The Red Meat That's Good for You

Natural History, March, 2000 by Terry Domico

Australians ponder solutions to their kangaroo problem.

Grinding forward in low gear, the four-wheel-drive truck bucks and sways along the dirt track. It's nearly midnight, but there's still another hour to go until Ted Heineman's "lunchtime." As we bounce along in the truck's cab, Heineman's assistant flicks the beam of the roof-mounted spotlight back and forth across the dark landscape. For an instant, a small tree glows in the light, then a bush, then three red kangaroos. The animals scatter as soon as the truck comes to a halt. "Roos are very skittish on windy nights like this," says Heineman. "The best times for hunting them are just a day or two before you get rain." As one of Australia's many full-time professional roo shooters, he speaks from experience.

The flitting spotlight momentarily catches three more kangaroos. "Two females and a joey." The truck and spotlight move on. Another group of six roos is illuminated briefly, then also passed over. Because his fee is based on carcass weight, Heineman shoots only big males and the largest females.

Near a line of trees we glimpse numerous green eyes. "Sheep!" comments the shooter. "We'd best move on. Sheep and roos don't like to mix." Soon we see two big male kangaroos. One continues to graze while the truck stops. Heineman readies the rifle, an expensive-looking .225 caliber center-fire mounted with an 8x scope.

"Shhhh ..." He lays the rifle barrel across the padded armrest mounted on the driver's door. A tense moment passes. Bang! A hit. Bang! Another hit. A third animal moves into his line of sight, but he passes it up: "Too small --we'll let it grow up."

We drive over to the prostrate forms and get out of the truck. In the headlights we can see the blood; both roos were shot in the head, killed instantly. Like many other kills, these were made at more than a hundred yards away. We load the carcasses onto the truck and roll onward. There are now eleven dead kangaroos on the truck. All of them have been shot in the head.

This killing leaves me feeling queasy, but I'm determined to see for myself what Australia's "kangaroo problem" is all about. Most of the shooters I've accompanied in the past three months seem to care about their quarry, and all try to be humane by making every shot an instant kill.

Australia is home to all of the large species in the kangaroo family as well as to most of their smaller relatives. For thousands of years, many of these animals provided the Aborigines with meat and other products. Long sinews from the tail became bindings for spears and stone implements, fur was twisted into twine, and teeth were fashioned into attractive necklaces. In the southern part of the continent, where winter temperatures fall below freezing, kangaroo skins made warm furry cloaks. On the dry plains, prepared skins were sewn and sealed to make water bags. The animals were a fixture in Aboriginal art.

But in the late eighteenth century, with the arrival of European settlers and their agriculture, the face of Australia began to change irrevocably. At first, the kangaroo was an important part of the newcomers' diet, too --probably because domestic stock was still too valuable to be killed. But as the colonial presence expanded, mutton began to replace kangaroo meat on the dinner tables of the wealthier farms. By the mid-1800s, eating kangaroo was associated with being a poor farmer.

Bit by bit, the image of the kangaroo as a resource was replaced by its reputation as a nuisance. The animals not only damaged crops and fences but competed with domestic sheep and cattle for precious grass. "Coursing clubs" were formed to hunt them on horseback. To aid in the chase, settlers bred the kangaroo dog--a swift, grey-houndlike runner with powerful jaws. Meanwhile, however, as they cleared the land and created and improved watering places for livestock, the settlers enabled the roos to multiply exponentially. An 1863 editorial in the newspaper Borderwatch warned:

   It is becoming daily more apparent that some system of wholesale
   destruction will have to be devised for checking the rapid increase of
   kangaroos. So much have these animals increased in late years that If
   measures are not speedily taken against them, they threaten to overrun the
   district.... We should therefore preach a crusade against kangaroos.

Coursing was not up to the task of eradicating large numbers of the animals, however. The battue, a hunt in which bushes are beaten to drive out the game (a method used by the Aborigines), proved to be much more successful. Kangaroos were rounded up and driven into a dead end or a pit, where they could be shot or clubbed to death. After kangaroos were legally declared noxious in 1880, under ACT#11.44 VIC, rural communities pursued the animals' eradication with a vengeance. A decade later, in a battue that took place in Queensland, a dozen shooters killed a total of 20,000 kangaroos in six weeks. Still, the roos continued to multiply.

Over the years, an industry has grown up around the killing of kangaroos. "There needs to be a reasonable balance struck," says Bob Miles, a researcher with the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, which helps farmers solve production and management problems. "Kangaroos are a native animal, and they need protecting, but the estimates now indicate that we still have nearly as many kangaroos in southwest Queensland as we have sheep."