Imagine a reality TV dating show. But replace the bachelor or bachelorette with a farmer or landowner and replace ‘looking for love’ with ‘looking for environmental volunteers who can help manage pest species problems’. That’s basically what the SSAA Farmer Assist program is.

Just like the dating shows, farmers explain what sort of a shooter they are looking for and shooters do their best to outline why they would make a good fit for the farmer. The farmer is then able to choose their favorite suitor – er, shooter, and the two can live happily ever after. But instead of marriage, the farmer lands help with controlling pest species and the shooter has somewhere to practice their recreation. A truly win-win situation if there ever was one.

To put it another way: “The Farmer Assist program provides an easy way for landholders experiencing pest animal problems to find volunteers that are skilled, insured and responsible to help them. The program operates through an online portal where landholders post an ad for assistance and members then register their interest in assisting with their specific problem,” said Matthew Godson, Wildlife Programs Leader for the Sporting Shooters’ Association of Australia (SSAA).

Despite having almost 200,000 members in Australia, SSAA is unknown to a large part of the Australian public. This is a shame because many SSAA members sacrifice a great deal of their time, money and energy into holding back the hordes of invasive pest species which have had a devastating effect on our native flora and fauna.

Sporting shooters have been performing this sort of conservation work informally for decades, if not centuries, and while small groups of conservationists have existed for quite some time, it wasn’t until 2013 that the idea to connect farmers and sporting shooters directly was conceived.

“The program began in Queensland in 2013 after a pilot program was set up in partnership with AgForce Queensland to help Queensland beef producers,” said Matthew. “There is no other community-based pest management program like this in Australia. Originally the program came about when the SSAA saw an opportunity to use their members’ specific skills to help landholders with pest management and to undertake activities to protect the environment from feral and pest animals.

“The Farmer Assist program is now available in all states after a national rollout in 2017. The program has the capacity to assist many landholders all across Australia so our focus is on promoting the program so more landholders are aware of it so they can use it.”

Praise for Farmer Assist has come from many sources including the ABC, the Commissioner for Threatened Species and the RSPCA. These endorsements should not be taken lightly, given the RSPCA’s murky stance on shooting and hunting. Even this group acknowledges that ground shooting is among the most humane methods of dealing with pest species.

RSPCA Australia has expressed their encouragement with Farmer Assist’s accreditation program, which sets and assesses requirements for shooting accuracy and best practice.

So far, the program has connected approximately 300 landholders and has the capacity to assist far more. However, not just anyone can sign up for a job. Shooters must first prove their shooting competency for the sake of animal welfare and to keep public confidence in the program. The standard that volunteers through Farmer Assist must demonstrate is the equivalent that professional kangaroo shooters are held to. This boils down to being able to shoot a five-shot grouping into an 8cm wide target from a distance of 50m (rimfire) or 100m (centrefire) in a favoured hunting position. That means five shots in a row must all be within an 8cm circle – accurate enough to humanely kill any pest species.

One of the 300 successful connections the program has made so far was between Queensland hunter and shooter Don Caswell. This is an excerpt from Don about his experience in 2016 helping out a dairy farm that was being terrorised by pigs and wild dogs.

‘We put in a request for the job and received an offer to come and meet the owner of that property and his neighbours. Mike and I rolled up at 10am, after the morning milking was all done and chatted with the folks over a cup of tea. We explained what we did and ran through our resume, so to speak.

The dairy farmers had two concerns. The wild pigs had grown in both numbers and daring, to the point where pigs were entering the dairy complex during milking every night. Workers were constantly encountering full-grown wild boars face to face in the yards and even in the sheds.

The second concern was attacks on cattle and calves by wild dogs. Every week animals were being maimed and killed by these dogs, representing a significant loss of capital and income. Like all good dairy farmers, they were quite fond of their carefully nurtured herd and were deeply upset at the pain and suffering inflicted on their animals.

Mike and I paid our first visit at 10pm, after the evening milking was done. The farmers had told us where to expect the pigs to arrive from and that they would be bold as brass. Mike had taped a torch to the barrel of his .30-30-calibre lever-action rifle and I had a small LED torch attached to the scope of my .223 Remington rifle. We parked, loaded our rifles and walked into the dairy. Half a dozen pigs looked up at us from their foraging. Crikey!

After a quick, whispered chat and a consideration of the safety aspects, we went to work. Two big boars, only 8m from us, flopped to our shots. We had not been on site more than five minutes. The farmer had told us there were several groups of pigs, so we waited awhile and, after about 20 minutes, another mob came barging in to the dairy. I dropped a mid-sized boar and Mike rolled an enormous sow.

After half an hour, we repeated that performance yet again. We were home by midnight with six hogs to our credit; a great start. We went back a few times each week and pretty much repeated that result on every visit. Other shooters were there during some of the nights we stayed at home. By the end of the second week, several dozen pigs, mostly boars and big sows, had been shot. The clientele was getting smaller in size but were still not lacking in boldness.’

Don’s story is not unique and despite the effort and personal cost to help out, shooters like Don are more than happy to be involved. This is fortunate because controlling invasive species helps all of us, not just farmers. In 2014 pest animals including wild dogs, foxes, rabbits and feral pigs cost farmers up to $797 million. Most surprisingly, this figure increased almost 30 per cent from the last time the analysis was made in 2009. Economically speaking, shooters are a powerful asset that should not be underestimated. 

This is particularly the case during the current drought conditions plaguing much of our country’s farmlands. “The program is a great asset in helping reduce the plague proportion of pest animals at the moment, especially with the drought conditions we are experiencing out here,” said Tracey, a landowner from Newstead, Queensland. “The two shooters I had here could not be faulted. They did an excellent job and all gates were shut properly.”

Pat, a farmer from Longreach, agreed and was also thankful to the shooters willing to help out in the tough conditions, saying: “I have found Farmer Assist to be extremely helpful in controlling feral animals on our drought-stricken property. I would recommend the program to other farmers.”

Arguably Australia’s native animals feel the biggest sting from invasive pest species. Several native species have already been driven to extinction because of predatory pests. Feral cats alone have been responsible for the extinction of 20 native mammals including the lesser bilby and the desert bandicoot. In fact, feral cats each eat between five to 20 native Australian species every week, which adds up to more than 10 million natives being killed in that time.

Their future is not as bleak as it appears. Along with the Farmer Assist program which targets invasive species, the SSAA has undertaken several projects which focus on rehabilitating native species. These have included re-establishing populations of the yellow-footed rock wallaby, the bridled nail-tail wallaby, malleefowl, bilbies and re-introducing the western quoll to South Australia. All of these projects were only possible because ground shooting removed invasive species out of the natives’ habitat so that the locals have a chance to re-establish their populations to their former glory.

To learn more or become involved with SSAA Farmer Assist, you can visit farmerassist.com.au or contact a state SSAA office.