The Executive

---

i have had a numbers of years experience in similar leadership position within political parties, firstly as Chairman of SFF party Bendigo branch, and currently hold a Vice Presidents position of the National party Bendigo branch, and have held numerous positions of other organisations, eg: progress society’s.  

I’m a proud 5th generation Hunter, mainly duck hunting and have found myself dedicating my life to the never ending fight to the preservation of our hunting culture and way of life. I have run a successful Facebook page The Hunters Voice, started in 2012 aimed at re-educating the way society perceives hunting and hunters, and to counterattack media and political bashing of our hunting community. 

This led to the creation of the first live to air radio program in Victoria that I produced & co-hosted ( Let’s Talk Hunting ). Also coordinating and running firearm safety course for school age children.  

My family and my upbringing has always been about the outdoors, hunting and fishing, My Nunnu taught his sons how to hunt, my father taught me and now I teach my son our way of life. Outside of the Duck Season, I hunt Deer, Pigs, Rabbits and also a bit of Fishing, however Duck hunting in particular holds a very special place in my heart. 

Over the past decade we have been losing our rights as hunters year after year, season after season and we are at the point of no return. I feel that if we do not fight back against the anti-hunting organisations and we do not voice our concerns that we will lose our tradition and our way of life.

After a number of very stressful encounters with feral anti-hunting protestors I decided to field the hunting community for support to establish a new hunting organisation that lobbied the Government in a different way that the other hunting organisations - because whatever they were doing was simply no longer working.

I am very proud to be the 1st Secretary of the VDHA and I will strive to ensure that duck hunting remains a legal activity in Victoria,

I started hunting when I was twelve years old, my mentor was a family friend who to me was like an uncle.  He was from a region in Italy called Puglia where he hunted duck and snipe on the major lake there called Lago Di Lesina.  Hence my introduction to hunting (which became a strong passion) was duck hunting on lake Colac over a few decoys.  

Duck hunting has remained my passion and I’ve hunted most weekends and some week days for most of the seasons since then.  I am sanded at how much of the life style that shaped my hunting life we’ve lost, not through any question of game preservation or sustainability but just sheer political gains for which ever political party is in power.  

I have also been involved in working gun dogs in the last 35 years competing in both field and retrieving trials and I have imported four working gun dogs from over seas to compliment the working lines in Australia.  

To loose hunting to me and to so many others would be a loss of a deep cultural activity which enriches our lives and has been a passion that we share with family members and friends.