Peter Darke has been hunting ducks for more than 40 years and said he eats everything he shoots.
"I hunt for the table, simple, that's the only reason you do it," he said.
He said for most hunters, shooting 20 ducks a year is enough and it helps manage populations.
"I think the process is very sustainable, mountain ducks for example are a pest, they're a grazing bird and they damage crops, they pick out new seedlings, and settle on farm dams and ruin the water," he said.
Peter lives in Longford in Tasmania's north and mainly hunts in the Midlands.
"The tiers are on my left and the sun rises over the mountains and it's just beautiful," he said.
He's pleased Tasmania's duck hunting season will go ahead again in 2023, starting on March 11 and ending on June 12.
Calls to ban the hunt
However, Eric Woehler from BirdLife Tasmania said up to 50,000 ducks were killed during Tasmania's last duck hunting season and populations were decreasing.
"Tasmania's ducks need a season or more to recover from the years we've had of drought and shooting," Dr Woehler said.
He wants duck hunting banned altogether.
"I think we need to really question how the Tasmanian government can reconcile shooting 50,000 ducks with the clean green image that we're trying to present to the rest of the world."
In 2022, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania said there were 9,222 hunters holding Tasmanian hunting licences for one or more of the game species.
"All recreational licence holders who wish to duck hunt must pass the waterfowl identification test before their first licence is issued. Licenses are issued annually," a spokesperson said.
BirdLife Tasmania said as of last year, it believed there were just over 1,100 hunters specifically shooting ducks in Tasmania.
"And they shot around 40,000 to 50,000 ducks (in 2022)," Dr Woehler said.
"One thousand one hundred shooters represents about 0.2 per cent of the Tasmania population ... so if the shooting way of life represents 0.2 of the population, clearly the other 99.8 per cent of the population aren't necessarily supportive of that way of life."
Tasmania has a number of species of waterfowl but only five may be hunted during the open game season. All other species must not be shot.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania said black duck, grey teal, chestnut teal, mountain duck and wood duck can all be hunted. Ten ducks can be caught per licensed hunter each day.
"Using bait, live birds, tape recorders or other electronic devices is prohibited, and duck can only be taken with shotguns not exceeding 12 gauge," a spokesperson said.
"Lead shot are also not allowed when hunting wild duck over wetlands, lakes, dams, harbours, estuaries, lagoons, rivers, creeks, canals, or other watercourses, whether on public or private property."
Hunting here to stay
The practice is banned in Queensland, but Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia still allow it in varying degrees.
The state government said it had no plans to ban recreational duck hunting.
"We do respect different people's opinions, but we do have three decades of surveys of wildfowl populations across Tasmania," Acting Premier Michael Ferguson said.
"I understand that a survey was done early in 2022 and it didn't pose any new concerns at all."
The Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania said each February since 1985 the department has carried out a state-wide count of waterbirds with assistance from the Parks and Wildlife Service and many volunteers.
"These counts are not an attempt to count all of the ducks in the state but rather to get an index of trends in the populations," a spokesperson said.
Shooter Peter Darke would like to see one thing change: he's supportive of a season delay until the end of March.
"At the start of March, you often see ducks with several ducklings around them ... and while those ducklings will probably survive, if we delayed the season until they were older, it would be better so they aren't orphaned," he said.
