animalpest wrote:Marksman - call it what you like, roo harvesters or whatever does not make you a professional.
A professional works in their profession. Simply being paid for a few bucks a month does not make you a professional.
If you never heard of anyone having to show competency other than shooting at paper only demonstrates that you are not aware of courses that require more. They exist as the course requires you to demonstrate you can humanely shoot animals, not shoot a piece of paper. And they are entirely different as anyone with experience in target shooting on a range as well as field shooting of animals can attest.
There is a lot more to pro shooting than kangaroos.
Recently I had a call at 4.00pm on Friday. Road train crashed and rolled full of cattle. So there will be wounded, dead, cattle thrashing about, others that are wounded and running around, all to be dealt with in amongst Fire brigade, Police, paramedics, rangers, and others. Forget training on paper targets.
Insurance is but one issue
how old are you animal pest
1) l do not call anyone a roo harvester, the government labeled roo shooters that
2) so calling someone professional shooter is like calling the garbage man a sanitation engineer?
3) can you post up a link where firearm proficiency tests are done on live animals?
4) yes there is a lot more to pro shooting than roo's
5) since when did the fire brigade and paramedics get permission to do a humane kill?
6) and yes insurance is but one issue
you really need to not get yourself so wound up and read what l have written, l was not having a go at you
the pro shooters l know work for the government mainly but private as well if they can find people who can afford their rate
they kill all sorts of pests including: roo's, horses, deer, pigeons, waterfowl, rabbits, foxes, cats, dogs ect..
the rate is very expensive and they are not paid by the dead weight
l have had to get a canberra clearance to be able to work for them on government land,
obviously they have a lot more tickets than me and are ticketed pro shooters
sometimes when we work we have army personnel and scientists with us to make sure the job is done correctly, humainley and to do tests as we go
they would not get the job if they were not qualified or could not do it right obeying strict rules while being observed
these guys make a hell of a lot of money and are not target shooters or week end warriors, they have spent a lot of time getting good reputations and spent heaps on good quality gear to do the job but the truth of it is that they still need a day job although they may be out a few nights a week in the local gardens park shooting rabbits while we are tucked up in bed at night, or on the local beach shooting foxes to save the endangered and vulnerable species of the local bird population while nesting, a lot of the time the shooting happens while baiting at the same time to eradicate pests from the area, more tickets
then the big jobs come in and they make a fortune on the night but that's not every night or even every week
l've witnessed splatter tests done proving the frangibility of projectiles so the shooter can shoot in suburbia safely before getting the ok for a job
these guys are pro shooters they are not part of the ssaa or its farmer assist program
“If you do not read the newspapers you are uninformed. If you do read the newspapers you are misinformed”. Mark Twain