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The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (Victoria) was incorporated as a public company on October 1, 1973. We exist to promote the shooting sports and protect firearm owners' interests.

With more than 40,000 members, SSAA Victoria is a leading body representing licensed firearm owners in Victoria. SSAA Victoria has more than a dozen branches and more than 30 sub-clubs and disciplines within the organisation.

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SSAA Victoria News

Wetland closures for 2024

Today, the Victorian Government gazetted wetland closures ahead of the 2024 Victorian duck season, which will commence on Wednesday. Hunters can stay informed about wetland closures via the Game Management Authority website and read more information in the Government Media Release. The reality is that most of the ‘bandwidth’ of hunting interests over the past twelve months has been used fighting the existential threat to the continuation of duck and quail hunting. Until a level of certainty about our future was given just ten weeks ago, it would not have been possible to have conversations with the Government about improving these processes. 2024 is a ‘transition’ year for duck hunting, with the promise that, from 2025, season conditions will be science-based. Hunting interests will work proactively with the Government and other stakeholders to drive a better process for 2025 and beyond. The closures announced today are:

Wetland name	Nearby town	Threatened species present / reason for closure	Regulation / Restriction
Andersons Inlet	Inverloch	Orange-bellied Parrot	Full closure
Big Reedy Lagoon State Game Reserve	Yarrawonga	Great Egret	Full closure
Bullrush Swamp	Hamilton	Brolga	Full closure
Clydebank Morass State Game Reserve and adjoining public land	Clydebank	Blue-winged Shoveler	Full closure
Cundare Pool	Cressy	Brolga	Full closure
Dowd Morass State Game Reserve	Sale	Breeding waterbirds	Partial closure (see gazette)
Koorangie State Game Reserve, including the Marshes, Lake Bael Bael and Little Lake Bael Bael	Kerang	Freckled Duck, Breeding waterbirds	Full closure
Kow Swamp	Gunbower	Wildlife sanctuary	Full closure
Greens Lake	Corop	Brolga	Full closure
Hird Swamp State Game Reserve	Macorna North	Australasian Bittern	Full closure
Lake Bolac	Lake Bolac	Musk Duck	Full closure
Lake Boort	Boort	Grey-headed Flying-fox	Full closure
Lake Buloke (which includes Little Lake Buloke)	Donald	Blue-Winged Shoveler	Full closure
Lake Buninjon State Game Reserve	Willaura	Blue-winged Shoveler Blue-billed Duck	Full closure
Lake Colongulac	Camperdown	Blue-Winged Shoveler	Full closure
Lake Connewarre (except Reedy Lakes and Hospital Swamps)	Barwon Heads	Orange-bellied Parrot	Full closure (Reedy Lakes and Hospital Swamps are open to hunting)
Lake Cullen State Game Reserve	Kerang	Blue-Winged Shoveler	Full closure
Lake Goldsmith State Game Reserve	Beaufort	Blue-winged Shoveler, Freckled Duck	Full closure
Lake Linlithgow	Hamilton	Blue-billed Duck	Full closure
Lake Martin	Cressy	Curlew Sandpiper	Full closure
Lake Muirhead State Game Reserve	Willaura	Brolga	Full closure
Lake Murdeduke State Game Reserve	Winchelsea	Blue-billed Duck	Full closure
Lake Natimuk	Natimuk and Horsham	Blue-winged Shoveler	Full closure
Lake Stewart (private land)	Corop	Brolga	Full closure
Lake Tutchewop	Mystic Park	Blue-billed Duck	Full closure
Lake Wat Wat	Orbost	Blue-winged Shoveler	Full closure
Lake Wongan State Game Reserve	Streatham	Blue-winged Shoveler	Full closure
Pine Lake	Horsham	Blue-winged Shoveler, Blue-Billed Duck	Full closure
Reedy Lakes (Reedy, Middle and Third Lake)	Kerang	Wildlife sanctuary	Full closure
Richardson River	Donald and Lake Buloke	Wildlife sanctuary	Full closure - from Lake Buloke up to and including the Sunraysia Highway Bridge
The Green Swamp State Game Reserve	Glenthompson	Brolga	Full closure
Tower Hill State Game Reserve	Warrnambool	Blue-winged Shoveler	Full closure

