Thread: Deer Population Growth

Deer are wild animals with a very highly tuned survival instinct .. . . . The fact that there are a lot of them now doesn't alter that. And there are a lot. Typical example. Central Otago Cocky reports 7 deer coming out on his young grass under the irrigation. This is Central Otago, nothing but rocks as far as the eye can see. A few gullies with tiny patches of matagouri scrub in them. One of the young guys went out and cast a thermal over the paddock. 28 Redskins, fucking 28! Now all 3 of us in our goat culling party spent an hour glassing the area that held these Reds, not a thing to be seen.

The point of this is that deer are not easy to hunt, never have been and never will be.

If you are not seeing deer when you are hunting 90% of the time I'd say you need to take a good look at your skills and work on those. I might be a slow learner but I reckon it took me at least 20 years to become a barely proficient hunter, I know I still have a lot to learn after 40 years of "armed tramping" (which I know is one of the reasons I shoot pretty low numbers).

So for those guys moaning about access and 1080, just get off your butts and do the Mahi to learn to hunt, it will take time but the journey can and should give you much pleasure.

Originally Posted by Tentman

Deer are wild animals with a very highly tuned survival instinct .. . . . The fact that there are a lot of them now doesn't alter that. And there are a lot. Typical example. Central Otago Cocky reports 7 deer coming out on his young grass under the irrigation. This is Central Otago, nothing but rocks as far as the eye can see. A few gullies with tiny patches of matagouri scrub in them. One of the young guys went out and cast a thermal over the paddock. 28 Redskins, fucking 28! Now all 3 of us in our goat culling party spent an hour glassing the area that held these Reds, not a thing to be seen.

The point of this is that deer are not easy to hunt, never have been and never will be.

If you are not seeing deer when you are hunting 90% of the time I'd say you need to take a good look at your skills and work on those. I might be a slow learner but I reckon it took me at least 20 years to become a barely proficient hunter, I know I still have a lot to learn after 40 years of "armed tramping" (which I know is one of the reasons I shoot pretty low numbers).

So for those guys moaning about access and 1080, just get off your butts and do the Mahi to learn to hunt, it will take time but the journey can and should give you much pleasure.

Backing you up with another anecdotal incident from two summers ago: three of us headed off into the kaimanawas for the usual Xmas freezer filler trip. We got all setup at the end of a low ridge, overlooking a valley, where the engagement distances would be 200m - 450m. 7pm. Out came the binos. We all spent half an hour looking. I added up that we probably had close to 10 grand's worth of glass between the three of us. Not a sausage.

Then the mate with the thermal viewer pulled it out, had a quick scan and said: there's 5 I can see in just that quick scan. And that's a major issue with small 800mm at the shoulder Sika in 1.2m tall scrub.

We got a few that night, but only thanks to the scanner. Without it we would have scored one. If we had had the patience to sit tight for a whole hour.