thanks elapid, to be honest both my friend and eye both love reptiles and often go into the local bush mainly for a swim but always on the look out for reptiles, we have both caught water dragons, jacky dragons, skinks (mainly blue tongues) frogs and my friend who is way more experienced have caught a couple of red bellies but all were held correctly and never halmed and it was always quick to limit stress and to be honest ill continue catching them so i can enjoy them, yes you can enjoy them by looking at them etc but holding is a much better experience and they are never halmed so why not i say and by doing this ive recued a couple of blue tongues for example after that year of the boxing day bush fires there was a fire where my friend and i go and we went after the fire and found 2 blue tongues and from a distance they looked good but when i caught them we found burns and took em to a local vet where they were taken into care and release a few months later, ill try find pics, and also almost everyone tha own reptiles handle them and theres not much difference, people would say but they are captive bred so wont stress, well to me i believe they do stress other wise why do people get biten???
thanks, just my opinion