A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE MAJOR SHOOTING SPORTS If you are interested in having a go, even if you think you hate guns, we would be happy to help you out - who knows you may end up really enjoying yourself. HUNTING Hunting is an exciting, challenging sport that both helps the environment and improves your fitness. Most hunters find immense pleasure from being in the outdoors and camping etc. Hunting is also the best way to obtain fresh meat that is not steroid or hormone induced. Hunting makes a resource out of wild animals - something that is critical to the preservation of the natural environment and the actual wild animals themselves. Hunting is the best way to control feral animals - it is far better for the environment than poisons. In fact many countries have banned the poisons still used in Australia. RIFLE SHOOTING Rifle shooting is a challenging sport that can be enjoyed by the whole family. There a various disciplines some of which are set out as follows: Rimfire, Match Class, Service Class, Full Bore etc. SHOTGUN SHOOTING Shotgun shooting is a sport requiring much skill and dedication. Many shooters find the clay target components of the sport the most interesting form of target shooting. There are various disciplines some of which are set out as follows: Clay Target, Field Clay (simulated hunting), IPSC Match etc. PISTOL SHOOTING Pistol shooting is a precision sport requiring significant practise to reach a competitive standard. However, basic handgun use and safety can be quickly learnt. Pistol shooting is an excellent urban pastime and numerous ranges are available in City areas. Notwithstanding the fact that Australian politicians prevent gun ownership for self defence, handguns are the ideal self protection solution, especially for women whom are able to carry a baby in one hand and adequately protect themselves with the other. For more information on the various shooting sports or to join a hunting or shooting club please see: www.ozhunters.com	IF YOU THINK HUNTING SHOULD BE BANNED BECAUSE IT IS CRUEL, YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T UNDERSTAND FARMING OR RESPECT OTHER PEOPLE'S RIGHTS! Please consider the following: WHY THE COUNTRYSIDE IS ANGRY Sep 19th 2002 From The Economist print edition Rural people say they want “liberty and livelihood” from the government. They can't have both BRITAIN has always had a thing about the countryside. Think of the Old Masters: the Dutch ones are of burghers, the French ones of naked women and the English ones of gentlemen surveying their rolling acres with an expression mixing complacency and contempt. The English country gentleman had good reason to feel rather pleased with himself: he was master of all he surveyed, and he could be sure that his land would provide him and his children with a comfortable livelihood for many generations to come. Until now, that is. Farm incomes have plummeted since the mid-1990s, adding to a clutch of rural grievances, including the mishandling of foot-and-mouth disease, excessive regulation, declining rural services and a shortage of affordable housing. That is why, on September 22nd, around a quarter of a million country-lovers are expected to march in London. Hunting is the rallying-cry bringing together these different interests. Almost immediately after it came to power in 1997, the Labour government announced that it proposed to ban hunting. This may have been a classic political mistake. While a majority of Britons favour banning hunting, they do not, by and large, mind very much about it. The minority who oppose a ban, by contrast, mind a lot. Then again, the plan to ban hunting may have been something altogether more cynical. The government may see it as a concession to its left wing that will cause a great deal of sound and fury but, in the government's view, no substantial harm. Either way, it was a rotten idea. [Hound Fox] hunting is not a particularly attractive sport, especially from the fox's point of view. But the human race has plenty of unattractive habits—adultery and lying, for starters—where criminalisation would constitute an excessive intrusion on individual liberty. If the primary concern of those who want to ban hunting is animal welfare, there are many prior targets at which they should direct their ire. Fox-hunting, which kills around 43,000 foxes a year (compared with 100,000 killed on the roads and 100,000 shot by farmers) causes far less suffering to animals than factory farming. Ban chicken nuggets before hunting.
