Thread: Ministry for Hunting and Fishing confirmed

we look to the past ,but wear blinkers,when we do so.
forsure the numbers are high right now....BUT unlike in the 40s.... the animals dont have the large untraveled areas as breeding grounds..they arent building up unobserved, eg even our big stations are no longer a two day ride out to the back for a muster 3 times a year. its hour or two on a quad bike or 10 minutes in a whirly bird.
we arent bombing up mobs with an opensighted 303 and hoping for a kill or 2.
you lot are pretty darn sharp with modern rifles/scopes n rangefinders...400 yards is no longer a very long shot for most of you.
thermals have just about replaced a spotlight...and even the spotlights are leap years ahead of what we had...my wee magtoch is better than the landing light powered by tractor battery in a wheel barrow....its not only a hell of a lot more portable,it lasts longer and has better light.
when allowed in to have a go..and the shackles are removed,we the general public DO HAVE A CHANCE..... but removing those shackles to begin with needs to happen.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

we look to the past ,but wear blinkers,when we do so.
forsure the numbers are high right now....BUT unlike in the 40s.... the animals dont have the large untraveled areas as breeding grounds..they arent building up unobserved, eg even our big stations are no longer a two day ride out to the back for a muster 3 times a year. its hour or two on a quad bike or 10 minutes in a whirly bird.
we arent bombing up mobs with an opensighted 303 and hoping for a kill or 2.
you lot are pretty darn sharp with modern rifles/scopes n rangefinders...400 yards is no longer a very long shot for most of you.
thermals have just about replaced a spotlight...and even the spotlights are leap years ahead of what we had...my wee magtoch is better than the landing light powered by tractor battery in a wheel barrow....its not only a hell of a lot more portable,it lasts longer and has better light.
when allowed in to have a go..and the shackles are removed,we the general public DO HAVE A CHANCE..... but removing those shackles to begin with needs to happen.

Absolutely. Night shooting has come a long way since having to have a spotlight hooked up to the ute battery or worse having to lug a 12v battery around on foot.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

we look to the past ,but wear blinkers,when we do so.
forsure the numbers are high right now....BUT unlike in the 40s.... the animals dont have the large untraveled areas as breeding grounds..they arent building up unobserved, eg even our big stations are no longer a two day ride out to the back for a muster 3 times a year. its hour or two on a quad bike or 10 minutes in a whirly bird.
we arent bombing up mobs with an opensighted 303 and hoping for a kill or 2.
you lot are pretty darn sharp with modern rifles/scopes n rangefinders...400 yards is no longer a very long shot for most of you.
thermals have just about replaced a spotlight...and even the spotlights are leap years ahead of what we had...my wee magtoch is better than the landing light powered by tractor battery in a wheel barrow....its not only a hell of a lot more portable,it lasts longer and has better light.
when allowed in to have a go..and the shackles are removed,we the general public DO HAVE A CHANCE..... but removing those shackles to begin with needs to happen.

The issue this time is not with public land and deer invading private from public. Its the reverse. Having sold my farm in the king country at the peak of the carbon buyup, I had quite some time to talk with the cullers sent in to remove animals. My farm was pretty easy because I actively managed the populations of deer, goats, pigs and possums. That meant that over 900hectares, I didnt allow a deer population of more than 300 animals, a pig population of more than 100 and a goat population of 1-200.
To achieve that I had to cull around 75 deer a year- mostly does, up too 200 pigs a year and 60-70 goats a year.
The result was that in the forestry initial cull, they shot maybe 100 deer, 80 pigs and next to no goats as Id already done it. But they were telling me that the other properties they had bought they were getting initial culls of 700-1000 deer per property.
That tells me that like me, the farmers loved seeing and having animals about. But also that they were making no attempt to manage them.
Thats because management takes effort, time and concessions. Dealing with 300 odd carcases, if you are not prepared too shoot too waste, is a big job in itself. You also cant just let anyone in to hunt them unchaperoned. Because sadly there is quite a level of inexperience and poor decision making in the wider hunting community. You have to actively target females, you have to find a way to make allowing recreational hunters onto your land cover the costs, and you have to be prepared to do some kill to waste.

What this government could possibly do to help would be look at ways to make it easier for wild game meat to be allowed onto the local market.

What Doc could do is look at finding greater and easier access solutions to public land.

What recreational hunters could do is become a bit more professional and reliable.