MIchael Bogle - Shooters, Trappers & Poisoners

It is old Peter, one of those nomads of the bush who make a living by trapping or poisoning rabbits, foxes, eagles, and dingoes, the first for the skins, foxes for skins and scalp money, and the scalp money for dingoes and eagles, but he wouldnt miss a kangaroo if he had a chance, or a water rat either for that matter.

Allen T. Elliott. The Trapper. Nomad of the Outback. Brisbane Sunday Mail , 9 January 1938, p.31.

This book explores the rapidly receding world of Australian doggers and rabbiters as they trap, shoot and poison two of Australias most familiar feral animals, the dingo and its mixed-breed descendants characterised in the bush as wild dogs and the well-known feral rabbit. Two masterful authors, the late Eric Rolls and Brian Coman, have surveyed the introduction of the rabbit in Australia tracing the first introduction of this fecund creature to the First Fleet in 1788 with later documented introductions in 1791, 1825 (Tasmania), 1829 (Western Australia), 1834 (Victoria) and of course, Thomas Austins famous importation of wild rabbits at Barwon Park, Victoria in 1859.

Eric Rolls famed book They all ran wild (1969) describes in intriguing detail the colonisation of Australia by introduced animals of many species while the Victorian research scientist Brian Comans droll Tooth and Nail: The story of the rabbit in Australia (1999) blends anecdote and science to update and expand on the story of Comans underground mutton. Coman develops Rolls startling 1969 revelation that rabbits had propagated and spread throughout the mainland colonies and Tasmania, not by their own fecund nature, but by intentional introduction by colonists. However, the mythology of the creation of Australias rabbit plague from Thomas Austins Christmas Day 1859 release of rabbits on his Barwon Park property has entered the national consciousness. This anecdote has burrowed deep and seems likely to remain.

Two intertwined themes of the social and cultural practices of dogging and rabbiting are identified; one is the lucrative business of gathering, bundling and selling of their pelts and carcasses and the other is practical, examining the day-to-day (and night-to-night) shooting, trapping and poisoning of wild dogs and rabbits. And not infrequently, the hunters poison or shoot one another. Australia-wide surveys of contemporary regional and city newspaper accounts and memoirs are used to describe the mores and manners of Australian rabbiters and doggers as they work their deadly way through Australias feral animal population.

Most Australian methods for dealing with feral animals have their earliest parallels in the British Isles including the trapping, shooting, net-drives and poisoning of rabbits. While these practices influence some of Australias methods for feral animal control, the United Kingdom never faced the plague proportions of rabbits or wild dogs found in our continent.

Rabbiters in the northern region of South Australia, 1907. The Searcy Collection, State Library of South Australia. no.PRG 280/1/4/241.

The commerce of rabbiting for carcasses and pelts also has a strong trade link with Britain as much of the highly profitable collecting, sorting and shipment of Australian rabbit skins went to London markets. Native animal pelts including koalas, water rats, the Central Australian golden mole and possums were part of the Australian fur trade. The record export year for rabbit pelts was 1926 when 134,024 CWT (6.8 million kilos) of rabbit hides were shipped. The hide economy was paralleled by the manufacturing and sale of tinned Australian rabbit for retail sale with the Melbourne-based McCraiths factories exporting rabbit meat to the British grocer Sainsburys at a rate of 32,000 cased rabbits per week in the late 1940s.

The circumstances, methods and motivations surrounding the destruction of Australian feral animals produced formal and informal animal control practices that continue to startle outside observers. The assignment of feral or vermin status to animals loosens the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, particularly in the context of amateur animal control measures. Surviving descriptions of rabbit drives concluding with rural men, women and children wading into a writhing carpet of rabbits to dispatch them with clubs and farm tools is an indication of a communitys revulsion at the massed population of animals. This palpable alarm is akin to the panic response that all animals, including humans, experience when attacked by a swarm of insects.

Constable Darken of the NT Police [and his Aboriginal deputy], shoot at dingoes, 1949. National Archives of Australia, no.A1200, L11653.

Amongst professional shooters, trappers and poisoners, extreme responses to feral animals are notable by their absence. For these men and women, this is their livelihood and memoirs and accounts often illustrate real sensitivity to animal suffering.

The public perception of the solitary rabbiter or dogger working in the bush is entangled with the romanticism of the Australian bush, the dusty image of the wandering sundowner and our innate fear of the dangers of the continents often inhospitable terrain. Rabbiting and dogging is not without overt danger particularly when the shooting of feral animals is pursued as sport. Professional hunters rarely trap, shoot or poison themselves. And with ironic detachment, the scientific communitys literature on feral animal management illustrates that professional and amateur shooting is largely an ineffective means of feral animal control.