SSAA Victoria provides this table for information only - for up to date information hunters should refer to the GMA website and local signage. Wetland closure process Under what has been termed the “Wetland Closure Process”, the government can use administrative instruments to close or further regulate access to hunting areas before or during the duck season. The process involves some objective elements, such as trigger points for species based on criteria that consider their conservation status and behaviour. Given the high preponderance of waterbirds present in Victoria in 2024, it has long been anticipated that this process would result in significant closures this year. Further regulation or closure can occur for several reasons, including to protect rare and threatened species or to avoid disturbance to colonially breeding waterbirds. Further regulation can involve additional restrictions on hunting times, equipment, and methods. If a closure is required, then this can involve either a partial closure or a full closure of a hunting area. Further regulated or closed wetlands are monitored throughout the duck season. If the reason for further regulation or closure no longer exists, the legal notice can be revoked. SSAA Victoria, FGA, Birdlife Australia (a conservation-cum-anti-hunting group), and government agencies participate in discussions and considerations of closures before duck season. In recent years, the incidence of closures based on subjective and opaque considerations has increased. This undermines public confidence in the process. In a written submission to last year’s Select Committee Inquiry into Victoria’s Recreational Native Bird Hunting Arrangements, SSAA Victoria asked the committee to make the following recommendation:

The Select Committee should recommend that the GMA develop a transparent and objective procedure for managing the potential impacts of game duck hunting. Game hunting stakeholders, such as hunting organisations and Birdlife Australia, should be involved in that process, and the closure of public wetlands should be a last resort.

That request was ignored. SSAA Victoria and other hunting interests will continue to advocate for a process that;

Focuses on management and mitigation rather than on closures.
- The fact that the government refers to the current process as the “Wetland Closure Process” is telling. Where disturbance has been established as a legitimate concern, a plethora of management actions can (or could) be taken to mitigate that concern. Closures of wetlands should be the exception, not the rule.
Is transparent.
- The present situation is that some considerations are put before advocates such as SSAA Victoria and FGA (and, on the other ‘side’, Birdlife), and they can be assessed and debated on their merits. Some considerations form the basis of advice to the relevant Minister from other areas of the public service that are not transparent or subjected to such scrutiny.
Is objective.
- Whilst an appropriate balance needs to be struck between a process involving environmental variables being prescriptive and being adaptive. A new management and mitigation process needs clear, documented rules and trigger points that can form the basis for considerations and needs to be a ‘living document’ that develops with learning over time. The current “Closure Process” is based on a technical document that sets trigger points for 146 species broadly defined as “waterbirds”. In recent years, the government has also implemented closures to manage a perceived risk of disturbance to non-waterbird species, notably the Orange-Bellied Parrot and the Grey-Headed Flying Fox. If disturbance from hunting is to be regularly assessed as a threat to these (and any other) species, those considerations must be evidence-based and become a part of the transparent, published process.
Is regularly reviewed.
- The current process evolved narrowly and largely organically. It should be subject to a review from independent experts, and any process that evolves should be similarly reviewed at reasonably regular intervals (e.g. every five years or so).

The closure process spreading its wings. Most of society expects its Government to take a precautionary approach when there are environmental threats from an activity; however, for Government intervention to be credible, those threats need to be real, and the approach to mitigating them needs to be clear and consistent. Grey-Headed Flying Fox The population of Grey Headed Flying Foxes has increased significantly over recent decades. Around twenty years ago, a concerted effort was made to force a colony of Flying Foxes out of Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens to Yarra Bend, which is adjacent to the busy Eastern Freeway. The government assessed ten criteria when choosing Yarra Bend as the colony's home, and disturbance was not one of them. More recently, the Yarra Bend flying fox colony has been observed in the immediate proximity of the New Year's Eve fireworks in Melbourne’s Flagstaff Gardens without apparent concern or comment from the regulators. Hunters are justified in being concerned about the dichotomy here. No literature that SSAA Victoria has found suggests that disturbance from recreational hunting poses an actual threat to Grey Headed Flying Fox populations. Last year, following the first wetland closure on the rationale of avoiding disturbance to a Grey Headed Flying Fox population, the bureaucrat primarily responsible for the closure gave evidence to the Select Committee Inquiry into Native Bird Hunting in Victoria. The discussion of the rationale was illuminating:

MP: “Can you explain to me how the process was used to close Reedy Lake near Nagambie for flying foxes”

Bureaucrat: “The process has focused on birds until now, but when we heard that there was a colony of grey-headed flying foxes, a threatened mammal, that had formed at Reedy Lake – that was brought up…I argued that flying foxes are susceptible to disturbance and that maybe we should think about whether hunting was appropriate around the flying fox colony”.

