Thread: Deer Population Growth

Originally Posted by Trout

Be given 2 free bullets for every tail we collect by the government or doc.

Ha ha I just saw a pink pig fly past using his knackers as air brakes lol

Another thing deer do is walk up to 10 -15ks in a night to get a feed and return to bed befor sunrise.Even when watching stags at night befor the moon rises they are happerly feeding,As the bright moon rises in the middle of the night,they scarper off for cover,smart allright.

Originally Posted by gimp

Would that really motivate you to shoot more deer?

I shoot a .223, ammunition is basically free - the cost of 1 extra round isn't what stops me shooting more - it's largely limited time to get in the back country (and the cost of driving places at the moment).

You right there gimp,tank of gas is 2 pkts of bullets to me.and nearly everybody is time poor.

Therein lies the problem. Most people these days, especially long range shooters, wouldn’t be arsed going to the trouble of recovering tokens/tails for say two rounds of ammo. Not enough motivation, me included at times. Private properties I shoot, take me at my word what I shoot. Nearly everything is gps marked though. DOC is the same although they occasionally ask for tails to be taken. Chopper shooting, the pilot’s there to verify kills. I guess tails would be the only reliable record for a bounty system if it ever came to pass for ground based hunting.

Originally Posted by gimp

Would that really motivate you to shoot more deer?

I shoot a .223, ammunition is basically free - the cost of 1 extra round isn't what stops me shooting more - it's largely limited time to get in the back country (and the cost of driving places at the moment).

Last lot of Belmont ammo was around $1/round so not exactly free if shooting 100+ rounds/day. Thankfully most of mine is reimbursed. But yes, transport costs are getting up there too.

Originally Posted by Tentman

Deer are wild animals with a very highly tuned survival instinct .. . . . The fact that there are a lot of them now doesn't alter that. And there are a lot. Typical example. Central Otago Cocky reports 7 deer coming out on his young grass under the irrigation. This is Central Otago, nothing but rocks as far as the eye can see. A few gullies with tiny patches of matagouri scrub in them. One of the young guys went out and cast a thermal over the paddock. 28 Redskins, fucking 28! Now all 3 of us in our goat culling party spent an hour glassing the area that held these Reds, not a thing to be seen.

The point of this is that deer are not easy to hunt, never have been and never will be.

If you are not seeing deer when you are hunting 90% of the time I'd say you need to take a good look at your skills and work on those. I might be a slow learner but I reckon it took me at least 20 years to become a barely proficient hunter, I know I still have a lot to learn after 40 years of "armed tramping" (which I know is one of the reasons I shoot pretty low numbers).

So for those guys moaning about access and 1080, just get off your butts and do the Mahi to learn to hunt, it will take time but the journey can and should give you much pleasure.

Backing you up with another anecdotal incident from two summers ago: three of us headed off into the kaimanawas for the usual Xmas freezer filler trip. We got all setup at the end of a low ridge, overlooking a valley, where the engagement distances would be 200m - 450m. 7pm. Out came the binos. We all spent half an hour looking. I added up that we probably had close to 10 grand's worth of glass between the three of us. Not a sausage.

Then the mate with the thermal viewer pulled it out, had a quick scan and said: there's 5 I can see in just that quick scan. And that's a major issue with small 800mm at the shoulder Sika in 1.2m tall scrub.

We got a few that night, but only thanks to the scanner. Without it we would have scored one. If we had had the patience to sit tight for a whole hour.

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

Funnily enough immediaty before reading this I was watching videos on using thermal drones for pest control. The purists here will hate this idea but I could see myself sitting on the deck with a coffee in the morning with the thermal drone checking the farm for me.... now just need to afford it, and then weaponise it to do all the work...

We used of those at a fire this week was a pretty cool bit of kit

Sent from my SM-S916B using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by woods223

Last lot of Belmont ammo was around $1/round so not exactly free if shooting 100+ rounds/day. Thankfully most of mine is reimbursed. But yes, transport costs are getting up there too.

Yeah. My ammo is sort of an invisible cost because of stocks of reloading components which even at high volume I don't notice so much. But Diesel at $2.15 a litre is a real ouch. I don't have any hunting less than 4 hours away return and I do it 40 times a year at least and then a few trips to the SI wallaby each year. My truck has done 93,00k in 3 years. For circa 70 deer a year and a truck load of wallaby that all adds up to a hell of a cost.

Originally Posted by Flyblown

No offence intended whatsoever but I think this is a very naive view....

The way I interpret your response is that there is a hefty dose of envy, which is getting in the way of understanding the practical realities. Like I say I do not mean to offend but sometimes some attitude adjustment needs to happen to be able to see a problem for what it really is.

I don't think it was said with envy, well not unhealthy envy at least.

