Thread: Deer numbers

Originally Posted by Tahr

I'm cool about knocking the numbers back so long as we maintain our respect for what are a magnificent animal. Clean kills for the particular purpose of controlling numbers and not just for the sake of it. I would have no qualms about shooting a hind right now so long as I could get the fawn too and velvet stags so long as they aren't special in some way. I prefer to recover the meat but some areas are getting to where just a pack full of backstraps might be the result from a day's hunting. 55 years of recreational and commercial hunting and I never thought I would be saying that.

The red deer numbers in the western CNI are out of control and a fairly serious problem on private land. There's so much politics involved in game animals though, and so many divergent opinions as to how much is too much, and what to do about it, that the likelihood of a consistent control approach is remote.

The grass this year is exceptional and the deer numbers are way up - what is causing this I ask myself? There's a shit load of capital being spent on fertiliser to take advantage of high meat prices, and it shows, but what strikes me the most is the much lower number of hard frost days in the winter, followed by wet springs, and long hot spells in early summer. The growth season feels markedly different to me, but I was away between 2010-2016, and after an absence any changes are amplified. Whereas if you live through them, you hardly notice. The lamb numbers and weights are well up though, a good indicator. If you're a sheep cockie and setup right, you're in for a good season even with the reduction in Chinese buying.

It's become normal for me to walk over a saddle and look into the next watershed and see 50+ reds munching their way through the pasture. I can think of three such places where I'll see more way deer and goats than sheep in the paddock. These places are always the same - back blocks, quite high up, with a long, easily accessible bush boundary. Go into the bush and there's nothing in there under the canopy. Pretty much impossible for a goat or a deer to get a feed in there now.