Thread: Shooting to waste

Such a waste of high protein meat. I am sure if you asked the needy people if they would eat the meat which hasn't been inspected etc the answer would still be YES.

Many deer are taken by commercial hunters for pet food. The hunters are licenced through MPI and GPS each kill to properties with landowner pesticide declarations and sign off.
Local pet food operation here processes between 60 and 80 deer per week. Skin, heads trotters on plucks in $2.00 kg

When the green dyed stuff has been spread around the country side it's a deterrent for recovery and processing. Carcasses' "taken" in Poison operations aren't recovered and disposed of even in town water catchments, so don't see why there will be any pressure to remove shot ones.

agree...its FAR better for S&D to be carried out with some limited recovery than green rain and wholesale wastage....but Im just enjoying aftertaste of venison backsteak from 2 yearling hinds I tipped over and recovered yesterday evening......zero waste there lads,zero waste.

It makes sense to me.

The primary focus is on pest destruction. Any time spent recovering meat is less time shooting.

And in blocks where they are hiring pest control shooters, they are more than likely using poison as well, so giving away meat is pretty risky.

Local council employ contractors who shoot to waste.
The area culled is not allowed to be hunted by us mear mortals as we might leave some guts near a stream.

So we will just shoot em from the air day and night and leave them where they lie (in the streams) and we will pay fucken dearly for it.


Largely this situation has come about because of "caretakers" who control access to public land and only allow mates in for an easy deer.....numbers get up and control is nessacary because joe blogs is not allowed to hunt it.

Its a big shit pie socialist sandwich

I heard the other day a Canterbury station put a chopper thru on S&D, 500 pigs and 268 deer, another station had 700 deer shot off it, all left to rot. Unfortunately recreational hunters aren’t going to smack that many even if they were allowed on.

Originally Posted by outdoorlad

I heard the other day a Canterbury station put a chopper thru on S&D, 500 pigs and 268 deer, another station had 700 deer shot off it, all left to rot. Unfortunately recreational hunters aren’t going to smack that many even if they were allowed on.

but thats the thing...IF they are let on,numbers dont get that big to begin with or build up that quickly again.....

said it before,the reason deer numbers got so big early on was they were in isolation,the back of big stations was a two day horse ride and wouldnt see person for months...now its hour on motorbike/quad/4wd and 5 mins in chopper...so they arent all hidden and breeding up overniight,the numbers have been slowly building up,if recreational hunters were given fair whack....those 20 deer breed 20 more so its not a huge number needed to be shot... those 700 deer make another 700 =1400 deer a LOT to be shot...its all about balance.....
let enough people in and instruct to shoot X amount and keep coming back or else access will not be granted Vs pay for chopper.....
I saw 17 deer and 12 pigs on station 2 years ago..shot one of each as allowed,havent been back yet as its a hassle to get access.

Originally Posted by outdoorlad

I heard the other day a Canterbury station put a chopper thru on S&D, 500 pigs and 268 deer, another station had 700 deer shot off it, all left to rot. Unfortunately recreational hunters aren’t going to smack that many even if they were allowed on.

Yeah culling jobs are getting more common even up here the neighbours had a chopper in and cleaned up a couple hundred.
I think before the finger gets pointed at farmers for not letting people we need to look at the forest parks the Ruahines are absolutely crawling with deer that are coming out onto the farms.
The recreational hunters simply arnt shooting enough animals.

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Im heading out to a spot in a couple of days where the farm manager told me 1000 deer were taken off a neigbouring block.

well we better all get out there and shoot some more then.....

Yep I plan to. The farm manager said he still has plenty on his block

While culling to waste is somewhat distasteful that is the nature of the beast when trying to get numbers down.
Yes. Some stations in Nth Canterbury and Marlborough have used choppers recently and 700+ deer is not unheard of, certainly in Marlborough. These are numbers that recreational hunters would never come close to. One aspect is that you need to shoot any and all animals seen as efficiently as possible, something a lot of hunters can't accept. Also,some of the country involved makes a trip into Muzzle station almost look like a walk in the park and that place is regarded as one of the most remote stations in the country.
As alluded to by others, animal recovery for consumption requires MPI certification and you are required to have a supply contract with a processor before they will issue one. This costs money and among other things requires you being trained by the processor as to how to dress and present the animal to the receival depot. All animals have to have a GPS plot where taken. All 1080 treated areas and their buffer zones are a no go, along with any areas with a history of Brodifacoum application. All these areas have to be noted in your poisons summary for the property you are harvesting animals from as well as all neighbouring properties. If you are doing it by the book you also need a WARO permit for DOC land even when foot hunting and when I last checked with DOC Christchurch in late 2019 none had been issued for the South Island. WARO permit is free but the associated paperwork fee was $1000, which is a bit of a dis-incentive aye.
Overall, the MPI requirements are a bureaucratic nightmare to deal with. Processing costs aren't cheap, minimum numbers required.
How many out there are willing to go through this hassel for the feel good factor of not wasting good meat ? Not many I would hazard a guess.

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.

Professional pest control operations have nothing in common with recreational/commercial meat hunting

A pest control operator has no moral or ethical obligation to utilise any part of the animal

In my experience, when a land manager employs a pest control contractor he doesn't want to see animal carcasses being recovered from the property.