HUNTING GIVES YOUR CHILDREN A JOB! October 2, 2002 -- SPENDING over $70 billion dollars a year in pursuit of their pastime, America's hunters and anglers would rank No. 11 on the Fortune 500 if they formed a corporation, according to a new report released today by the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Over 38 million Americans enjoy the outdoors - twice the number of labor union members - and sportsmen support 1.6 million jobs, well more than Wal-Mart, the country's largest employer. American sportsmen are a demographic group worth a closer look. "Because sportsmen enjoy hunting and fishing alone or in small groups, they are often overlooked as a constituency and as a substantial economic force," notes Melinda Gable, executive director for the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation. "These impressive statistics actually underestimate the impact of sportsmen since they do not take into account the millions of hunters and anglers under 16 years of age and people who were not able to get out and hunt or fish in 2001." The report, The American Sportsman: Take a Closer Look, uses the results from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's 2001 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation and compares hunters' and anglers' impact on the economy with other industries. When sportsmen's spending is thought of in business terms and compared to other sectors of the economy, it is remarkable how much state and federal tax revenues are generated, how many people are employed and how many sectors of the economy are impacted as a result of hunting and fishing. "Hunters and shooters have been widely acknowledged for their role in conserving our wildlife and natural resources," stated Doug Painter, President of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, "but they represent so much more than meets the eye. Hunters spend $2 billion just on food when they take hunting trips - that's more than Americans spend on Domino's pizza. These statistics would be even larger if some 30 million sport shooters were incorporated into the spending estimates. NSSF is working with competitive and recreational shooting organizations to complete the economic picture with the inclusion of the non-hunting sport shooter." While the combined national economic impact of sportsmen is remarkable, it is even more important to recognize the impact at the state and local level. In Florida, recreational anglers spend three times more each year than the cash receipts for the state's orange crop. In Minnesota, sportsmen pay $175 million in state sales, fuel and income taxes equivalent to the salaries for 8 per cent of the state's teachers. In Oregon, sportsmen support more jobs than are provided by Intel, Nike, Oregon State University and the University of Oregon combined. "It is a fairly simple equation - hunters and anglers mean jobs in states and local communities that have made the effort to maintain their hunting and fishing opportunities," commented Gable. "The economic impact that sportsmen have on state economies should be a wake-up call to state governments to welcome and encourage hunting and fishing in their state." Ken Moran - Sportsmen Pack a Big Punch	PLEASE CONSIDER THE BENEFITS OF HUNTING: I recently sat under a colorful tent with Ed Kadzombe, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Wildlife Advisory Council. We were surrounded by photos of lions, leopards, and elephants, as well as hand-woven baskets and other artifacts — such as statues of black rhinos, sacred animals to the people of Zimbabwe. Kadzombe told me he wants to spread the word that his people are managing the Zimbabwe resource "for the good of all." In an era when politically correct pundits challenge that hunting has anything to do with conservation, Kadzombe has his work cut out for him. But the cold facts on hunting in Africa tell the real story. You may have heard various eco-groups grabbing headlines with the claim that African elephants are endangered. Well, that depends on just where you are talking about. In l980, Zimbabwe had 40,000 elephants. Today, after 22 years of carefully regulated hunting, they have 88,000 pachyderms. How can this be so? I had met Kadzombe at the outstanding Hollywood Celebrity Shoot, which completed its sixth annual shoot in August at the Triple-B Shooting Sports Park in South El Monte, California. Actor Robert Stack said, "You meet the nicest people at shooting sports events." And a lot of them too. More than 600 people turned out for the two-day competition, including nearly 100 actors, writers, directors, producers, and musicians such as Louise and Irlene Mandrell, Frank Stallone, Marshall and Lindy Teague, Anne Lockhart, Michael Gregory, Charles Napier, and Olympic Gold Medalist Kim Rhode. The event, which benefited St. Jude's Children's Hospital, is produced by the tireless Sandford Abrams and John Laughlin. This year's program was an illustration of what's possible when people doing good work come together in support of each other. Sponsors and shooters came from 27 states and five foreign countries. And the man who came the farthest, Ed Kadzombe, donated the biggest prize — a 14-day African safari. Tourism is a $25 million a year business in Zimbabwe. The eco-tourists may outnumber the hunters, but the hunters outspend them — $15 million to $10 million. When eco-tourists come in, they whisk around in a jeep for a couple days, wine and dine, and leave. Hunters stay longer, pay trophy fees and guides, and the meat from the animals they kill goes to local villages, along with skins and bones that can be used for clothing and arts and crafts. "The communities involved see the value of the animals, and in turn they turn out in force to help curb poachers," Kadzombe explained. The primary reason why elephants and some other species of wild animals are declining in some countries is that poachers need the money and there is no way to police the bush. Yet in Zimbabwe, hunting fees are returned to the local communities and to wildlife management programs, thus perpetuating the resource. In addition, outfitters not only hire local people as guides and support crew for the safaris, they donate part of their profits to the local communities and for use in conservation enforcement. Zimbabwe's unique grassroots approach to wildlife management is called CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources). Typically, CAMPFIRE begins when a rural community's elected council asks the
