The ’roo shooter
by Gary Tippet, The Age, November 9, 2008
Climate change expert Ross Garnaut says kangaroo farming could replace cattle and beef in Australia’s arid regions by 2020. Meet a man at the front line of a controversial industry.
Wind makes a kangaroo skittish. Wind subtly plays with the flight of a bullet. Tonight storms are building far to the west, but here in the prickly scrub and saltbush flats north of Burra, in outback South Australia, it is mild, starlit and still. Which is good news for shooter Garry Gebhardt.
A big male red, raises his head at the rumble of the approaching Land Cruiser and blinks in the sudden spotlight. About 150 metres away, Gebhardt slides his rifle through the car window and steadies it on a black, padded rack bolted to the door. He assesses the animal through the 24x40 scope, likes what he sees, puts the crosshairs on its skull and squeezes the trigger.
A round from his 22.250 centre-fire Howa travels at 1173 metres per second. The roo is dead before the sound of the shot reaches it.
Gebhardt walks over to fetch its carcass back to the truck. He cuts a hole through one hock and another into its thoracic cavity to let it bleed out. Then he hangs it upside down from the side of the tray with the other kangaroos he has killed tonight.
Gebhardt, 42, has been shooting since he was seven, when he began tagging along behind his father with his first rifle, a little slug gun. Now he is an accomplished marksman, able, from 150 metres at night, to put bullet after bullet into a circle the size of a teacup rim - or a kangaroo’s cranium.
For each roo he shoots, he will be paid an average of 85 cents per kilogram dressed weight. Last night, which was a good one, he took 36 at an average weight of 26 kilos, giving him a return of $795 before expenses. Not bad, but not quite enough yet to give up his day job, running the discount tyre centre back in Burra.
Amiable, patient and laconic, Gebhardt works at what, to some, is the unpleasant end of a growing agricultural enterprise. Since 1996, when it first became legal to sell kangaroo meat for human consumption on Australia’s eastern seaboard, the industry has slowly expanded to employ 4000 full-time workers and be worth $250 million a year.
It could become radically bigger if one proposal, tucked away in Professor Ross Garnaut’s final report on climate change last month, is heeded. The report suggests that one way of tackling climate change would be to switch from beef and sheep meat production to harvesting the low-emission marsupial.
The “enteric fermentation emissions” - the methane-rich burps and farts - of livestock (mainly sheep and cattle) account for about 67% of Australia’s agricultural emissions, the report says. Cattle and sheep production also causes significant added emissions from agricultural soils, savanna fire and land clearing.
The industry is also highly vulnerable to the “biophysical impacts” of climate change, such as water scarcity.
“(But) Australian marsupials emit negligible amounts of methane,” says Garnaut. “This could be a source of international comparative advantage for Australia in livestock production. For most of Australia’s human history - around 60,000 years - kangaroo was the main source of meat. It could again become important.”
The Garnaut report includes modelling on the potential of kangaroos to replace sheep and cattle in Australia’s rangelands. It concludes that by 2020, beef cattle and sheep numbers there could be reduced by 7 million and 36 million respectively. This would “create the opportunity” for an increase in kangaroo numbers from 34 million today to 240 million by 2020.
Meat production from 175 million kangaroos would be sufficient to replace all the forgone lamb and beef and would be more profitable when emissions permit prices exceed $40 per tonne of CO2-equivalent. The net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be about 16 million metric tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year.
However, Garnaut adds, there are some “significant barriers” to such a change, including livestock and farm management issues, the gradual nature of change in food tastes and, perhaps particularly, consumer resistance.
John Kelly, chief executive of the Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia, adds that it would require a “paradigm change” in Australian agriculture and attitudes.
Indeed. Maryland Wilson, a vegan and president of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, claimed last month that shooting kangaroos was like shooting “the spirit of Australia”. She said it was cruel and that was one of the reasons little kangaroo meat is eaten.
Perhaps surprisingly, Gebhardt has some sympathy for the first bit. “I like kangaroos,” he says as his four-wheel-drive bumps over a rough fenceline track on Coorona Station, north of Burra, 155 kilometres north of Adelaide. “They’re just a nice animal, they’re a nice emblem for Australia, it’s nice to see them jumping around.
“But if they weren’t controlled, I reckon they’d overrun the joint. They mightn’t do a lot of damage on the inside country, other than the crops at certain times of the year. But here on the outside, the farmers rely on what little bit of grass is around for their sheep, so ‘roos can be a bit of a pest.”
And while at the supply side he might be boosting kangaroo consumption, he admits he’s not helping at the consumer end. He’s tried it once: “Nothing wrong with it, it was quite nice, but I’m more a beef man. Set in my ways, I suppose.”
