FKNK defends hunting bag records

The hunters' federation today defended hunting bag reportsand and insisted that the autumn bag was not enough to compensate for the loss of Spring hunting.

In a statement, the FKNK observed that BirdLife Malta (BLM) had described as “laughable” the official report on the ‘Carnet de Chasse’ (bag reports) for quails bagged in September 2008. It had claimed that it was impossible that on average hunters only managed to bag one quail each when that September’s quail migration had reportedly been “biblical”. On the basis of that autumn’s bag of one quail per hunter, BLM then questioned the need for the satisfactory alternative of a spring-hunting derogation, stating that enough quails were being bagged in autumn, the FKNK said.

In its reaction, the federation said that it received close to 85% of hunters’ and trappers’ ‘Carnet de Chasse’ reports and it was in the best position to verify the official published figures.

‘Carnet de Chasse’ records were officially used and recognised by all EU Member States, their birding organisations and by the Commission as the “best available data”.

Malta’s system of collating and reporting bag data was one of the best in Europe.

The FKNK added that anything ‘biblical’ occurring once every 2000 years was definitely not a criterion to be used for the purposes of the EU ‘Birds’ Directive. Furthermore, the referred “biblical” migration only affected the western coast of Malta leaving a high percentage of hunters with no satisfactory solution in autumn.

"Even if a spring-hunting derogation was to be based on the previous autumn’s bag, September 2008 would have absolutely no relevance to a 2011 spring-hunting derogation," the federation insisted.

"Contrary to any reported biased observations, hard evidence cannot lie. Finally, there are no arguments against hard facts."