Thread: Time to re-introduce a paying for deer/goat tail scheme?

Originally Posted by Fat ninja

Doc will never pay $500 for a tail, they try and get their work done for the cheapest they can. Look the their goat cull, the guy who had the most tails is a semi pro hunter and he only had 400ish

Well that's a shame

I bet you could kill all the goats in NZ in a decade at $500 a tail.

Originally Posted by gimp

Historically (in the last 20 years) a large source of environmental lead to kea has been the lead ammunition used in tahr control. Across the kea range, this would account for a significant majority portion of the ammunition lead source.

DOC tahr control is now done with non-lead ammunition.


The issue with current levels of lead availability to kea from ammunition is poorly understood and there are many challenges.

https://www.odt.co.nz/rural-life/rur...r-control-work

Good info thanks

A bounty is just another bureaucracy waiting to fail. But we do need a better system.

Make it easier to sell wild shot meat. The mince for shelters idea is brilliant. Make it so the same product can easily be offered in stores. Legally change the focus of waro onto females. Open up more access options. Its bloody ridiculous haw many hard to get too places dont have a heli option.

I understand why people don’t like choppers shooting stags but, I bet none of you go to work to loose money. The bounty scheme won’t work we had deer cullers for decades and it didn’t reduce numbers much. It was the venison industry that brought numbers down and I don’t want numbers to get low like they did in the 80’s

Originally Posted by Nugget connaisseur

Just thinking about the National Goat hunting competition and was wondering why doc don't pay per tail of animals.

"It's not known how many wild goats there are but DOC believes there are several hundred thousand roaming across 15% of New Zealand."
"DOC spent more than $5 million last year culling goats, but if numbers aren't controlled their population can double every two years."
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/08/01/f...ff-from-today/
Seems like alot of money spent culling for not much return. Say 25-50k goats killed per year by cullers thats $100-200 a goat.

The cullers back in the day got paid per tail, starting with department of internal affairs then Forest Service. Was this available for the public too?

I cost of ammo and fuel is expensive now days and when people shoot 10-50 goats it sure does add up. So getting a few bucks back per tail would be a bonus.
I think it will increase the amount shot by the public.
Why don't they pay per animal anymore?

Wouldn’t work to easy to scan with the amount of wild animals on private property

Originally Posted by Kelton

Wouldn’t work to easy to scan with the amount of wild animals on private property

thats the fly in ointment..... UNTILL the entire country is seen as a block to be culled..with no exempt places the mindset wont change. the big hairy mountiain goats are a classic case in point....the legislation states we should have a TOTAL population between X and Y ok fair enough we need to be realistic and live with that...but when a certain large company owned by a fella who started out on a digger in waimate and now is large land and company owner,can have numerous farms with very large number of animals on them for safari /guiding/shits n giggles it takes that number out of public shootable land around it...actually out of entire countrys allowable tally....in t"heory" you could end up with situation where he had more than 25% of all the animals allowed..... which is a win win for him as he can raise his guiding fees as high as market will pay...supply and demand,he controls 25% of supply so can demand whatever market will stand.

There'll be some unknown formula which would estimate the total cost for elimination.
A bounty system would work as long as it was understood that as the animal numbers reduce, the bounty per animal needs to go up.

Read an interesting story in a hunting mag in a hut a while back. Getting the last deer off one of the islands around Fiordland. The resources that were tied up getting that last hind were pretty substantial.

Originally Posted by norsk

Well that's a shame

I bet you could kill all the goats in NZ in a decade at $500 a tail.

People would just bread them for the tails

Yeh and at some point, who's going to the bother of chasing the last few goats when they're still only $500 a tail?

If the price were up at like $50k by the time you're down to the last few, and it's open market, then somebody will put the effort in.

It was only a few years back the cullers were still tracking down the last remnants of goat population on the Pouakai range I believe here in Taranaki between the big mountain and the coast. A lot of effort involved.

Originally Posted by hunt08

People would just bread them for the tails

Not too sure,any system can be milked. It just depends on how much effort is required to milk it.

Species become extinct for a reason,goats could become extinct too. The reason been their monetary worth.

Originally Posted by norsk

Not too sure,any system can be milked. It just depends on how much effort is required to milk it.

