. Also let me point out the Moaris culturally ate human flesh for many centuries, but its not allowed anymore, because its not publically perceived to be appropriate.

Eating game meat is also dangerous. We don't have any pure waterways anymore, most are filled with farm chemicals, sewage, cattle manure and other contaminants. Wild ducks are very prone to botulism......I wouldn't eat one for that reason. The excuse to go shooting for food is plainly ridiculous, unless you've got very good health insurance, and don't care what you put in your body..

Neither is duck shooting, or kangaroo shooting, or any other blood sport appropriate in the 21st Century, in spite of the bleating of a few gun enthusiasts.

Pat, 'cultural' may have been a poor word to use. Joe Gartner's word "tradition' is probably better. The point, however, remains basically the same. People have been using shotguns to hunt ducks for food ever since the shotgun was developed. Could clearly state what species will disappear in the next few decades due to duck hunting or is hat just the general vibe of your position?

Cultural practices is a long stretch, but it is true that this lifestyle is long ingrained in rural populations. You may not understand it, you may find it distasteful, but nevertheless they are longstanding traditions and practices in rural communities.
Do you object to the practice of hunting in indigenous communities?

@Luc and Rob, you are both making the mistake of thinking that just because you don't like something that it is somehow wrong or evil.

The first point is sport. You both wish to dismiss hunting as a sport yet you are anthropomorphising and assuming that no animal has ever been hunted by another animal until humans came along with guns. Hunting has been a sport for a very long time, essentially since domestic agriculture arose. So just because you don't like it doesn't change this fact. Luc, under your definition of sport, I could list several Olympic sports that don't meet your standard, care to argue them as well, or just the sports you feel morally outraged about?

The next point is "morality". This is nothing more than a logical fallacy, the argument from authority. You are imbuing this topic with your ideologies and assuming that you are more moral for doing so, yet your ideologues rely on anthropomorphism and appeals to emotion (another fallacy). Trying to say that because hunting "takes life" is nothing more than emotional rhetoric, because so does eating, so does just about everything we do (just look at species extinction figures). I find Rob's example of antiquity "entertainments" as laughably irrelevant, since there is no comparison between hunting and burning an animal alive, to suggest so is just rubbish.

I'm not a fan of animal cruelty, I'm not a hunter, I'm not a shooter, but I'm not a bigot who wants to impose my ideologues on others based upon false premises about guns and animals.

@Rob I suggest you read up on logical fallacies then, as you are emoting an issue rather than using rational discourse. If you can't see how the "morality" claim is a logical fallacy then it is obvious that you are assuming that your morality is superior to anyone else's, whilst not understanding or acknowledging anyone else's moral position. You assume that a hunter is trying to hurt their prey, but that is incorrect, the hunter is trying to kill their prey. The hunter becomes skilled at ending life quickly and cleanly so that they can (usually) obtain food. Thus, your entire stance is based upon a misconception and an assumption of superiority as a result.

You use the term "unintentionally harm", which is a slight goalpost shift from your original statement of "he objective of the latter is to take life and in doing so, frequently cause pain and suffering". Why is it bad to kill for food? Because I don't see too many plants or animals surviving the eating process. Do you wish to supplant our position as a level 5 consumer? In which case, isn't that just your personal bias rather than a rational approach to food. Why do you assume that animals don't die painfully in nature? I'm not suggesting that we should try to cause harm and do not wish to appeal to the nature fallacy, but you are assuming that we have to cause pain as part of hunting. I'd argue that we have evolved our methods of hunting to be far more humane than ever before.

Until you understand this I doubt you will fully understand why I have used the term anthropomorphism.

Geoff, I'm well aware of your thoughts on this topic. I've read your duck wounding model and the critics of it, I tend to agree with the critics.

