Thread: the OFF TOPIC to Stags shot 21 (discussion of wild animal management)

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

The outcome I would like to see is as follows:
A balanced age group population of deer with a good proportion of trophy quality and aged stags in those few areas that can produce them.
The current situation is that during periods of high feral venison prices the Waro operators go silly and cash in shooting every deer they can find. During periods of normal pricing they still do annual fly throughs targeting stags.
This results in the deer population becoming unbalanced as Waro creams off an annual take of stags and in effect runs the wilds like a big hind farm. During periods like right now with low venison returns, hunters rush off to trophy producing areas in the hope of beating the choppers and bagging a trophy. During periods of high venison returns, there is no point in going to those areas as the stags have been shot in velvet.
In the summer the stags and hinds occupy separate habitats and it is easy for a machine to target stags by flying the stag areas. