Thread: Newshub attacking Sika

Originally Posted by hebe

I also think a culture change in hunting may factor in too. A lot of my generation aren’t into bush hunting. Not bothered on learning how to do it. Sika in the Kawekas are mostly bush deer and it can be low percentage hunting sometimes.
A lot of people want easy deer on slips and tops. Not hard won deer from the back of nowhere. There are still plenty that do, but the number of guys I meet in there with long range rigs is easily double what I would meet in the more heavily bushed country in there.
Surely that has some impact. I think the park has more pressure than ever but its concentrated on the open stuff more so than in the bush. Its still relatively simple to find a bush catchment with no one in it both in the front and back country. But finding a set of tops that doesnt have a hunting party there from September through to May is a little more challenging.

Just my thoughts.

I suspect the easy deer expectation comes about from TV shows. Watch a half hour show and you usually get to see a number of animals thanks to editing.
Walk the for same amount of time and the sightings are quite different.
We now live in an age where people want instant results.

Originally Posted by hebe

I also think a culture change in hunting may factor in too. A lot of my generation aren’t into bush hunting. Not bothered on learning how to do it. Sika in the Kawekas are mostly bush deer and it can be low percentage hunting sometimes.
A lot of people want easy deer on slips and tops. Not hard won deer from the back of nowhere. There are still plenty that do, but the number of guys I meet in there with long range rigs is easily double what I would meet in the more heavily bushed country in there.
Surely that has some impact. I think the park has more pressure than ever but its concentrated on the open stuff more so than in the bush. Its still relatively simple to find a bush catchment with no one in it both in the front and back country. But finding a set of tops that doesnt have a hunting party there from September through to May is a little more challenging.

Just my thoughts.

I agree with this
All my hunting years ago was bush hunting. Now i hardly go bush. No need to deer a every where. Also the headache of parking at a road end or on the side of the road.
I shot a deer in the bush yesterday (doc land) and its been a while. Thankfully this deer one of three was the dumbest deer ever come across
I do my best to target hinds during the year up until mid November then will target yearlings now for 3 or 4 months.

@Tahr should I hop across the ditch, pay for the heli, and you take me on a few days adventure?

Seems a North island wide issue issue at the moment. Everyone is quick to blame farmers who won't let hunters onto land.
Seems everyone wants easy deer and no one wants to walk, I suspect most can't hunt as well as their internet personalities portray.
I've hardly hunted the kawekas so can't offer on opinion, But when a weekend walk in the Ruahines finds you 50 odd deer you realise something is up and it's being getting worse for the last few years.
Hunters are the first to complain when the choppers come in, or 1080 gets dropped, but most won't play any part in game management.
I was reading a story written on here this morning about someone not shooting hinds at this time of year or velvet stags. That's cool but its not helping the population explosion.
Get out there and shoot some deer, or don't moan when Doc does it for you.


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Originally Posted by Ackley

@Tahr should I hop across the ditch, pay for the heli, and you take me on a few days adventure?

That would be fine

Originally Posted by BRADS

Seems a North island wide issue issue at the moment. Everyone is quick to blame farmers who won't let hunters onto land.
Seems everyone wants easy deer and no one wants to walk, I suspect most can't hunt as well as their internet personalities portray.
I've hardly hunted the kawekas so can't offer on opinion, But when a weekend walk in the Ruahines finds you 50 odd deer you realise something is up and it's being getting worse for the last few years.
Hunters are the first to complain when the choppers come in, or 1080 gets dropped, but most won't play any part in game management.
I was reading a story written on here this morning about someone not shooting hinds at this time of year or velvet stags. That's cool but its not helping the population explosion.
Get out there and shoot some deer, or don't moan when Doc does it for you.


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We need a system that protects farmers too. You know my old farm was bounded by road and doc land access on one side. It was a maximum 2 hour walk to get from the road right into the back of the farm. Good hunting within 45 minutes walk from road. Yet no one did it except to poach the farm itself.
Opening up access is fine as long as some real measures to deter unlawful behaviour are there as well. Tresspass with a firearm should be an immediate loss of licence offence.
Any other sort of wilful damage should see loss of use of such access or use of public land all together.

Originally Posted by whanahuia

We need a system that protects farmers too. You know my old farm was bounded by road and doc land access on one side. It was a maximum 2 hour walk to get from the road right into the back of the farm. Good hunting within 45 minutes walk from road. Yet no one did it except to poach the farm itself.
Opening up access is fine as long as some real measures to deter unlawful behaviour are there as well. Tresspass with a firearm should be an immediate loss of licence offence.
Any other sort of wilful damage should see loss of use of such access or use of public land all together.

