Thread: Big deer numbers being taken out of the Ruapehu/Wanganui?

Caught up with a mate last night, haven’t spoken for a while. What he was telling me was pretty mind blowing – the numbers of red deer being taken out of the southern Ruapehu / northern Wanganui regions.

(The area bounded by SH4 to the west, SH49 to the north, SH1 to the east, centered on Papanui Junction thereabouts.)

Haven’t been down there for while, about 18 months probably – last time we were talking commercial venison recovery, it wouldn’t pay, couldn’t make it work. Seems the post-pandemic venison price recovery has kick started a decent amount of contractor activity again. But as for the numbers being shot, well if what old mate told me is true and I repeated it here, you probably wouldn’t believe me.

So any of you lads from that part of the world got some updates on this? @Kelton, @andyanimal31, others? What’s the go, is commercial deer recovery shifting through the gears again?

Unsure about the commercial recovery, but talking to one of the shooters I know well, been hundreds taken out so far, they were averaging 20 deer an hour from memory. Shooting to waste in the Ruahines.

Originally Posted by mawzer308

Unsure about the commercial recovery, but talking to one of the shooters I know well, been hundreds taken out so far, they were averaging 20 deer an hour from memory. Shooting to waste in the Ruahines.

Yeah, some of the numbers I’ve been told are scarcely believable. But when you hear the same thing twice from people involved on the same job, several weeks apart, you wonder whether it’s exaggerated or not.

Some of you might remember that paper that was leaked and published on here that talked about DOC attempting to get private landowners to cooperate on a major cull across the central north island. I wish I had saved that document because I’ve asked about it subsequently but no one has come up with it. Wishing we had a better search function….

Originally Posted by mawzer308

Unsure about the commercial recovery, but talking to one of the shooters I know well, been hundreds taken out so far, they were averaging 20 deer an hour from memory. Shooting to waste in the Ruahines.

@mawzer308 - Where abouts in the Ruahines is this happening?

Originally Posted by Andrew46826

@mawzer308 - Where abouts in the Ruahines is this happening?

NW management unit if I'm not mistaken.

As way back as 5 years ago my neighbour who PD'd calves down there said the local farmers were ganging together and having mass shoots to remove significant numbers of deer that were hoovering winter feed crops. He spoke of using tractors with FEL's dumping a couple of hundred deer into a couple of gullies, and that was just after a weekends worth of ground based shooting.

Yeah I heard of a station in that exact area a few weeks back that put a chopper on the property and culled 2400 in a few days.
2 weeks later some Rec hunters took 17 on the weekend, so there are obviously still a fair few left.

There is a video on YouTube of a chopper shooting Fallow with a MSSA on a station that looks like it’s in the Para’s. It’s scarcely believable, the numbers are extraordinary.
If the barrel wasn’t out in the breeze it would’ve been glowing red hot.

I heard similar from a shooter in a chopper said they got 1800 deer in that area in a day

Yep.
Most of the rumors have got a fair bit of truth to them.
Even down our way there has been a bit of heli culling as ground hunting just can't keep the numbers down.
A mate shot over 90 ground hunting over 3 or 4 nights with plenty left.

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I heard a while back that a farmer up the road from Cheltenham had counted 49 deer in his winter feed paddock during the day!! imagine how many are there during the night!

Shit crazy numbers , surely this must be viable for meat recovery now with the price of beef and lamb on the shelves , at the local butchers today $75 to $80 for a leg of lamb FFS

Math.

1800 over 10 hours(simplicitys sake) 180 / hrs is 3 a minute/ average. Would 1.5 rounds / animal be about right? 2700,rounds.

I'm thinking sore thumbs from loading.... I'd believe rhe numbers bring high...they were high 20,years ago...

Originally Posted by tiroahunta

Math.

1800 over 10 hours(simplicitys sake) 180 / hrs is 3 a minute/ average. Would 1.5 rounds / animal be about right? 2700,rounds.

I'm thinking sore thumbs from loading.... I'd believe rhe numbers bring high...they were high 20,years ago...

Shotguns were what I was told they were using

What were the prices and costs when Waro was booming?

From what I heard just a couple of weeks ago from that area I'd believe it.

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