My grandfather had a room of his own on the roof of his estate flat. The musty dark room, roofed by large scrap sheets of corrugated plastic, contained nothing more than an oft-repaired wooden chair, a chipboard table, several empty wooden crates and more rusty birdcages than we could count. Next to his makeshift office was a large well-kept aviary. He was a nassab. He couldn't afford a gun and it was not in his nature to tote weapons. His aviary was his pride and joy, and his hobby was his escape.

Why anyone would even want their hobby to consist of spending days wielding a lead-filled, double-barrelled shotgun and shooting beautiful animals dead (in the spring or any other season) is absolutely beyond me. I'm not into that sort of thing and I am not sure what it says about a person. I'm equally confused about the joy trapping birds can bring to anyone. I am also, for instance, completely indifferent about fireworks. As far as I'm concerned, they are a nuisance with regular, tragic human cost. But, it's someone else's pastime. And I'm sure the hunter, the trapper and the fireworks enthusiast would say the same of any of my hobbies.

After all, there is no such thing as an objective cultural practice that we Maltese, anyone, need to share. And that is perfectly fine; difference is a good thing, it is something to be celebrated. The hobbies that come from our differences should be protected, as long as they do not cause severe harm. Thinking otherwise would flatten our healthy divergences.

Moreover, it seems that there is no such thing as an objective 'harm' in the case of spring hunting: To those who hunt in spring, the harm would be entirely and disproportionately inflicted on them. While to the rest, it signifies the horrific destruction of migratory birds and our environment.

This article is not an apologia; it is merely food for thought.

 

'A thing is a thing, not what is said about a thing'

I was one of those who signed an online petition to stop spring hunting. I did so along with thousands of others who are equally disinterested in having the status quo persist and disgusted at the practices of a small but significant segment of the population.

Within that small segment there is an even smaller body of people whose abuses have led to the situation we are in now. The unrelenting law-breakers should not be taken to represent the vast majority of the hunters. The image of the noble owl with a hole blasted through its neck jolts us into collective revulsion and rightly so. Without doubt, and without discussion, that act is objectively wrong.

But the real image here would be several empty shells; a carefully adhered to quota of turtledoves and a crumpled, processed holiday request form from an employer. Like my grandfather's trapping, this is their escape, their version of a yearly package holiday.

Those against spring hunting should seek to distinguish between the two sets of people or they risk missing the point entirely. Demonising hunters, plural, will not help us stop the singular cases of abuse regardless of the outcome of the referendum. It is these people that should be stopped.

A lack of distinction makes the 'No' lobby's case seems hysterical, renders it untenable in debate and is counter-productive to its aims. It is this perception that is being fed to all hunters - that we want to stop their hobby, their escape, not the flagrant abuses by a minority within a minority. Both spring hunters whose hobby is on the line and those who want to end spring hunting have a vested interest in stopping the abuses. This must be communicated. Antagonism breeds contempt not dialogue and the 'No' lobby needs to see beyond 11 April.

 

Small is significant

The harmful effects of spring hunting (and hunting in general) on our ecosystem or our country's image are obvious. So I guess my question here is ... Who am I to decide?

Here is the moral dilemma:

We, the disinterested and disgusted, want to stop this. It's been a long time coming. Legislature after legislature has dodged the question (and the electoral bullet). In a country as small as ours, where a few thousand votes can make all the difference, no one has really had the guts to say: 'this is wrong (or right), this is what we're going to do (either way) and here it is (no ifs, no buts)'. Ultimately, we are in this position because of successive failures by our government (past and present) to conclusively end the to-ing and fro-ing on the issue.

There is a lack of significant leadership on the issue. Both party leaders have, of course, declared they will be voting 'yes' and allowed for a free vote. Politically, they had no choice. This was, however, yet another cop out. The people want leadership - the same sort of directed leadership we saw on the LGBT rights front, where the government took ownership of the situation with a view to action. The people don't want their politicians to be vote-mongers; they want them to act.

What I worry about is that lack of government action will create a precedent on other sensitive minority issues. Dishing out the phrase tyranny of the majority would probably be hyperbolic here, but isn't it a fact that democratic government is there to make the decisions on the 'hard cases', the cases that deal with a minority issue such as this one?

 

I will vote 'No' but...

... I am angry that this decision has been left up to us. I have to ask myself these questions:

Do I have the right to vote to stop all spring hunters pursuing what they consider to be their pastime?

Does the impact of spring hunting on the wider community cross enough of a threshold to authorise the majority to decide upon its future?

And why does the majority get to decide that?

Doesn't that seem unjust and... well, undemocratic?

I wonder what the next issue, unresolved by political indolence and irresolution, to lamentably force public action will be. I just hope that the spring hunting referendum won't bring about the unsavoury precedent its wider ramifications suggest it might. I also hope we, collectively, take note of that.