If the process is to be credible, it needs to be better than that. Orange-bellied parrots Last year, we saw, for the first time, closures at Connewarre State Game Reserve and Andersons Inlet to manage a perceived threat of disturbance to the critically endangered Orange-bellied parrots. The Andersons Inlet closure was based on a reported sighting of a bird some months earlier, and the Connewarre closure was based on the experimental release of captive-bred birds in the area. This practice had occurred alongside recreational hunting for five years previously without incident. These areas have been closed again; however, this year, pleasingly, Hospital Swamp and Reedy Lake have been spared from the Connewarre closure. The areas affected by the closures host many other dynamic activities, including motor boating, kite surfing, aviation, wind farms and heavy industrial operations.

Call for hunters to assist with Stubble Quail research

Victoria’s game quail hunting season opens this Saturday, 6 April 2024. The Game Management Authority (GMA) is appealing to quail hunters to assist with a research project identifying the age and sex of hunter-harvested Stubble Quail. As part of the program, licensed quail hunters mail harvested quail wings to the GMA so they can be aged. This data contributes to a better understanding of harvested Stubble Quail demographics and reproductive rates in Victoria. Together with the data gathered from the Stubble Quail monitoring program, this information allows GMA to model the Stubble Quail population to predict trends and assist in developing sustainable management practices. We don’t have to look back too far to see what happens with our quail seasons when decisions are made by the wrong people, using the wrong information for the wrong reasons. Anti-hunting activists are using cherry-picked and misrepresented data to attempt to further their campaign to ban what we do. Researchers must have the best available information to ensure that the Government can meet its commitment to basing game hunting seasons on the best available science. For more information and to become involved CLICK HERE.

Victorian shooters in solidarity with bowhunters over the border

Victoria’s leading shooting body has slammed a decision by the South Australian Government to ban bowhunting. SSAA Victoria says it is speaking out because “bad ideas have a nasty habit of crossing borders”. SSAA Victoria’s Hunting Development Manager David Laird labelled the ban a “disgrace”. “Bow shooting is a legitimate form of shooting, and bow hunting is a legitimate form of hunting,” Mr Laird said.

A bi-partisan committee of the South Australian Parliament conducted an inquiry into bowhunting that reported in November 2021. That inquiry made eight recommendations to regulate bowhunting in South Australia. None of those were to ban bow hunting. “Prohibition is poor policy,” Mr Laird said, “There is a golden opportunity here for the South Australian Government to follow the Parliament’s recommendations and regulate bowhunting to address community concerns”.

Recommendations from the Parliamentary inquiry included introducing training initiatives and amending the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972 to better regulate hunting. The South Australian Government has opted instead for an approach that would ban bowhunting by having the Governor sign off on a change in regulation. This means that the changes would avoid the scrutiny of the elected Parliament, where they would likely fail in the Upper House.

When SA Environment Minister Susan Close first announced the bowhunting ban in late 2022, the Minister’s rationale was “that was our election commitment (to RSPCA), we would ban the use of bows and arrows for recreational hunting”. This so-called election commitment was not made public before the election and is not included on the Government website outlining all of the commitments that SA Labor took to the March 2022 election. “The public is entitled to know what they are voting for,” Mr Laird said. “It’s ironic, given the vitriol we hear about the allegedly secretive gun lobby, that governments are making secret deals for support with the shadowy animal rights lobby”.

Read the South Australian Government's proposed banning process here.

Scientific advisory committee recommends the removal of Hardhead from the threatened species list.

Victoria's Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) has recommended removing Hardhead (Aythya australis) from the State's Threatened Species List. A de-listing would clear the way for Hardhead to return to the list of game ducks that can be hunted. Hardhead were listed as vulnerable in 2013 on the basis that there were fewer than 10,000 mature individuals and that there was purported evidence of a continuing population decline. In a detailed nomination to the SAC, SSAA Victoria demonstrated that the population of Hardhead is considerably greater than 10,000 individuals and that there is no evidence of a continuing population decline. The SAC recommendation is in direct response to SSAA Victoria's nomination. The Association is grateful to the SAC for assessing the evidence and accepting the nomination. In doing so, the SAC has struck a blow for the integrity of the listing process. It follows from the SAC's recommendation that Hardhead should not factor as a trigger species for any wetland closures for the 2024 season. The Government now has sixty days to consider the SAC's recommendation. SSAA Victoria appreciates that duck season settings have already been announced and that timelines are tight; however, the Association is hopeful that the Government is able to consider the SAC's recommendations ahead of the duck season and then take advice from GMA on the appropriateness of including Hardhead in the bag for 2024 Field & Game Australia worked with SSAA Victoria to frame up the nomination for the SAC.

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