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Hunters during the opening morning of Victoria’s duck hunting season. Little Lake Buloke, Victoria, Australia. This year’s has been shortened to 20 days from typically about 90
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Victorian policeman checks the duck hunting licence of a shooter just 14 minutes after the opening of Victoria’s duck hunting season.Daily hunting start times have been moved from dawn – when ducks are most active – to 8am, reducing the chances of a successful hunt
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Just 30 minutes after the opening of hunting season, with virtually no ducks now around to shoot, a hunter checks his mobile phone while standing in Little Lake Buloke. In April the 2021 bag limit for shooters was increased from two to five birds a day, angering conservationists
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Base camp of the Coalition Against Duck Shooting beside Victoria’s Little Lake Buloke. Each year on hunting season’s opening day, the group and others, including volunteer veterinarians, arrive at multiple wetlands across the state
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Laurie Levy, the Coalition Against Duck Shooting’s founder and campaign director. He has worked since 1986 to ban the recreational shooting of ducks
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Ducks take flight as the opening shots of Victoria’s duck hunting season are fired at Little Lake Buloke. Veterinarian Natasha Bassett says: ‘Watching that first volley, it’s hard not to turn away’
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Manfred Zabinskas, of Five Freedoms Animal Rescue, holds a Pacific black duck that was shot and rescued at Little Lake Buloke but needed to be euthanised
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An x-ray of a Pacific black duck that had been shot, shattering a wing bone, and was euthanised. ‘Individual shot pellets appear so puny but each puny pellet adds up to deliver a death sentence,’ vet Natasha Bassett says
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A hunter with his dog at Little Lake Buloke just after the season’s opening. Duck hunter numbers have dwindled over the years to almost 23,400 in Victoria holding a licence in June 2020, according to the Game Management Authority
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A hunter’s gun cartridge belt. ‘If Victorians knew the extent of animal cruelty, duck hunting would cease,’ Natasha Bassett says
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Smoke rises from the chamber of a shotgun after being fired
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A hunter fires at Little Lake Buloke during this season’s opening morning. A Victorian government report in 2019 found that duck hunting contributed $65m a year to the state’s economy – a figure that has almost halved since 2013
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