NZ Geographic article on Thar and Chamois

Pretty well balanced article

https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/tahr-and-chamois-monarchs-or-misfits/

Was free access for me to read

Working link

Yep free to read and pretty good

I flue into the Douglas with Mcnutt in the 70's , interesting flight .Am I right in thinking he was Amirican .

Good article, thanks for sharing.

"Use it or lose it". It's sort of down to us as rec hunters, even with the minimal impact we make.

If we don't do it, DOC will, so either get amongst it, or don't complain when it's "Apocalypse Now: Tahr Wars". It was painful to recently see the damage tahr do to the vegetation - it put my own manicured lawn to shame, and my lawn grows about 100,000 times faster than alpine "lawn".

Someone posted a thread the other day about the ethics of shooting a velvet stag. With the current numbers of all game animals across the country, you can pretty much shoot whatever you see, and rec hunters will still not likely see a noticeable impact on populations.

I heard some stat that in one DOC region, they shot ~8000 tahr in a year, and that was 1/3rd the anticipated population increase. Hard to argue that the herd needs protecting with those numbers.

In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, "I am not a smart man", and most of what I hear is anec-data, so keen to hear argument/evidence to the contrary...

Written 20 years ago, and still the same issues. Sad.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by yeah_na_missed

Someone posted a thread the other day about the ethics of shooting a velvet stag. With the current numbers of all game animals across the country, you can pretty much shoot whatever you see, and rec hunters will still not likely see a noticeable impact on populations.

I heard some stat that in one DOC region, they shot ~8000 tahr in a year, and that was 1/3rd the anticipated population increase. Hard to argue that the herd needs protecting with those numbers.

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People keep forgetting, all hunting is pest control in NZ. Like you say if we don't do it the govt will.

I read the bit about too many bull tahr shot - made no difference to the population. All hunting not quite pest control - shoot more hinds or nannies - the breeding stock to keep the population in check. Game management is what you want in NZ and that will make more people happy long term as you will see better results. Two guys earlier this year shot 14 hinds walking through Lake Sumner, all on the river flats over a week. A bit of veni left on the ground but that's the way to go. Let the stags grow bigger. And approx 3 yrs ago the NZDA culled about 143 hinds on the Lake Sumner tops - flown in for the purpose of culling over 3-4 days. Camped high up in groups of 3. All on public land. God knows the numbers on private land - will be far too many.