I for one know of places where I can reliably shoot deer on public land, but its a two hour drive from home ($100 of diesel and RUC's these days) and a four hour hike. There's also no sign of there being too many deer so I'm only shooting what I can carry (1-2 deer) I'd by lying if I didn't say I wasn't jealous of hunters who know of (or have private access to) area's where they see herds of deer and perhaps have easier access. I can also accept thought that knowledge like that comes from years of hunting.

I think there could be a more balanced approach though such as an "adopt a hunter" programme through NZDA's, where seasoned hunters commit to taking a junior hunter out to an area with too many hinds for culling and/or meat harvesting purposes. The junior hunter would have already demonstrated a level of commitment through NZDA membership (maybe having done the HUNTs course as well) which reduces the chance of an area being overrun by people. I know this already happens informally to an extent but there's no formal system or organised hunts like this that I know of (North Canterbury DA is my branch).

Originally Posted by HarryMax

So aside from folks shooting hinds at every reasonable oppurtunity - what else can we do?

It's complicated. Shooting more hinds certainly will not hurt - but it also may not help. There are density-dependent fecundity effects where releasing acute feed competition may increase the breeding rate in the population (e.g. more first year hinds breed that otherwise would not have) - resulting in no population reduction. Shooting stags under the guise of "population control" can fall into this category - making the problem worse rather than helping.



Hunters shooting every hind seen in a certain area may result in a reduction in the population however it would be self-limiting - at a certain population level and with behavioural adaptation, even if enough effort was applied to become additive mortality (rather than compensatory as above), the encounter rate of hunters with hinds would drop off - you'd never entirely remove deer, only reduce to a certain density. Which may or may not be enough to achieve a change in outcomes, depending on your defined objective. It would be interesting to see it applied and studied.

Originally Posted by Tahr

Yeah. My ammo is sort of an invisible cost because of stocks of reloading components which even at high volume I don't notice so much. But Diesel at $2.15 a litre is a real ouch. I don't have any hunting less than 4 hours away return and I do it 40 times a year at least and then a few trips to the SI wallaby each year. My truck has done 93,00k in 3 years. For circa 70 deer a year and a truck load of wallaby that all adds up to a hell of a cost.

But its fun being out there tahr, better than waisting yr money in bars n casinos pokey machines.

Originally Posted by Trout

But its fun being out there tahr, better than waisting yr money in bars n casinos pokey machines.

Exactly

Originally Posted by gimp

It's complicated. Shooting more hinds certainly will not hurt - but it also may not help. There are density-dependent fecundity effects where releasing acute feed competition may increase the breeding rate in the population (e.g. more first year hinds breed that otherwise would not have) - resulting in no population reduction. Shooting stags under the guise of "population control" can fall into this category - making the problem worse rather than helping.



Hunters shooting every hind seen in a certain area may result in a reduction in the population however it would be self-limiting - at a certain population level and with behavioural adaptation, even if enough effort was applied to become additive mortality (rather than compensatory as above), the encounter rate of hunters with hinds would drop off - you'd never entirely remove deer, only reduce to a certain density. Which may or may not be enough to achieve a change in outcomes, depending on your defined objective. It would be interesting to see it applied and studied.

as William Wallaces father said about the english.."we dont have to beat them,we just have to keep fighting them"
we dont want to whipe them out,but we need to keep the cream off the top and take a fair hunk of milk too...trim milk levels are good all around but make for harder hunting....

Originally Posted by Trout

Be given 2 free bullets for every tail we collect by the government or doc.

Greetings,
That used to be three rounds per tail of corrosive primed .303 milsurp ammo. Not many takers for that I suspect.

Originally Posted by gimp

It's complicated. Shooting more hinds certainly will not hurt - but it also may not help. There are density-dependent fecundity effects where releasing acute feed competition may increase the breeding rate in the population (e.g. more first year hinds breed that otherwise would not have) - resulting in no population reduction. Shooting stags under the guise of "population control" can fall into this category - making the problem worse rather than helping.


Hunters shooting every hind seen in a certain area may result in a reduction in the population however it would be self-limiting - at a certain population level and with behavioural adaptation, even if enough effort was applied to become additive mortality (rather than compensatory as above), the encounter rate of hunters with hinds would drop off - you'd never entirely remove deer, only reduce to a certain density. Which may or may not be enough to achieve a change in outcomes, depending on your defined objective. It would be interesting to see it applied and studied.

Some interesting ideas there and having a clear objective is obviously very important (to be clear I'm not advocating for entirely removing deer but I am interested in the populations being managed more effectively)

In terms of this sort of thing being 'applied and studied' - isn't all this data being gathered in the US with their management of animal numbers which goes back into available tag numbers etc ?

Cheers