Animals Australia today condemned a NSW proposed regulation that would allow children under 12 to kill animals with hunting bows and participate in one of the most violent forms of hunting known as pig-dogging.
The proposed Game and Feral Animal Control Regulation 2022 (NSW) would for the first time allow young children to gain licences to hunt with both bows and hunting dogs with parental supervision while allowing children aged 16 to 18 to do so without any supervision.
“What century are we in?” said Animals Australia spokeswoman Lyn White. “Most Australians would be horrified by the idea of licensing child hunters to kill animals in a slow and brutal way for so-called sport.
“This absurd proposal would open the door to both unimaginable animal cruelty as well as extreme psychological damage to children.”
Last year the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child acknowledged the harmful effects on children caused by witnessing animal abuse due to their empathy with the sentience of animals. The committee recommended against children being exposed to “violent traditions” involving the killing of animals. The adverse effects on a child exposed to violence against animals can include an erosion of empathy and normalisation of violence which can later lead to domestic violence and child abuse in adulthood.
The controversial practice of pig-dogging involves releasing packs of trained “pig dogs” to chase and maul a hunted wild pig. Dogs, too, are often gored in the hunt, which culminates in the hunter stabbing the wild pig through the heart or shooting them at close range.
“Allowing young children to inflict often painful slow deaths on animals with bows or knives or watch animals viciously ripped apart by hunting dogs is tantamount to child abuse,” Ms White said.
“This proposed regulation has absolutely no regard for the protection of animals from cruelty or the protection of children from psychological harm.
“While the community sentiment in 2022 is firmly against animal cruelty for any reason, some marginal interest groups want to drag us backwards by sanctioning abhorrent practices.”
Child hunters would lack the accuracy, strength and abilities to minimise the suffering of animals they killed or wounded. Hunters are expected to pursue and humanely kill maimed animals and their dependent young which young hunters might be unwilling or unable to do.
The use of bows is even crueller than firearms for hunting as it often results in a slow, agonising death as animals bleed to death from their wounds to the body. Bow hunters aim at the heart rather than the head as the skull deflects arrows. Many wounded deer (up to half those targeted) will escape hunters only to die protracted deaths from their injuries.
The proposed Game and Feral Animal Control Regulation 2022 would also allow the killing of more deer throughout longer periods of the year, further reduce the oversight of hunters’ behaviour by increasing the maximum period for hunting licences from five to 10 years and slash fines for aberrant hunter behaviour such as target practice on public lands.
