The Animal Justice Party copied the image from a Facebook page and sent it to media outlets last week, in a bid to highlight animal welfare concerns.

Ms Byfield said she understood why people might have been confronted by the image, but encouraged them to learn more about hunting.

"Nobody likes to see animals killed but it's a necessary part of living in a society," she said.

"With or without hunting, wallaby numbers still need to be managed and in the absence of hunting, the government will revert to using 1080 poisons - a much less humane way for an animal to die."

Hunting ensured wallaby numbers were kept at controlled levels, Ms Byfield said.

"Their numbers have to be kept in control otherwise they will either starve themselves or they will cause other animals to be starved because they take all their food sources.

"If you go out to any rural area after dark, there are wallabies everywhere and I live in suburbia and there are wallabies everywhere here.They're also coming down into farm land and competing with livestock.

"If we let those animal numbers grow exponentially they're going to die on the roads anyway because we've got them coming into suburbia getting hit by cars and trucks."

Ms Byfield said hunters did not want to eradicate any species of animal, but she noted the Tasmanian Greens backed a goal to eradicate feral deer.

Animal Justice Party Tasmania convenor Tim Westcott said while "hunting groups may claim that they are controlling a pest, these animals [pademelons] are native to Tasmania and local residents do not consider the mass slaughter of native animals to be pest control".

Mr Westcott called for funding of non-lethal alternatives for population control to be increased.

Ms Byfield said relocation and sterilisation initiatives would either move overpopulation issues elsewhere, not provide immediate solutions to problems or cost taxpayers "huge" amounts of money.