Thread: goat shooting land

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

I should have said I don't know anything about FMNZ policies over all, just the specifics of the block next door because I asked the manager about it. His reply was about investors doing the shooting, this might be a one off situation. He also said they intended to do a once annual possum control, which did not impress me. I try to get it done every three-four months.

Yes as you say the pest population is nowhere near as high here as it is in N HB, but what I know is I see a lot of trees looking like this over the boundary fence (then they die and stand there for a year or so brown).



They don't seem to be doing any control at all, as far as I know. What is acceptable loses for pine forests? I don't have a thermal yet, but have borrowed one a few times and seen deer in the pines every time. I'm probably the only guy on this forum who would prefer not to have deer in the backyard.

My place for comparison;

Different tree species, same problem.

Goats have not been a major issue here for several years, just the odd one. But they're coming back with some big mobs both N and S of me on the coast. The new pine block on my N boundary touches another pine block on the coast giving full undercover access to goats so this will no doubt become a problem for me again soon. The only good thing about it is the young guys on the big corporate farm to my S are very keen hunters so they will keep the population down.

Possum control done properly once per year is more than enough. Most of the blocks that we do monitor at 1% rtc or less, that is 1 possum per 100 trap nights.

Possum control in HB is changing. I'm unsure entirely what area it encompasses but from my understanding is the council are going to take the possum control back and contractors are going to do the whole lot which will be monitored to ensure an adequate job is being done. As you would be aware, with the current system outside of the TB area some landowners aren't quite getting around to it.
As far as FMNZ blocks go in HB, out of all of the forestry blocks we have done, they tend to have the lowest possum densities compared to other forestry companies.
They do goat control pretty intensively for 5 years. After that more often than not the forest supervisor will continue to shoot them each visit. And often the deer too if they see them.

They have a very passionate ecologist that works for them, skogs.mark on Instagram. He is against pests more than most and often volunteers to do pest control in the weekends outside of work too.

Unfortunately in the future there will be even more deer and once the trees get too big to see into they won't just be harder to hunt but will push out more readily to better feed ie the neighboring farms.