Sunday the 17th of August 2014 - The Australian Conservation Hunting Council was officially accepted as a member by the Game Management Council of NSW (GameCon NSW inc). Five committee members went along to meet the delegates from the other member clubs prior to being accepted as a GameCon member.
ACHC had formally applied to GameCon at the May 2014 general meeting with Vice-President David Baker (ACHC primary delegate for GameCon) and Rodja Vukobratovic (ACHC secondary delegate for GameCon) presenting the club purpose and reason for wanting to join. ACHC was at the time still awaiting confirmation from fair trading for the acceptance of their official name :Australian Conservation Hunting Council Incorporated". The August meeting saw ACHC incorporated and in the position to move forward with the application and attend the GameCon AGM as a voting member.
The Game Management Council of New South Wales Inc. is a recognised peak body by the NSW Firearms Registry with a membership of the combined organisations exceeding 70,000 hunters. GameCon’s primary objective is to support hunting and other traditional outdoor activities such as 4WDing and dog owners, pig dog hunters, fishers, and bow hunters. GameCon meets quarterly in Sydney and welcomes interested parties to request an invitation to attend a regular meeting.
GameCon evolved from The Joint Committee of Recreational Hunting Clubs which operated in the mid-80's. GameCon strives to ensure the wishes of hunters are articulated in a clear and focused manner to influential decision makers, stakeholders and the wider public. GameCon has observational status on The NSW Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, is a full member on the Pest Animal Committee, provides advice at a national level to the Australian Wildlife Health Network, was instrumental in having hunters endorsed as sentinels for the early detection of wildlife disease, works with Dogs NSW on responding to legislative activity affecting the ownership of all dogs and hunting dogs, and is proactively involved many other aspects of the hunting community.
Impressed with effort of GameCon, ACHC aims to bring in some of the younger blood to the fight for hunting rights within Australia. ACHC initially forming from the activity of a facebook group to save the now defunct Game Council of NSW has continued the fight to start up a NSW based hunting club / council in an effort to help secure hunters rights to hunt on public lands after organising a protest in front of parliament house in August 2013. Following on from the protest and the reinstatement of the R-Licence hunting in state forests those involved in organising the "Save the NSW Game Council" facebook group pushed to form the "Australian Conservation hunters" facebook group which now has over 1300 members. From the facebook group ACH formed a committee and then an association and finally incorporated to meet the requirements of the GameCon constitution.
ACHC is now taking on members and applying to the Firearms Registry for their genuine reason club approval and will be concentrating on building up their membership, getting involved with building up their Hunter education programs and combating the misinformation being driven forward by the Green comrades and their anti hunting associations.
In just one year ACHC has gone from a group of hunters angered by the lies and broken promises of the corrupt O'Farrell government disbanding the NSW Game Council to organising the only official protest to forming a legitimate hunting council with key intentions of taking on the discriminatory behavior of the Greens and similar misconceived anti hunting organisations to working up to nationally accredited hunter education programs.