Thread: goat shooting land

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

That's actually very true. We farmed cashmere goats for about 30 years, kept them well after the fibre market died because they were great 'organic' herbicide. They would eat blackberry and thistles and all kinds of crap the sheep and cattle would not touch and only move on the pasture when desperate. We only got rid of them once we started planting trees in a big way, goats and trees are not compatible.

FMNZ manage the young pine forest next door to us, but they do a crap job with pest control. I can see huge amounts of deer damage just looking over the boundary fence. I think the issue with those guys is a lot of the plantations they manage are owned by groups of investors, who like the chance to come out and shoot occaisonally, so non-investors don't get a look in.

Not too sure about that. Some of their newly planted blocks in Northern Hawkes Bay they have literally taken thousands of goats out of each block to the point where you seldom see many at all. They do a pretty reasonable job of pest control overall.
As far as no shooting hinds go, that's the first I've heard.

At the end of the day you have to weigh it up don't you. A few tree's damaged by transient deer is a hard thing to deal with. You could spend thousands on pest control and still have the damage done. And to be fair I think as far as deer numbers go it probably isn't very high numbers in the scheme of things.
Anyone who has been into some of the blocks in the likes of parts of Gisborne would understand what high deer numbers are.

A large chunk of fmnz blocks are permitted out to hunt which is better than virtually all forestry companies in Hawkes Bay now. Also there are a lot of people in the database and not enough blocks to give out. Plus investors and staff also like to hunt.