Shotguns vary greatly in their distribution of projectiles, based upon barrel length, charge size, type of shot used, size of shot used, variability in all of these factors, distance to target and angle of initial trajectory. You have not only made some basic assumption errors (better shooters will miss in all directions evenly is just patently incorrect, better shooters will be more consistent) but you have also assumed "aim error" as the driver, rather than shot distribution which varies greatly. I won't go into the other points as Dr Grahame Webb and Birds SA president Dr Jeremy Robertson have already done this more than adequately. The science conclusions show that your wounding rates are far too high, with wounding rates measured at ~5%, ditto crippling, as is outlined by the Animal Welfare Code of Practice. http://www.chasa.org.au/site_files/529/Wounding%20&%20Crippling%20rates.pdf

Also, the studies you cite of "high rates of old wounds" aren't exactly a representative sample. 300 ducks caught near hunting spots is hardly representative of the entire population. That's like saying all Aussies are talentless hacks because you've just watched Australia's Got Talent.

And now a strawman Geoff? That is rather lazy. I pointed out that the previous links you made were to studies that were not really representative of anything, please don't try to paint it as anything else.

Next point, I referred to the people who have contested your findings, including one who is a bird watcher, biologist and ecologist. Considering he has been critical, what is one us people "who don't have enough mathematics to understand it" meant to think? The fact that your "paper" doesn't appear to have been published in an actual journal also makes me think the criticisms of the study are more likely to be accurate.

Now, you keep saying "bivariate normal distribution" which fails to adequately address my points on the spread of shotgun pellets being more random. Essentially, as far as I can see, you are not including a probability function that assigns a likelihood of a pellet occupying space that will also be occupied by a part of the duck that will not kill it. This probability has to also be related to the other pellets and their relative location, their relative space related to the duck and the combined impact. Thus, I think your model does not adequately account for variability of shotgun ballistics and probability distributions of occupied space.

Finally, your model isn't really related to "field observations" as you are citing data that is suggesting lower wounding rates than your own and generally confounded data at that. As I said, the Animal Welfare Code data suggests ~5% wounding (another reference I read suggested 7-11% in Europe), which is much lower than you suggest and your model.

Geoff, for someone who declares themselves a mathematician you really have failed to address my points about your model with anything other than dismissal, rather than an explanation of the constraints. As I said, it seems to me that you are disregarding important factors in your model, yet you seek to blithely dismiss these factors with no explanation.

You have also just cited a figure of 7-17% of ducks with embedded shot, which only further supports my figures of ~5% wounding with a further study showing 7-11%. You have to use a whole population figure, as the only other measure would be tracking a given population on a single duck basis, recording that individual being shot at and whether it is killed or wounded and whether it tries again that day, that week, that season, or in following seasons. Since studies haven't done that, the wounding factor has to be a population basis, not on the confounded basis you seem to prefer. This reminds me of your broccoli claims (using US yields, soils, and rainfalls supplanted to Australia, negating digestibility differences, and ignoring arable hectares suited to crop production); very short on applicable logic.

You didn't give an explanation, Geoff, you gave a dismissal. Your current response is still a dismissal. Your current statement doesn't address the needed sampling rate to confirm, and your model doesn't cover the needed spatial variability.

Essentially your analysis and claims are far too simple for a natural system. This is just another example of why I continually question your maths claims. You continually oversimplify and misrepresent figures, whether it be proportion of carcass, digestibility of food, misapplication of data to inappropriate situations (your yield figures), etc, you continually apply your ideals first and the maths after. Because you don't understand the natural system you frame in biases in your basic assumptions and data collection and create useless information as a result.

The alarm bells should be ringing when you are claiming 1:1 wounding rate when the science says ~5% or as high as 7-11%. But instead you continue with your biased and false data claims.

Didn't bother to master the basic terminology of the field? You mean like not accounting for not accounting for the massive ballistic differences between shotgun types, pellet types, barrel lengths, distances to target, barrel elevation angle, randomness of pellet variation (I actually have the Winchester manual in my writing research folder) and the skillset of shooting? Yeah, how dare someone be so ignorant.

Next, your 1:1 ratio, how can I put this..... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/PIDOOMA and Sagan's "statistics of small numbers" http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/saganbd.htm