The amount of poaching we've put up with over the years would amaze most. We even had a forum hunt there years ago when we busted poachers.
My beef isn't with the farmers its all the hunters saying it's the farmers not letting hunters in that is making the population explode in the forest park, while it contributes I don't buy into it.
Case and point this article on the sika
The problem is lack of good hunters.


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Originally Posted by BRADS

The amount of poaching we've put up with over the years would amaze most. We even had a forum hunt there years ago when we busted poachers.
My beef isn't with the farmers its all the hunters saying it's the farmers not letting hunters in that is making the population explode in the forest park, while it contributes I don't buy into it.
Case and point this article on the sika
The problem is lack of good hunters.


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“The problem is a lack of good hunters”


1000% correct there Brads

I think its pretty complicated and some of it is not enough pressure on the animals on public land, and some of it looks like its big reservoirs of animals on private land.
There are fair solutions, its just they will always make someone unhappy and they are not simple or stand alone.

Managing deer populations long term is something the DoC does not seem too interested in, and often do not follow their own printed litterature. They will budget for a few professional hunters, and the odd shoot and destroy missions, yet have backed the destruction of historical huts (the preservation of which is in their raison d'etre), and in some cases will actively fall in behind the closing down of existing public access points to Public lands (the western access routes to the Kaimanawa range comes to mind).

Bungling relationships with land owners has further reduced access to, say the Ruahines. And their unwillingness to robustly remind land owners that unformed legal roads are just that may be an indication that they prefer to not rock the boat, instead of do what their website says, and assist in getting more people to get into the public conservation estate.

If they had devoted just a tiny bit of their budget to long term, slow improvement to our access to Public Lands, to permit regular hunting and tramping access to the front country, the management of deer in those areas with excess populations would become significantly easier.

DoC landing fees are a small example of their weird thought processes. Charge hunters an access fee for helo insertion, then a month later pay for a helo to go in and do search and destroy missions.

But back to the deer in the Kawekas: my photo album from the mid 1980's shows me with much larger Sika than we shot last Xmas, with a handful of 'handbag' Sika deer. Great for the carry out for sure. But emblematic of the increase in the herd size.

Originally Posted by XR500

Managing deer populations long term is something the DoC does not seem too interested in, and often do not follow their own printed litterature. They will budget for a few professional hunters, and the odd shoot and destroy missions, yet have backed the destruction of historical huts (the preservation of which is in their raison d'etre), and in some cases will actively fall in behind the closing down of existing public access points to Public lands (the western access routes to the Kaimanawa range comes to mind).

Bungling relationships with land owners has further reduced access to, say the Ruahines. And their unwillingness to robustly remind land owners that unformed legal roads are just that may be an indication that they prefer to not rock the boat, instead of do what their website says, and assist in getting more people to get into the public conservation estate.

If they had devoted just a tiny bit of their budget to long term, slow improvement to our access to Public Lands, to permit regular hunting and tramping access to the front country, the management of deer in those areas with excess populations would become significantly easier.

DoC landing fees are a small example of their weird thought processes. Charge hunters an access fee for helo insertion, then a month later pay for a helo to go in and do search and destroy missions.

But back to the deer in the Kawekas: my photo album from the mid 1980's shows me with much larger Sika than we shot last Xmas, with a handful of 'handbag' Sika deer. Great for the carry out for sure. But emblematic of the increase in the herd size.

I agree with all of that, but the access to 90% of the Ruahine front country is so easily accessible that it's just not getting hunted
Yes, there are a few difficult land owners on either side with various reasons, but generally, there few are far between.
100% on the doc hunters though, there was recently a team of goat shooters with dogs employed to hunt the river behind our farm, I've never seen a single goat nor no anyone that has in there yet these guys were in there for 3 days chaceing something that's never been there.
Is the heli landing fee and kaweka/kaimanawa only thing? Not something I have come across this in the Ruahines?

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For what its worth, my thoughts include:

• As hunters I suggest we try to separate F&B from this issue…for my money they will have to do way more than change their language to convince me they have changed their position on introduced animals, the legitimacy of hunting, and their regard for hunters. There are multiple examples of them being duplicitous and untrustworthy, so fuck’em.

• By definition, the statement that there are too many deer in the Kawekas (or any other landscape for that matter) has gotta be bullshit. As other posters have noted, there are places where there are too many deer for the carrying capacity (from a biodiversity perspective) and others where that is not the case. And while the correlation with deer density exists, it isn’t 1. In short there are places that can handle relatively high numbers, and others than can handle bugger all. Thats the lens that should be applied to these matters, imo.

• DoC recognized this with their previous aerial S&D and focused that on the Mountain Beech areas ….. Sean Husheer did a PHD thesis on Mt Beech, and I understand his work to some extent underpinned DoC’s approach to that work. Hard to argue with that type of approach, I think.

