Bigruss
I'm thinking we know each other from "way back".
For those unfamiliar with the period of time mentioned by bigruss and just to add my 2 bob's worth about the feral animal culls - the main concern was simply that the top end of Australia had a major problem with animals that had been introduced by European settlement.
After roads were extablished and the advent of motor vehicles, animals such as Camels, donkeys, buffalo, horses were let loose and then started to build big feral populations.
I was involved in a lot of the control shoots thru the eighties and the government was trying to reduce the feral herd size due the fear of Foot and mouth and other such problems coming in thru illegal boat immigrants.
I flew the 12E and 47G 3B1 and just looked up some of my logs and noted an average day consisted of 3 X 3 + hour sorties.
We shot about 25K donkeys per 4 or 5 weeks with the best being 548 in a total sortie flight time of 1.75 hrs.
The good white shooters averaged about 3.5 rounds per animal while an aboriginal shooter I teamed with for a few years averaged 1.5.
It sounds like a turkey shoot - but far from it as the animals were running full tit, often down wind, the nachine was floating in and out of transition, the flight path was usually with the nose offset about 45 degrees (for the shooter to aim forward), usually it was very rough, rocky, sandstone hills strewn with bush. Temp averaged about 35 - 40 C, humidity above 85% after October, always a wind, unbearable glare reflecting back thru the bubble, dust etc.
We slept on the ground, serviced our own machines, refulled out of drums and probably averaged about 150 - 200 hrs a month.
An interesting job! I respect those other Aussie pilots in a big way who were involved as to survive they had to work bloody hard.