01/07/2021
Social media guys please be careful what you post.
Everything we do as pig hunters, whether or not you are members of the APDHA, is being watched. There is no privacy, there are no closed social media groups and your phones and tracking gear mark where you are and have been. And who is watching? Well apart from various police officers, hunting law enforcement officers and land owners and managers, there are the people who hate us and all we do. We are, by nature, passionate about our lifestyle. It might be hunting as a culture. It might be our pro environmental motivations. It might be about the dogs. It might be all of those things and more. But passion can make you stupid.
There are laws governing pig hunting with dogs. There are also community expectations about how animals are treated and there are people whose passion it is to dump us in the skip bin of history.
Yet some in the hunting community still don’t see an issue…
Well here is the issue. Every video, every photo and every comment on social media is seen by someone. If you are breaking the law, knowingly or through ignorance, your actions will be seen and your name might come out of the prosecutions hat. The first step is you go on a POI list. That means you become a Person Of Interest and that means your name, vehicle rego, address, workplace, everything about you goes on a list of people who are worth watching further. And that list is shared between law enforcement agencies so that if one of them sees you on the road, they will pull you over, or watch where you go. Sometimes this stuff takes years but it happens.
Stupid people comment on FB posts when the cops announce they raided a house and charged someone with illegal hunting.
“They can’t prove that. You can’t be poaching at home. They have to catch you in the act…”
Er, no.
By the time they are at your house, they have photos, social media posts, statements from people who have seen the posts or what you have on your phone or sent in messages to ‘mates’.
And then they take your ute.
Of course, if all that happens to one of your friends, you can bet the cops know about you too. Either they will just note the relationship or they will see your message exchanges or your friend will give you up for a lesser penalty…
And we are OK with all that.
We exist to represent legal, ethical hunters who are members of our association. If you poach or film yourself watching dogs chew on a pig instead of getting in and killing it as the law requires, we aren’t your friends. We are so much ‘not your friends’ we have argued for some of the increased penalties you now face.
You are the greatest threat there is to legal pig hunting and being ignorant of the law and the consequences is no excuse.
We will keep trying to educate you by talking about the law in public and sending you messages in private and you can continue to play at being the outlaw who can’t be tamed. And all that time, the police and others will build their files based on the evidence you hand them while smearing the rest of us in the process.
