Following the publication of my experiences of the spring hunting season, I would like to divert my attention to the recent comments with regards recording of bag limits, or rather the lack of it, and the illegalities connected to the season.
With the new conditions attached to the season I dare classify the hunters into three categories: the law-abiding hunter, the hunter abusing the newly introduced conditions and the so-called poacher, whose aim is to shoot down protected species for his ego show case.
It is worth, however, explaining a simple exercise about the bag limits which everyone seemed to criticise without have gone into the bother of comparing past recorded takings in the carnet de chasse. The latest documented figures recorded for a spring hunting season are 50,000 birds in 700 hours of hunting by more than 12,500 hunters. A very simple equation gives the result of approximately 4,000 birds in 125 hours of hunting by less than 5,300 hunters. In other words it is humanly impossible for less than half the hunters to catch anywhere near the seasonal total figure established by the government. This confirms the unnecessary requirement of the personal daily bag of just one bird and the four birds for the season.
The Malta Environment and Planning Authority has published the figure of some 2,200 birds as having been recorded and everyone seems to imply that this was grossly understated by the hunters.
It depends whether the comparison is made with the 50,000 or the 4,000 figure. The 2,000 recording was mainly due to the result of a very poor migration, the restriction of hunting on public holidays, two of which were good migrating days, and the personal daily recording requisite coupled with the four total bag limit, which were too much to expect from the hunters.
This gave space for my second classification of hunters, that is, those who might have abused the newly-introduced conditions. The government is definitely in a better position to verify my argument with the timings recorded at Mepa. In my opinion, recording of caught birds would have been more credible and near the 4,000 expected figure if this requisite was not introduced.
Finally there is the long-time story of aiming at protected birds. Both NGOs declare themselves against this malpractice but their approach is far from convincing. BirdLife keeps putting pressure to stop all types of hunting, which is unacceptable since it is now proven that most of these incidents happen out of the hunting season. The hunters’ federation, although very willing and cooperating fully with the police, have their own personal and family safety to look into. This is not a hunting but a criminal offence and some of them are repeat offenders. The laws are there but are they being used to deter such crimes? Moreover, killing a protected bird and forgetting the mobile phone has the same grade of conviction. Shooting a collared dove (protected only in Malta) and shooting a turtle dove, which is difficult to distinguish at dawn, carries the same conviction. The hunters have paid an additional €50 for a special license to increase enforcement and they are not to be punished for the malpractice of others, who in all probability did not even pay for this special licence, since their actions were recorded outside the hunting hours.
I urge all those responsible to get together round a table and come up with legislation and enforcement that gives more positive results. The publishing of sensational photos is only giving a negative image of our island unless these are accompanied by proof for possible conviction. Improvement was registered and I personally witnessed migration of birds of prey that were not shot at. The foundation formula by the government to establish future spring hunting total bag limits based on the autumn takings is acceptable. The personal bag limit is uncalled for and should not be a requirement.