IT'S on again. Victoria has declared a 72-day duck season and another anti-hunting furore has erupted.
Talk-back radio, letters to editors, TV news and the inevitable internet have borne the bulk of the antis' effusions. As usual, emotive words such as "barbaric", "blood lust" and "pandering to killers" pepper their protests.
Although 22,000 Victorians are licensed to hunt duck, they have been comparatively silent.
So the public debate, if one can call it that, has been one-sided.
Many of the contributions have got it wrong, too, with the result that a lot of misinformation is floating around.
It's time to lay some facts on the table:
The season will run from March 20 to May 30, three weeks longer than last year.
The bag limit has changed, too. Now it's five game birds, plus an additional three maned geese (commonly known as wood duck or woodies). No more than one blue-wing shoveler can be included.
Under the Wildlife (Game) Regulations 2001 and the Wildlife Act 1975, the final decisions about a duck season rest with the Minister for Environment and Climate Change. That put the Acting Minister, Tim Holding, in the hot seat.
Because Australian duck species are highly migratory and ignore state boundaries, official decisions should be based on the prevailing conditions and outlooks in all eastern states.
Hence the minister has to think in terms of eastern Australian duck populations, not Victorian birds.
The Department of Sustainability and Environment gave Mr Holding the latest data about waterfowl numbers and advised him that a modified open season would be sustainable.
Announcing his decision three weeks ago, the minister said: "The most recent index of population data collected across eastern Australia indicates game duck numbers have increased since the 2009 season.
"On balance, I am convinced hunting will not adversely affect duck populations at the levels allowed for 2010."
Mr Holding's last sentence is conservative, for open seasons are not merely "allowable" or "possible". They are a basic, pro-active strategy in wildlife management programs.
When a species becomes too numerous for its food supply, there is a massive population collapse. Hunting helps avert this, for it lessens the competition for food and, in the long run, allows a greater number to survive for breeding.
Because hunters crop a part of the natural annual loss, they do not add to the death rate.
Instead, they replace nature's tools - starvation, disease, accident, talon and fang - with the more humane firearm.
Talon and fang refer to two kinds of predation, both of which are important variables. "Talon" signifies raptors or birds of prey, while "fang" represents mammalian predators and scavengers, notably foxes, wild dogs and water rats.
When opponents claim that hunters interfere with evolution by choosing the best specimens, they commit a basic error: taking the idea of "survival of the fittest" too literally.
Nature cares nothing for specific individuals. It is the species that matters. In short, the forces of evolution and the environment play a gigantic numbers game: if enough survive to breed replacements and if enough of the survivors are worthy specimens, the species will go on. Controlled hunting fits neatly into this picture.