Species become extinct for a reason,goats could become extinct too. The reason been their monetary worth.

Goats can be east farmed I remember when the goats were worth big money years ago dad catching the Wild ones and farming them and that's how a lot of goat spread around New Zealand too because when it crashed farmers opened up the gates and let them go

No different to deer then lol

Originally Posted by LA3LOW

Thanks, that is how to put it bluntly. I'm not sure why I bothered responding to the 'where's the science' comment.

It seems to be a recurring theme that people who request published literature studies on a topic still won't agree as it doesn't support their views and opinions on a topic. Is it easier to be ignorant than to admit being wrong?

Works both ways bud. I've quickly read through the DOC Review you provided link to. it seems you may have formed an opinion while possibly not correctly interpreting what's printed.
Two examples in the literature.
Isotope testing of lead within blood, feathers, tissue, and bones from live and dead birds is a promising option to identify the primary sources of lead among kea (Church et al. 2006). This technique requires minimal equipment to collect, samples have a long shelf life, and it can provide retrospective data from stored material to build an understanding of lead exposure history (Finkelstein et al. 2012).
Analysis to identify the primary sources of lead toxicity in kea using isotopes has not been conducted for kea. However, a recently established research collaboration between DOC, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu (TRONT), Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT), South Island Wildlife Hospital, University of Melbourne, and University of California, Santa Cruz is exploring whether this is a viable option.
While I acknowledge and accept the fact that Kea can and do suffer from lead poisoning I must also point out that the use of 1080 should also carry a burdon of blame for their demise in some areas. My reasoning for this is that there used to be a population of Kea resident on Mt. Patriarch in Marlborough. After the application of 1080 on the southern face of this area a number of years ago I havn't heard of a single sighting of any of this species. Please note that I am a regular hunter in this area, at least 10 times/year, and have been for approx. 40 years.

Originally Posted by woods223

Can you provide links to scientific ( peer reviewed ) literature regarding lead isotope testing in NZ kea? Otherwise I call bullshit on your statements. How many bullets do you think are dispersed over Kea habitat ffs.

Here is the requested link to the scientific (peer reviewed) literature. Are you still calling bullshit?

https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...111/conl.13059

As I said, lead ammo is killing our Kea.

Originally Posted by woods223

Works both ways bud. I've quickly read through the DOC Review you provided link to. it seems you may have formed an opinion while possibly not correctly interpreting what's printed.
Two examples in the literature.
Isotope testing of lead within blood, feathers, tissue, and bones from live and dead birds is a promising option to identify the primary sources of lead among kea (Church et al. 2006). This technique requires minimal equipment to collect, samples have a long shelf life, and it can provide retrospective data from stored material to build an understanding of lead exposure history (Finkelstein et al. 2012).
Analysis to identify the primary sources of lead toxicity in kea using isotopes has not been conducted for kea. However, a recently established research collaboration between DOC, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu (TRONT), Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT), South Island Wildlife Hospital, University of Melbourne, and University of California, Santa Cruz is exploring whether this is a viable option.
While I acknowledge and accept the fact that Kea can and do suffer from lead poisoning I must also point out that the use of 1080 should also carry a burdon of blame for their demise in some areas. My reasoning for this is that there used to be a population of Kea resident on Mt. Patriarch in Marlborough. After the application of 1080 on the southern face of this area a number of years ago I havn't heard of a single sighting of any of this species. Please note that I am a regular hunter in this area, at least 10 times/year, and have been for approx. 40 years.

That's a shame about kea on Mt Patriarch, but Id suggest that they were declining from predation well before 1080 was used in the area. There are numerous other areas that haven't been 1080'd that also no longer have kea. Additionally, 1080 is proven to be an effective tool for improving kea nesting success. Sure, some will die but more will survive.
Unfortunately there is a strong correlation between kea that are fed being more likely to die from 1080, hence the strong push with messaging of "a fed kea is a dead kea".
This is also true for kea getting run over on roads, as often occurs in AP Village and on the Milford Road. IMO it's the tour bus operators who are predominately feeding the kea in our region (Monkey Creek for example). The kea seem to arrive at approximately (exactly) the same time as the busses do every day.

https://www.keaconservation.co.nz/pe...ion-statement/