Thread: Pest deer on private property.

Problem deer on private property....What would you pay and what would you charge financially?

Perhaps some of us have met rural property owners who have problem deer on their property and want to get rid of 1...2...3...4...5 deer or whatever. What would be a fair price to pay a deer shooter to get them disposed of?

If you are running a professional pest deer shooting business what would you charge per animal or time involved.
Allowing time to travel there....to do the work required....and travelling back to you base. Total time say 10 hours labour.

What would be a fair price per hour or animal?

Forget about comments of doing it for nothing you are running a business with overheads, expenses etc
Every thing is done legally, safely and properly.

I suspect the farmer will have plenty of options to get deer shot for free, so that's what you're competing against, and that will strongly influence the price you can charge. As a land owner with wild deer on my farm, I know I could find responsible recreational hunters to cull a few if I wanted a few culled (which I don't).

My comment isn't suggesting that you should do it for nothing, just that you are competing against others who will.

whos the farmer ? Ill ask him for you. lol

How long is a piece of string?

If you're planning on setting this up as a business you cannot have a "fixed price" your time will vary from job to job. You could have a low "kill" price. which is like a small bonus for you on a job well done. Otherwise I'd be charging out an hourly rate, which would cover your time, fuel, vehicle and gear expenses/ maintenance. Although initially you might have a good cull, but you sell yourself as maintaining the pressure on the herd as well. depending on the scale of damage get them to book you in to come back and do another sweep. You might go back to the property and not get as many but your time is covered in your hourly rate and the pressure is maintained.

If you have an ATV or Quad are they set up as per OSH regulations for commercial usage on farms? are you taking offal away? If you're operating it as a business what is your plan with the meat after, plan to sell to distribute you might want to look into MAF regulations for sale and consumption, etc.

I think you have to balance out the revenue you can gain from selling them for pet food, along with your overheads and investment in gear......also skill level.
I know if I was paying per deer shot or by the hour I would want the best bang for buck I could get, and also want someone to clean up as many as possible, not just a few and educate the rest to be wary of hunters/people etc.
I only know one professional culler and I'm sure part of his business relies on selling the meat for pet food as part of the cost consideration.
No one runs a business at a loss for long.

We charge by the hour
You may be able to structure things differently, but we found anything other than a hourly rate to get a bit messy,
If your trying to off set the cost selling for pet food, be a bit cautious as the margins are not that great and the demand isn’t always there.
Cheers

Originally Posted by video hunter

Problem deer on private property....What would you pay and what would you charge financially?

Perhaps some of us have met rural property owners who have problem deer on their property and want to get rid of 1...2...3...4...5 deer or whatever. What would be a fair price to pay a deer shooter to get them disposed of?

If you are running a professional pest deer shooting business what would you charge per animal or time involved.
Allowing time to travel there....to do the work required....and travelling back to you base. Total time say 10 hours labour.

What would be a fair price per hour or animal?

Forget about comments of doing it for nothing you are running a business with overheads, expenses etc
Every thing is done legally, safely and properly.

waro helicopters are the best bet to knock down numbers quickly and efficiently on private property - but not sure who is operating North Island - a friend in the Contract business has been doing heli shooting on a few propertys to reduce numbers - but there is culling and then theres hunting for sale meat or pet food and they are two different things - why -when I hunted as a culler we left most of the deer where they were shot and that is the right way to go about it - time wasted retrieving carcasses is time that could be spent shooting more deer - simple as that- you need to be hard hearted and practical about it - to spend time humping deer around one will soon get sick of that and you need good access with decent tracks -I know contract rates to employ experienced hunters was around $50 an hour - but for that you get very very experienced hunters with top dogs - and fit hunters - one could try a safari type operation with groups but skill levels will be either nill of feck all - if you did get permission ask for a koha for your costs and see how much work you might get - but North Island you have genuine competition from some very experienced out fits if the farmer has big pockets and can afford to pay

heli certainly makes sense, no idea what the cost per hour is but recenlty myself and @223nut watched on as a heli culler pinged over somewhere in the vicinity of 30ish deer on a neighbouring property to where we were hunting all in the space of probably 20 minutes (probably factor 1 hour including set up and pack up for the heli)....Heli certainly is effective

a heli cull with guys on ground picking up what can get to easily would just about have to be the best of both worlds....SOME gets recovered/utilised and MANY get culled in quick timespan. will still need followups from time to time no matter what is used..one thing is for sure,ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN GREEN RAIN.

With low number’s, getting a machine in at $1000 + per hour could work out rather expensive
And recovering a small amount of carcasses wouldn’t cover the machine costs
As Barry the hunter said unless you can get a vehicle to the animal it’s bloody hard work and at $2-3 per kg your making your money the hard way

We are already seeing a lot of helicopter shooting to waste. (and ground shooting) And we will se a lot more - especially with low carcass weight deer like fallow.
If I was still a cocky I would just get a chopper in for a few hours and tell them to go for it.

Originally Posted by mick

With low number’s, getting a machine in at $1000 + per hour could work out rather expensive
And recovering a small amount of carcasses wouldn’t cover the machine costs
As Barry the hunter said unless you can get a vehicle to the animal it’s bloody hard work and at $2-3 per kg your making your money the hard way

recovery for the recoverers to use themselves would be ideal.... just to have a LITTLE BIT less waste.

You'd be hard pushed to compete with a chopper, the neighbour's had 300 shot from a bird in few hours, even good ground crews couldn't do that in my experience.

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You would think given it's the 21st century, the chopper pilot or shooter could hit a mark on the gps to mark where the deer were shot, and a keen ground crew could go in ( obviously with land owners consent), and recover what meat they wanted and either give it to some food banks or hand it out to the needy.

The hardest job of any culling operation is meat recovery

Your first job is to strike hard and fast to avoid educating the pests

Meat recovery would be at the bottom of ground staffs list