Think Hunters are dangerous people? - Please think again! Extracts from 'Exposing Animal-Rights Terrorism'. When many people think of "animal rights," they may picture trendy celebrities posing in nude photographs to combat the fur industry. But the animal-rights/liberation (ARL) movement isn't funny anymore. Unable to get most of society to agree that animals are the moral equals of people or that farming pigs is akin to holding human slaves, some ARL activists have crossed to the dark side — animal-rights terrorism. Indeed, violence, vandalism, and personal threats from groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) have ratcheted up so radically against medical researchers, ranchers, and others in recent years, that animal-rights terrorism is now being scrutinized by one of the most respected antiterrorist organizations in the world, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). One of the center's most useful projects is the respected SCLC Intelligence Report (IR), a quarterly magazine that offers in-depth analysis of political extremism in the United States. The Fall 2002 IR exposes the depth of the threat of ARL terrorism — earning ALF, ELF, and SHAC a level of infamy usually reserved for American extremist groups such as the KKK, Aryan Nation, and the American Nazi party. According to the IR expose, "From Push to Shove," ARL terrorists such as ALF and SHAC regularly employ "death threats, fire bombings, and violent assaults" against those they accuse of abusing animals. Some of the cruelest attacks have been mounted by SHAC against executives for Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British drug-testing facility that uses animals to test drugs for safety before they are tested on people. Indeed, the threats and violence became so extreme that Huntingdon fled Britain out of the fear that some of their own were going to be killed. They had good cause: The company's managing director was badly beaten by three masked assailants swinging baseball bats, while another executive was temporarily blinded with a caustic substance sprayed into his eyes. The deafening lack of condemnation by mainstream ARL organizations against these terrorist tactics speaks louder than their oft-stated claims to being a peaceful social movement. Indeed, the firewall that groups such as PETA have long maintained between themselves and ARL terrorists seems to be breaking down. PETA's tax-exempt status is being challenged because it admittedly paid $1,500 to ELF. (According to the FBI, ELF is one of the nation's largest terrorist groups.) According to the SPLC, PETA also provided funds to convicted animal- or environmental-rights terrorists, including contributing $20,000 to Rodney Coronado, convicted of a research lab at Michigan State College, and $7,500 to Fran Trutt, convicted of attempting to murder a medical executive. The Intelligence Report also reveals that known ELF and ALF activists are routinely invited to speak at the yearly Washington, D.C. animal-rights conference sponsored by PETA and the Humane Society of the United States. Further, the IR quotes PETA's Bruce Friedrich as stating: If we really believe that animals have the same right to be free from pain and suffering at our hands, then of course we're going to be blowing things up and smashing windows. … I think it's a great way to bring animal liberation, considering the level of suffering, the atrocities. I think it would be great if all of the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories, and banks that fund them, exploded tomorrow. PETA should be roundly condemned for permitting one of its own to advocate violence and for associating with violent groups such as ALF. In this regard, it is worth pointing out that ALF has gone so far down the terrorist path that it posted a how-to-commit-arson manual on its website. Called "Arson Around With Auntie ALF," the tract promotes the use of incendiaries to destroy animal "abusing" facilities because "pound for pound" they "can do more damage than explosives against many types of targets." This isn't alarmist rhetoric. In the Netherlands, an animal-rights extremist allegedly assassinated a candidate for parliament, perhaps because he defended pig farming in a debate with animal-rights activists. An ELF representative recently suggested that it might be time to "take up the gun," while the Intelligence Report quotes Kevin Jonas of SHAC-USA as personalizing JFK's famous quote, "If you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable." — Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute	government's wildlife department to grant them the legal authority to manage the local wildlife resources — and demonstrates it has the capacity to do so. Since 1975, Zimbabwe has allowed private-property holders to claim ownership of wildlife on their land and to benefit from its use. Under CAMPFIRE, people living on impoverished communal lands, which represent 42 percent of the country, claim the same right of proprietorship. Conceptually, CAMPFIRE includes all natural resources, but its focus has been wildlife management in communal areas, particularly those adjacent to national parks where people and animals compete for scarce resources. CAMPFIRE offers an alternative to the destructive land use by making wildlife a valuable resource. Wildlife, in fact, is the most economically and ecologically sound use of the land in much of Zimbabwe. Since its official inception in 1989, more than a quarter of a million people have been involved in managing wildlife through CAMPFIRE. It has been so successful that South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, and Botswana are now developing programs similar to the one in Zimbabwe, sometimes using relocated Zimbabwe animals, including elephants. Kadzombe said that it costs $5,000 to $6,000 to relocate one elephant from its herds to nearby countries that tried to save elephants by stopping hunting (and have paid the price with escalated poaching). Kadzombe was especially proud of how hunters have supported the conservation of black rhinos, which are a national treasure in Zimbabwe. For the last 20 years Zimbabwe has been capturing and exporting black rhinos for captive breeding in zoos. This protects animals from poachers and preserves the gene pool. In exchange for the adult animals some of the offspring are returned to Zimbabwe to shore up the gene pool of the wild animals. You're most likely aware that Zimbabwe has been caught in a struggle over land ownership for the last two years. President Robert Mugabe has told white farmers to leave the land. About 40 percent have left voluntarily and others have been evicted. The seizure of white-owned farms affects about 350,000 workers, as well as the food supply of the region. According to attorney Leo Grizzaffi of Torrance, California, who works with the Zimbabwe Wildlife Advisory Council and EK Safaris, the land-redistribution controversy has not had any negative effect on tourists visiting Zimbabwe. (Tourism is extremely important to the Zimbabwe economy, and the police consider protecting tourism a very high priority.) But some hunting concessions have already been hurt by the land redistribution as outfitters route their safaris to other places. The Media Research Center recently reported that over a two-year period antigun stories outnumbered pro-gun stories by a ratio of nearly 10 to 1 — even though some 35 million people in the U.S. enjoy shooting firearms. So, it's unlikely you're gonna read many stories describing how tourism and hunting are stabilizing forces in the turbulent country of Zimbabwe. But it's a story that Ed Kadzombe has the facts to back up. — Mr. Swan is the “Media Watch” columnist for North American Hunter Magazine Do you have a contribution you can make? If so please contact us.