Saturday 8 August 2009

We have become a nation of sooks

A police attempt to euthanase a wounded kangaroo went horribly wrong in front of a group of children.

Police in Armidale were asked by the NSW Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service (WIRES) to euthanase the animal, which appeared to have broken a leg.
If you read the full article, you'll see that the Police did everything they could to get it right. I've had to put a final bullet into more than a few roos, and I can tell you, it ain't easy unless they are so whacked, they are lying on the ground.

Back in the days when I had a 10 shot semi-auto .22 (I would have been 15 or so at the time), I fired off the whole magazine (minus my first shot that winged it) from close range as I tried to finish off a roo that I had shot in bushland. It kept jumping around, and as unbelievable as this may sound, most of those bullets missed from a range of only a few feet. I had to reload to give it one behind the ear.

It was a bloody horrible experience, I can tell you that. I gave up trying to hunt roos then and there with a .22, and became a firm believer in using the largest calibre possible to take them out. I'll happily use a .243 on them, but prefer a .303 or .308.

Anyway, my point is that this happened in Armidale, a country town. Since when have country kids become so wet and sooky that they act like a Balmain brat with a bad case of the vegans when a roo gets put down?

I've seen roos put down with a tyre iron to the skull after they've been hit by a car and badly injured. We're talking back in the days before everyone had a mobile phone, and before mobs like WIRES were setup. If you clobbered a roo (or an emu), it was your responsibility to take care of it in the most humane fashion possible, given the circumstances.

Someone must have hit the roo in this story with their car, and either they've been too useless to finish it off themselves, or they've driven off and left the poor thing there with a broken leg. How lucky to have the Police nearby, with pistols, to do your dirty work.

All I can say to the kids of Armidale is this: "Drink a nice warm cup of HARDEN THE FUCK UP".

2 comments:

kae said...

Sooks. Shocking in a country town. Poor things must be traumatised. Welcome to the real world. I suppose there'd be the fair share of parents explaining why it had to be done, then there'd be the ones who call it roocide and accuse the police of it... bleating about wildlife, etc. Roos with broken legs don't usually survive, there's too much other damage - and they often die from stress anyway.

Anonymous said...

As I have been witness to part of this story (and not all of those shots missed, we kept the carcass for dog meat so the process involved skinning and butchering, and the failure of underpowered weapons were clearly evident).

My only concern is the several shots fire from the service pistol(Glock?) or did he use a rifle (I cannot recall though I did see a picture attached to the story). What happened to the shots, were they fired in a safe direction? It may have been safer to bludgen the animal to death with a cricket bat, and quite possibly safer, particuarly if there are bystanders nearby. Scorecard, Police = no casualties, bystanders = no casualties, Roo = 1 casualty. Congrats to the police for the correct outcome, a nasty job they had to do. Anyone else, get over it.

Bigtones