• Comparisons with the past aren’t necessarily useful, or valid. For example, a pilot who worked lots of the private Kaimanawa blocks ( and the public land too, of course) in the late 1970’s/early 80’s they were catching and shooting mostly Reds, and now they have been supplanted almost entirely by Japs. The differences in their feeding habits means the impacts will be different, too.

• With respect to the private lands I’m (mostly) inclined to the view that the grazing up to mid last century would have impacted the environment more than the current deer numbers do. And the effects of the Ohinewairua fire of 1983 are still pretty raw in places too. For my money fire is still the greatest risk to biodiversity on most PCL in NZ.

• A simple step DoC could take is to be more permissive with respect to allowing helicopter landings on PCL. Not as big an issue in the Kaweka’s as say Kaimanawa for example, but in my view material nevertheless. As @Tahr noted it is possible to land at specific sites in the Rangitikei during the roar again now, but a few years back you could get permits to land there over a 6 week period in spring, along with a site at Whakamarumaru as well. DOC chose to view that as landing for management purposes ( animal control) but determined that the numbers being shot were insufficient to justify the ‘concession’, and so in a review of the Kaimanawa FP Management Plan they canned that arrangement. Be nice to think their thinking has now changed, but in my view is indicative of their shithouse attitude towards rec hunters at that time.

• Rather than articles like this one from Newshub provoking a response from hunters, I’m of the view that it most usefully serves as a reminder that hunters should support their advocacy bodies (in this case I’d put Sika Foundation at the top of the list) and also get in (and stay in) the ear of DoC …. Reminding them that any actions should be science based, and arguing for improved access where that is an issue, and the like. Worth remembering also that outfits like Sika Foundation will always have to be a bit more restrained and reasonable than individuals, so don’t underestimate the impact of collectively strident individual advocacy too …. works for F&B.

For what its worth, my thoughts include:

• As hunters I think we should separate F&B from this issue…for my money they will have to do way more than change their language to convince me they have changed their position on introduced animals, the legitimacy of hunting, and their regard for hunters. There are multiple examples of them being duplicitous and untrustworthy, so fuck’em.

• By definition, the statement that there are too many deer in the Kawekas (or any other landscape for that matter) has gotta be bullshit. As other posters have noted, there are places where there are too many deer for the carrying capacity (from a biodiversity perspective) and others where that is not the case. And while the correlation with deer density exists, it isn’t 1. In short there are places that can handle relatively high numbers, and others than can handle bugger all. Thats the lens that should be applied to these matters, imo.

• DoC recognized this with their previous aerial S&D and focused that on the Mountain Beech areas ….. Sean Husheer did a PHD thesis on Mt Beech, and I understand his work to some extent underpinned DoC’s approach to that work. Hard to argue with that type of approach, I think.

• Comparisons with the past aren’t necessarily useful, or valid. For example, a pilot who worked lots of the private Kaimanawa blocks ( and the public land too, of course) in the late 1970’s/early 80’s they were catching and shooting mostly Reds, and now they have been supplanted almost entirely by Japs. The differences in their feeding habits means the impacts will be different, too.

• With respect to the private lands I’m (mostly) inclined to the view that the grazing up to mid last century would have impacted the environment more than the current deer numbers do. And the effects of the Ohinewairua fire of 1983 are still pretty raw in places too. For my money fire is still the greatest risk to biodiversity on most PCL in NZ.

• A simple step DoC could take is to be more permissive with respect to allowing helicopter landings on PCL. Not as big an issue in the Kaweka’s as say Kaimanawa for example, but in my view material nevertheless. As @Tahr noted it is possible to land at specific sites in the Rangitikei during the roar again now, but a few years back you could get permits to land there over a 6 week period in spring, along with a site at Whakamarumaru as well. DOC chose to view that as landing for management purposes ( animal control) but determined that the numbers being shot were insufficient to justify the ‘concession’, and so in a review of the Kaimanawa FP Management Plan they canned that arrangement. Be nice to think their thinking has now changed, but in my view is indicative of their shithouse attitude towards rec hunters at that time.

• Rather than articles like this one from Newshub provoking a response from hunters, I’m of the view that it most usefully serves as a reminder that hunters should support their advocacy bodies (in this case I’d put Sika Foundation at the top of the list) and also get in (and stay in) the ear of DoC …. Reminding them that any actions should be science based, and arguing for improved access where that is an issue, and the like. Worth remembering also that outfits like Sika Foundation will always have to be a bit more restrained and reasonable than individuals, so don’t underestimate the impact of collectively strident individual advocacy too …. works for F&B.

I agree with the article.
Recreational hunting is not keeping numbers in check.

Originally Posted by Scortched earth

I agree with the article.
Recreational hunting is not keeping numbers in check.

Because there’s not enough people actually out there hunting

Most with the motivation to hunt are too busy at work