13 May 2007

Canberra Times bedwetting over kangaroo cull

| johnboy
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Idiot media hysteria comes no better than the Canberra Times devoting three stories to a proposed roo cull on defence land in the ACT.

Firstly we lament three days of death, the girls follow it up with Action an attempt to ‘drive eastern greys to extinction’, and then we have, finally, a more measured Shooting plan being ‘considered’.

Take a deep breathe. It’s a plan to halve the population in one area, of a verminously common kangaroo species.

The real question is what environmental atrocity are they planning to ram through while the activists are out on Majura Range dressed as skippy?

Last time we went through this saga they bulldozed O’Connor ridge while moronic activists staked out Googong.

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Illegal, so far as I know. But only if you get caught.

I thinking of drying it – like the South African biltong. That needs game meat with as little fat as possible. We may be moving rural soon and i’ll probably be flamed silly by the roo-huggers (especially if i provoke a flame by using terms like roo-huggers :-)) but is it legal to kill roo’s on your own property for your own consumption? Obviously as humanely as possible and with no human risk (i’m not really that cruel!)?

I must say, I’m a bit puzzled too, it’s good meat, and when they mix it up with some fat, like in sausages or mince, it’s very user-friendly.
There are hundreds on my 10 acres daily.

I suspect you can make the meat moister by brining it, too.

Considering the number bouncing around i am really suprised Roo-meat isnt more popular. Maybe teebee was right and it is a culture thing – Brits and their meat n two veg (Cow, Pig or Lamb) and all that…

Only Roo i can find is in plastic wrappers and costs a fortune. Are there no spotlighters out there who wanna sell some roo?

Does anyone know where i can buy cheap edible roo meat (worried now about ‘wormy’ stuff)? I cant believe it is SO expensive in the shops. Looked in Fyshwick market and Woolies etc…. I wanna make biltong (like jerky but tastier i think) with it.

Only because they’re too lazy and stupid.

Yeah, but at least the kangaroos are cute and don’t break into cars, drain as much of our tax dollars.

How do you know the kangaroos aren’t junkies?

They’re just adicted to grass!

They sit around all day rooting and consuming their grass and crapping all over their homes!

They neglect their children after just a few months!

Bloody junky scum!

If we hadn’t built houses everywhere and forced them into the small amounts of grassland remaining then things would be fine.
Just leave them the hell alone.
I would give more value to the life of a roo than I would some of the dero junkies with kids in tow that wonder around Canberra. Maybe we should cull them first and give a Kangaroo family the ACt Housing land instead. Thats my opinion anyway.

I’d say the professional shooters who undertake this kind of work are fairly mindful of what is sitting behind their targets before pulling the trigger.

You’re quite right in saying that Belco is lousy with them. Before that last bit of rain, there was a constant line of dead roos up Bindubi street. They were eating the last remaining grass on the verges and straying onto the road.

sorry mr shab havent tried rocksalts roo, but its an easy recipe for the home chef.

i have walked past the belco roos on the weekends occasionally and i think that a cull is needed. there are too many there. i think the easy access to permanent water keeps them in that area.

i sent a few photos to johnboy of roos lolling about.

id be happy to go in and take a few out. my only worry is that on all sides there are residential areas. i think careful selction of shooter is required.

For clarification – I’m not sure they’ve got roo on the menu any more. I haven’t been to Rocksalt in a while, so the menu has almost certainly changed.

Kangaroo fillet with native pepper sauce at Rocksalt too, bonfire?

Damn – I took Mrs Danman there last thursday night – and I had the twice roasted duck w/ duck sausage.

If I knew they had kanga there I would have had it – but duck always steals the limelite for me.

Kangaroo – like any fat free meat (i.e. chicken breast, whole long filet of steak) is easy to cook – just needs some pre treatment – and to NOT be cooked through.

Slow cooking a’la crockpot would be ideal as VY pointed out through his own personal experiences.

“Raise the fences a few feet, introduce a pride of lions and sit back…”

Tigers are better for that sort of thing saw a show on foxtel when they released two tigers on a big fenced off farm in South Africa as part of a breeding program. And they just went apeshit killed 15 to 20 gazelles in an ambush in one go All so attacked a guy on a horse. And they reckon the fences around the property need to be much higher then ones used for Lions to keep the two tigers in.

But we’d have to speak French.

All of this just brings me back to my sometime lament that in someways it is unfortunate the French did not colonise Australia: kangaroo would be a national delicacy, and there’d be no need for culling; our wine industry would be som much more mature; the Darling and Murray Rivers would be dotted with great hotels to stay at; everyone would drive a ute with 25cm of suspension travel; and we would have had a 300kph train service between Brsibane – Sydney – Canberra – Melbourne 20 years ago!

Just had some kangaroo tail stew tonight. There is quite a bit of fat on the tail. You don’t need to add any to the stew. I’ll re-heat the remainder for the next three evenings. Cooked over 3 hours at a low temp it’s a top stew. I have also eaten the meat raw. The grey kangas have a more gamey flavour than the red ones. If you buy roo meat from the shops, you may like to know that the Macro brand are reds and the brand sold in red and blue packs are greys. Buy a pack of each and do a test.

It’s crazy that a cull of over a thousand kangaroos cannot be organized so that the meat is used usefully, preferably as food for people who don’t mind it.

It suited the original Australians; no reason why it shouldn’t suit us – apart from preciousness.

Raise the fences a few feet, introduce a pride of lions and sit back…

WRT stretching out and lazing. It looks like they are having a nice relax, but in fact I wonder if they are not a bit malnourished and conserving energy? I’ve noticed that it’s mainly the very large roos here that do it, and it was very prevalant during the spring/early summer months, when I had bugger-all grass. I haven’t seen any of them doing it lately, when there’s still good feed around.