But he bridles at Wilson’s last claim. “Cruel?” he says. “I work bloody hard not to be cruel.”
A small mob of reds bobs up in the sweeping spotlight. At the first rifle crack, one tumbles sideways and the rest break. After 10 or 20 metres, each stops and looks back in what seems a mix of bewilderment and curiosity. Within a minute four more are dead.
Gebhardt pulls up at the first body and takes a torch to look for the rest in a 200-metre semi-circle. He brings them back, cursing the nasty prickles in their coats. Each has been shot through the top of the head, the 55-grain ballistic tip bullet leaving a gaping wound. It isn’t pretty, but clearly it’s quick.
To be licensed as a kangaroo harvester, Gebhardt not only needed to be a cool and consistently accurate shot but undergo TAFE-approved training in regulatory controls and compliance and strict hygiene requirements before being assessed by two government departments.
A large part of his training centred on the animal welfare guidelines under the Federal Government’s “code of practice for the humane shooting of kangaroos”. This specifies the minimum high-calibre firearms that can be used, and that all animals be shot in the head - “one shot to the brain”. It also documents procedures for the humane dispatch of any pouch young.
Gebhardt prefers to avoid the need for the last. He assesses each target through the powerful scope, looking for the longer, stronger facial structures of males. “Most females this time of year are carrying young,” he says. “So unless she’s a big one, with nothing on her, I wouldn’t consider it.”
A female appears in the spotlight, a large bulge signifying she is carrying a good-sized joey. She hops along just in front of the vehicle, apparently unconcerned. “She must know something,” says Gebhardt.
He pulls on to a stony patch to dress the five reds, eviscerating each animal, using a special knife with a small, blunt knob at its point, designed to avoid puncturing the gut and fouling the carcass. He pulls out the large grey mass of stomach and intestines, inspects it, and throws it aside. The liver, kidneys and heart remain. Foxes will clean up the discarded offal before daylight.
He attaches a government-issued plastic tag to each carcass. The tags - white for greys and orange for reds - are sequentially numbered and record the property on which the animal is killed. Later Gebhardt will use the tags to record the species, sex and weight of each animal, to be monitored by the state’s National Parks authority.
Finally, the dressed kangaroos, which have been hanging from hooks on the side of the tray, are transferred to racks inside where they will be in the cooling breeze but protected from dust. Gebhardt bought the specially built stainless steel roo tray from his predecessor and it accounted for more than a quarter of his $30,000 start-up costs.
He also inherited his patch, the country around Burra and a series of stations in a circle starting about 35 kilometres out - places like Chalk Cliffs, Princess Royal and Poonunda. He has learnt kangaroo behaviour and knows to circle the dams on hot nights and move into the hill country when it’s windy. He knows reds prefer the open, western greys like the scrub and euros stick to the hills. When water’s scarce they’ll move on to cropping country: “They make their way to greener pastures - and make my job a lot easier.”
Gebhardt’s not the type to scoff, but he doesn’t think there’s much to Garnaut’s proposal. “I doubt you’d find many cockies round here turning their country over to the ’roos,” he says. “It wouldn’t fit the mindset. I think consumption will increase as time goes on because it’s got all the protein people want and none of the fat, but I don’t think it’s going to trouble the sheep or cattle market. I just can’t see it happening.”
Kelly, of the Kangaroo Industries Association, says Garnaut’s suggestion is perfectly feasible, if unlikely.
“You could do it tomorrow. There’s very little that needs to be done in terms of a production system, it’s simply a matter of a change of paradigm, an attitudinal change among pastoralists.”
No one is suggesting farming ‘roos, he points out. “The concept is simply that in arid rangelands - around Broken Hill, Cobar, Charleville, that marginal sort of country - pastoralists might be better off destocking or partially destocking their country of sheep, claiming a carbon credit for doing so, and, heaven forbid, devoting a feed resource to kangaroos.”
But to deliver the amount of carbon mitigation Garnaut suggests is possible, the kangaroo industry would have to increase production six or seven-fold. And that would require an enormous growth in the market.
“Myths, misconceptions and attitudes” towards kangaroo as a food are changing, he says, but the average annual quota of about 3 million (from a population of about 25 million within harvest areas) still accounts for 0.5% of red meat consumed in Australia.
Loading the chiller at the Burra showgrounds, Gebhardt says he wouldn’t mind more work but is content with what he’s got for the moment. “I enjoy it. I always wanted to do it.”
Often he will take along his wife of 25 years, Jenny. She’ll do some of the tagging, the bookwork, giving him time to get out and get a few more. “But mainly it’s a bit of company. It’s nice and quiet out there. It gives us time to have a bit of a chat, to relax and talk. It’s a good bit of time to have together. It’s a nice life. I love it.”
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