I was rounding up some steers for the saleyards with a neighbour in the company of my brother who was visiting from the big smoke.
He lamented, having just married a vegan, whether it was really necessary.
“I mean that lot,” he pointed, “they haven’t had much of a life; they’re only a year old.”
“But they were born for the purpose of food, and they’ve enjoyed this,” I replied, waving a hand around the lush green valley of solitude and over-priced rolling hills.
“If we didn’t need them, they would never have existed.
“Like these,” I pointed to my two upper canine teeth to remind him of his evolutionary place.
We came to no conclusion.
Rather than opine on respecting the arguments about animal rights or respecting the need to feed people, I opt to respect the dilemma itself.
I’ve read quite a few research papers on developments in human health, and I confess I get quite nerdy, such as with one last week which found a certain protein helped a certain gene to maybe form another (unknown) protein which just might help alleviate a chronic liver disorder.
I confess also that I am now immune to the fact that 48 rats were killed in the making of that maybe-discovery.
It happens a lot in medical research that most conclusions confirm what doesn’t work — it is how we discover things, after all — and the less exposed we are to animal use, the better we sleep.
Animal cruelty surrounds us, from hamburgers to swatted mosquitoes to the utterly shameful caging of bears for harvesting their bile.
Somewhere in there are ducks and those protesting the 2024 hunting season.
Stuck in the middle of that are journos being as professional as possible by reporting about what’s happening.
Two points need to be made: first, I have been accused of bias.
Secondly, we report on what either side presents to us.
Point number one should now make more sense.
State Member for Northern Victoria Georgie Purcell was banned from all wetlands on the first weekend of the season for illegally trying to rescue ducks.
Has she shot herself in the foot (of all the metaphors) or just got her powder wet (when you’re on a roll ...) by doing this?
She has passion and she has guts — some opponents have even confessed that to me.
At the same time, will the few rogue elements among hunters soon lapse in their conduct, given the start of the season was relatively offence-free?
And if hunting has now cleaned its act up, then the smartphone needs some credit — claims made to me last year by protestors could not be verified, despite every person now carrying a mini-TV studio in their pocket.
Hunters are wary of the technology available, and they don’t want to lose their generations-long pastime.
But to something else on which we should all be of one mind.
Killing rats in an effort to find a cure for a liver disease is a moot point, but filming minors as an act of intimidation to save ducks should never come even close to that for anyone with an ounce of decency.
Three protestors captured (on video) of setting up their phones on tripods at Wooroonook when the duck season opened, to film three young girls of a camping family for their entire stay, is thoroughly indecent.
Filming children as means of intimidation is about as creepy as you get.
Following them to the public toilets is indefensible.
This column has approached the two groups which were present when the filming took place for either comment or responsibility.
Crickets.
Since last October, all adults in Victoria are now mandatory reporters for the protection of children, so the filming is, I think, a disgrace.
I am an ecologist and an environmentalist. Some of you are letting the side down.
And I’m a father.
Andy Wilson writes for Country News. He is a pre-peer review science editor in a range of fields and has a PhD in ecology from the University of Queensland.