Thread: Shooting to waste

When venison prices are so low, the cash & effort invested to recover animals is low.

Recovery of venison from ground based night shooting on anything other than flat paddock country is a total nightmare.

The only economic way to to this is helicopter shooting, and that’s a tough ask in this low venison price cycle.

We couldn’t even get a pet food venison contract over the line recently. Costs too high, revenues too low. Simple economics.

Originally Posted by Flyblown

When venison prices are so low, the cash & effort invested to recover animals is low.

Recovery of venison from ground based night shooting on anything other than flat paddock country is a total nightmare.

The only economic way to to this is helicopter shooting, and that’s a tough ask in this low venison price cycle.

We couldn’t even get a pet food venison contract over the line recently. Costs too high, revenues too low. Simple economics.

The good work you are doing with your pest control is obviously in the same vein as this, but at least you spoke about harvesting prime cuts. It seems a shame that there is not some way that either private hunters can utilise this pest population (which is within an hours drive of a population of 150,000 people including some enthusiastic hunters), or that there could be some mechanism for distributing meat like the great stuff @Tahr does.

Originally Posted by Flyblown

When venison prices are so low, the cash & effort invested to recover animals is low.

Recovery of venison from ground based night shooting on anything other than flat paddock country is a total nightmare.

The only economic way to to this is helicopter shooting, and that’s a tough ask in this low venison price cycle.

We couldn’t even get a pet food venison contract over the line recently. Costs too high, revenues too low. Simple economics.

S and D is starting next week in the Raukumaras via 500D.

Originally Posted by TeRei

S and D is starting next week in the Raukumaras via 500D.

The ground cullers have been doing search and destroy in there for a few years now and still have a lot of hours still to do this year.

We done a culling job over a couple of days last week, 50 odd predominantly hinds shot on a farm.
He has had hunters taking deer regularly for years, sometimes every weekend for several weeks in a row there are animals being shot. But sometimes recreational hunters can't get enough and once the numbers reach a certain point they explode. Once they are that high the problem is regular recreational hunting does nothing but educate the animals.
It is hard looking at them and seeing waste and if there was a viable option to get the meat out of there most clients would be more than happy to get them utilised.
Problem is the use of pesticides, particularly brodifacaum don't help matters as does Tb and lastly, low venison prices.