7 shots per horse to kill it, sometimes up to 15 :(

[Buckshot Bear]

This is just utterly outrageous, how can they defend this?????-

 

Ballistics expert casts doubt on choice of weapon as National Parks and Wildlife Service defends 'humane' brumby aerial culling

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-18/ballistic-expert-questions-aerial-culling-practice/103240904

 

[Eyesa Horg]

Goes way beyond outrageous mate. 

[Badlands Bob #61228]

I think the .308 is certainly a capable cartridge.  I do question the shot placement.  Shooting at a running horse from an aircraft is not going to produce clean kills.  On a side note, I find shooting horses distasteful.  

[Subdeacon Joe]

Says more about the lack of marksmanship than the caliber used.  As Badlands Bob said, shooting at a moving horse from a moving helicopter isn't the best practice for a clean kill.

[Eyesa Horg]

A clean kill doesn't appear to be the objective. It's just wrong in so many ways. Glad I don't know any of the shooters.

[Dirty Dan Dawkins]

 

I deer hunted with an Army ranger that shot a doe in the head on the run at 300 yards with a 243. Hire real marksmen.

[twelve mile REB]

Feral horses and burros are a real problem in some western states.  There are no wild horses in the Americas.  Therefore it is a choice between the native species or the feral animals.  

[Cypress Sun]

As much as a chopper costs to operate for two days along with the so-called snipers' fees, you'd think that hiring some wranglers to go out on horseback armed with large caliber pistols w/suppressors would be more humane, effective and economical. Pay them XX amount per horse and be done with it. 

[Painted Mohawk SASS 77785]

If those rangers shoot anything like the majority of Aussie cops then I can understand the number of shots as most can't hit the side of a barn...there are professionals here that shoot out of choppers regularly & a .308 is more than capable...on a side note it's a bloody shame to shoot the iconic Brumby !!!

[sassnetguy50]

Maybe this is a political play to roll back the large caliber restrictions from earlier in the year like 470 Nitro.

[Pat Riot]

The ***holes firing these weapons should be ashamed of their accuracy. Helicopter culling? It’s really too bad their idea of “humane” is “humanely expedient for our budget”. 
****ing bureaucrat scum. 
 

I wonder how this sonofab**** Atticus Fleming would like it if he were diagnosed as destructive and the choice of his cessation of life was a pizz poor shooter hanging out the door of a truck on a bumpy road firing .22 rounds at him as they made several passes? I’d be all for him finding out. 

 

[Pat Riot]

By the way, my post above is not meant to convey that the .308 Winchester against a horse is like a .22 LR to a human. 
If the morons used an actual expert marksman using a highly accurate firearm from a smooth operating helicopter perhaps they could kill horses more humanely. 
 

I have a feeling it’s more like this:

[Alpo]

Everyone seems to be taking this story as

 

They shoot the horse. Oh my God the horse is still alive! Shoot him again. He's still alive!! Shoot him some more!!!!!

 

Like Jim Carrey putting that cow out of its misery In Me Myself and Irene.

 

But the way I read it, was more like using a machine gun. If you shoot the horse one time, he will probably die, but he will suffer for a while. Shoot him five or six times, and he will probably die quicker.

 

 

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

More government inadequasy.  See?  Americans aren't the only people to suffer from it. 

[Ozark Huckleberry]

If it wasn’t for being spooked by the ‘animal rights’ jackwads, they could probably raffle off some high-dollar hunting tags to cull the herds.

 

The result would be: more humane kills, a bit of revenue for the conservation programs, and hunters spending their own dime to get it done. 

[bgavin]

Use a 45-70.
That will influence the shooter to do the job with fewer shots required.

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

 

In my Sordid past, I spent an amount of time as a Helicopter Door Gunner.  We (gunners) had a short life expectancy (different story), but it is amazing how hard it is to hit something from a moving Helicopter.  And we had MACHINE GUNS.  Rest assured, I could hit you, but there were a number of bullets that just dug holes in the dikes.

 

And after further review, let us remind ourselves, Ballistics Expert  >  An Ex = Has Been and Spert = Drip Under Pressure.  It is still quite the challenge to hit a moving target from a herky jerky moving platform with anything like precision.

[Eyesa Horg]

4 minutes ago, Colorado Coffinmaker said:

number of bullets that just dug holes in the dikes.

You'd never get away with shooting dikes these days.

[Cypress Sun]

32 minutes ago, Eyesa Horg said:

You'd never get away with shooting dikes these days.

 

Not enough little Dutch boys to go around these days.

[bgavin]

They would object to being plugged in the Dutch boy manner.

[Rye Miles #13621]

6 hours ago, bgavin said:

Use a 45-70.
That will influence the shooter to do the job with fewer shots required.

It sure worked well on buffalo !

[Badlands Bob #61228]

They hunt pigs in Texas from a helicopter.  If I was rich, I could be talked into that.  