And as for that not breeding during hard times thing, again I’ve not noticed it here. during the past few years, when my paddocks were down to just dry, short bush grass, and the roos were infesting my garden and lawns desperate for food, they all had joeys. Maybe it takes more hardship to stop them gestating joeys, I’m not sure.

Also it is my understanding (I could well be wrong) that kangaroos can halt their pregnancy, basically putting their embryo in stasis when there are food shortages. So if there is an overpopulation/food shortage issue they can just halt their pregnancy until there is food again. so unless the buggers are vermin (i.e. eating commercial crops) is there really a problem?

Mos – Interesting. I was talking to a qualified envt consultant today who is familiar with the area over some years and has done systematic surveys etc which show major overpopulation and degradation of the grasslands, other species under threat from too many roos etc. I’m not denying what you saw, but I guess I’d be wary of extrapolating too far from your 5 mins with a pair of binoculars to saying there ain’t no problem.

CT reported the “serious environmental problem” of overpopulation of kangaroos at the Belconnen Naval Station. Rubbish! I went down to the path between William Slim Drive and Ginninderra Creek this (Monday) morning armed (with a pair of binoculars).

On the lush green grass on the near side of the creek a few large males stretched out enjoying the sun.

On the other side of the creek and up the hill a little, the grass was short but still clearly green and alive. A number of females were feeding their young joeys and several other joeys could be seen with a larger mob of about fifty – some grazing, some lazing and some loping south toward the trees. Others were already stretched out amongst those trees snoozing.

I can’t claim for a moment that I saw the entire population but those I saw seemed to be in good condition and enjoying an idyllic life.

Kangaroos have maintained a balance with their environment for thousands of years – it appears that those at Belconnen have still got things pretty much under control.

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt3:48 pm 14 May 07

How would kangaroo meat go in the slow cooker? As a spicy, game meat stew I think it would work quite well.

Poppycock.

Cull a few million people: we’re all going to starve in the next 30 years if we don’t do something right away.

I nominated the Japanese for culling – because of the amount of damage they have done to the world.

James-T-Kirk12:58 pm 14 May 07

On another point, has anybody else noticed that Mr Watts from the canberra times must also be using WordPress for his stories. He clearly isn’t going back and editing them, as they are full of poor gramar – Just like mine.

Wo Hoo! My next carreer – Canberra Times Journalist.

I wonder if I am sensational enough to make the grade?

James-T-Kirk12:56 pm 14 May 07

Ant – You have an oportunity to improve the herd using natural selection (lead loaded) to remove the ones that don’t eat clover – Then you can leave the usefull ones to breed.

You can quite easily get hold of tenderised roo meat … as long as your vehicle has bullbars.

Does the meat stew well? Moist cooking. I haven’t tried to cook with roo meat. If I was tougher and could butcher, I’d eat out here for free. yesterday I could see a bunch of them guzzling grass out behind the Stone Pines, but when I went out, the whole paddock was alive with them, as far as the eye could see. There’s craploads of them east of the ACT. They munch away at my lawns in the night, you can hear them ripping the grass and chewing it. So they mow the lawns, and leave roo poo in return. But they won’t eat the clover.

‘Roo is just like any other game meat – too easily dried out in untrained hands due to the virtual absence of fat to keep it moist. Though it has a nice, strong gamey flavour if correctly prepared.

Did you, perchance, eat the Kangaroo fillet with native pepper sauce at Rocksalt too, bonfire? A pretty damned tasty dish, IMO.

i disagree.

kanga meat has a distinctive gamey flavour.

however – it has to be cooked properly. its easy to overcook it and it becomes dry and tough. undercook it and its not pleasant.

also, a nice pepper sauce suits roo.

It takes a marinade well though (essentially putting some fat in I guess).

BBQing one of those long fillets and then slicing it up thin crossways before dumping into a big salad and it makes an excellent meal.

But agreed it’s arse on top of beetroot mash.

Kangaroo meat is highly overrated as far as I’m concerned. One of the things that makes a steak tasty and nice to eat is a curtain amount of fat content. Which is what makes a Wagyu or Kobe steak so nice. Kangaroo is so lean that its quiet boring especially when they serve it up with Beetroot mash which seems to be the default way of serving it.

^^The same could be said about human-kind. I’m pretty sure there is not enough water to sustain the growth expectations of Canberra.

Woolworths has a tasty selection of Kangaroo, I reccomend the marinated meat logs, the kanga banga’s and the marinated steaks. They’re all quite delicious and full of protein.

“The preslaughter handling of meat animals is one of the intrinsic factors influencing meat colour appearance and quality. When animals are herded together, stress involved with mixing with strange animals, transportation , being held without food prior to slaughter and movement to the stunning pen can cause abnormal conditions in meat such as pale soft and exudative or dark, firm and dry conditions, both of which have poor eating and keeping quality. All kangaroos harvested for human consumption are head shot in the field which eliminates all of the negative effects of preslaughter handling on meat quality.”

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt8:57 am 14 May 07

I don’t know how happy I’d be eating wild roo – I believe they get quite wormy. That said, I really like the kangaroo I’ve had in restaurants (wild? who knows?).

Kangaroos are in no danger of extinction at this point. If they need to be removed, do it as quickly and humanely as possible, and be done with it.

Whether we eat beef, chicken or roo, if the meat isn’t wasted ie. turned into pet food or blood and bone does it really matter what animal we kill as such as long as it is not an endagered species ??

Oh, thanks for pointing that out: did not realise there ws a choice.

Does it matter?

DarkLadyWolfMother8:06 am 14 May 07

The activists, or the kangaroos, Pandy?

Give me gun: I will shoot. Ha Ha

Really, are they starving or are there just too many of them? If the starve, let them.

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