Thread: Bloody hell !

^^^ This is 100% correct. Its a simple question of sound farm management. Your working capital is not going to deliver, if your feed is getting hammered every night by as many deer as you have sheep or cattle. Goats are also a problem but there the equation is a little more sensitve, as they browse problem weeds and scrub and can help pasture quality, but they reach a tipping point where they too start to hit the good stuff too hard.

There are two professional hunting outfits in our area that deliver a bankable hunting experience, plus the half dozen or so of us that hunt the high country blocks for recreation but the number of deer we take is miniscule as a percentage of population. When I go into the native after a decent stag, the lack of feed under the canopy is really obvious, the deer hammer anything they can reach in there and because they are landlocked by farmland, they have to come out at night to survive.

I totally get the frustration felt by stalkers who struggle to even see a deer on the public land. @JoshC is right, a good well mannered presentation at the homestead and a willingness to go out of your way to give something in return will often pay dividends. Not always, but often, there are some strange buggers at the end of some of the roads, in the good areas. And I'm dead serious when I say you do need to be very very careful in some areas, with where you leave your vehicle and who you get your permission from. Especially the city folk with flash SUVs and not much clue about local history. And if the land owner says 'don't shoot this or that' then don't shoot it. Especially pigs or fallow, if those are your instructions.

In 2015 in Victoria we door knocked in the foothills of the eastern high alpine country and came up trumps first call, for accomodation (a barn to put our swags in and a long drop) and as many goats as we could shoot. I offered to straighten all the fence battens as we went, and re-staple any that needed it and generally tidy things up, that went down a treat. Rehung a couple of gates, a few strainer wires here and there. Cost me a couple of packs of staples and a black thumbnail and a few hours failing to teach my boys to bloody concentrate. Shot half a dozen fallow, recovered and cleaned them and hung them in the farmer's chiller for him to do with them whatever he wanted to. Happy days, we were there for a week and we can go back anytime.