Acknowledgements
These web pages have been put together in somewhat of a hurry, but the content has been developed over many years. I watched duck shooters for a couple of years before I learnt about the X-Ray studies. I realised intuitively the massive injury rates that these studies implied. Next followed a long period of slowly accumulating information. The staggering thing was that so many departmental officers in government Conservation departments across Australia are either ignorant about the wounding rates during this sport that they are supposed to police, or just don't care.
There are plenty of people who helped with putting together the wounding rate story:
A number of people connected with the "MAPLE" symbolic mathematical software package helped with the mathematics. Particularly Dr Tony Scott who cracked the main integral. Dr Greg Fee also helped with methods of calculating hypergeometric functions. "Waterloo Maple Software" provided a version of their "Rolls Royce" software to me for the work at no cost. "SIR Software" provided an upgrade at a reduced price. The reviewers of my paper "Shotgun Wounding Characteristics" provided excellent feedback and improved the paper enormously.
Ralph Hahnheuser has provided a great technical filter for the shotgun simulator and has been a tireless campaigner on behalf of the ducks. He even wrote his own shotgun simulation program which helped me check mine.
The U.S. Humane Society helped with photocopies of journal articles that were unavailable in Australian libraries.
People in our duck rescue teams here in South Australia, and also in Victoria, New South Wales, and Tasmania provided inspiration. In particular I want to single out Laurie Levy and some of his "core" team. Laurie's selfless dedication to helping the underpriviledged, whether whales, ducks, or people should be a lesson for everyone.
A special debt is owed to all the volunteer veterinarians and duck rehabilitators. These people patch up the wounded and display the sort of intelligent caring attitudes that are so sorely needed to make this world a better place.
In addition to a variety of people directly involved with the mathematical and rescue activities, there have been plenty of unwitting helpers. These are the people who devote large amounts of time to writing programs and then giving them away. I have used the work of the "Free Software Foundation" (the GNU people!) extensively in all sorts of little and big ways during this work - everything from their compiler down. The LEDA people will also see their work in one of the graphs. TeX was used for the fancy mathematics .
Lastly, thanks to Suzanne for getting very muddy with me, being a great duck spotter, and not getting too upset over hours spent in front of the computer.