[Pat Riot]

10 hours ago, Alpo said:

Everyone seems to be taking this story as

 

They shoot the horse. Oh my God the horse is still alive! Shoot him again. He's still alive!! Shoot him some more!!!!!

 

Like Jim Carrey putting that cow out of its misery In Me Myself and Irene.

 

But the way I read it, was more like using a machine gun. If you shoot the horse one time, he will probably die, but he will suffer for a while. Shoot him five or six times, and he will probably die quicker.

 

 

The way I see it is I don’t like to see an animal suffer at the hands of a bunch of dipwads. I didn’t see anything that told what weapon they were actually using. 

[bgavin]

Here in the PRK a pig hunt usually takes place in either Davis or Berkeley

[Buckshot Bear]

The outcry is picking up momentum down here.

 

I hate this kind of crap....These brumbies (Man from Snowy River movie.....this is where they are shooting them) have a great bloodline, for year stockman have offered to go in and catch them for people who would love the bloodline for breeding....but the govt says no - so they get shot inhumanly. 

[sassnetguy50]

Something the ABC article leaves out that several other articles mention is that multiple 308 shots to the "target area" within seconds of eachother was the plan.  They decided that shooting the horse multiple times would be more human as it would die quicker, they claim 5 second average from the shooting to passing out.  If memory serves one article claimed 90% of the shots hit the target area.  I was unable to find any wildlife services report with numbers to verify this.  There was a quote saying this 270 horse culling was a method test and they plan to cull 3,000 over the next few years.

[watab kid]

22 hours ago, twelve mile REB said:

Feral horses and burros are a real problem in some western states.  There are no wild horses in the Americas.  Therefore it is a choice between the native species or the feral animals.  

i suspect that much like the hogs these days this condition might lend itself to diseases as well , a decade ago i got invitted to texas tpo shoot hogs from a helicopter with a friend who was a helicopter pilot in VN , it never happened because he got sick and died before we could finalize the trip , they were trying to reduce the overwhelming population to reduce destruction and diseases , 

 

we have a lot of CWD in the deer up here , its not a nice thing for the deer population when this disease goes crazy , sometimes you have to cull , 

[sassnetguy50]

Found the transcript here, downloadable as a PDF.  

https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/committees/inquiries/Pages/inquiry-details.aspx?pk=2991#tab-hearingsandtranscripts

[sassnetguy50]

Another article references a horse culling at Guy Fawkes River Park in 2000.  606 feral horses were killed but 1 was found alive 5 days later.  It caused international embarrassment for Australia.   Enough that the population has risen from 100 (2000 after culling) up to 1,800 horses (2020), more than 2.5x the population that instigated culling in 2000.  This population rise occured while they were live trapping horses.  I wonder if this is the real reason they are shooting each horse 3 or more times.

[watab kid]

eventually the population will out grow the available sustenance and they will die a much worse death unless yall go out and feed them , its natures way , if you dont want to shoot - dont , i wont as i dont kill what i wont eat , only reason i considered that hunt back then was my friend , i might not even have shot back them but i wanted to spend time with pete , im not one to just shoot stuff , i dont kill things indiscriminately , id have issues with horses - my friend gimp , on his african safari , had issues with the zebra , he couldn't  shoot the horse 

[Dubious Don #56333]

The practices a government employs in game/animal/natural resource management correlate directly to how they would treat people. Interesting, don't you think? Having already seen how this government treats its citizens, it shouldn't be a surprise they manage game this way.

[Utah Bob #35998]

Biology vs Humanity is tricky.

[Buckshot Bear]

5 hours ago, Dubious Don #56333 said:

The practices a government employs in game/animal/natural resource management correlate directly to how they would treat people. Interesting, don't you think? Having already seen how this government treats its citizens, it shouldn't be a surprise they manage game this way.

 

? 

[Alpo]

I wonder what the public outcry would be if the government sent in soldiers, armed with M16s or whatever the Australian equivalent of them would be, to shoot wild cats?

 

As I understand it, feral cats have taken over the continent, and Aussies kill them on sight.

 

The rest of the world with lose their minds on hearing about it, but how would the Aussies react?

 

I remember an English guy telling about being at the range, and a rabbit hopped out onto the range. Every person there started shooting at it.

 

The Americans on the forum that he was supposed to on were outraged. But then, rabbits are game animals over here, and you would treat them like wild turkeys or deer that walked out on the range. You would stop shooting until they cleared out. But in England they're vermin. Be like if a rat walked out in the range. Everybody'd try to shoot the rat. The different countries have different ways of looking at things like that.

 

Hell, not just different countries. If your normal city guy was out driving in the country and saw a dog running loose, he wouldn't think anything about it. But quite often your normal country guy would think nasty thoughts about the "jerky city guy that dumped a dog he no longer wanted out in the country", where it's going to end up going after the chickens or the pigs or the cows, and the country guy is going to shoot the dog.

[Buckshot Bear]

Alpo.... Aussie army snipers on cats - 

 

https://www.deseret.com/1992/8/13/18999335/australian-snipers-fell-420-feral-cats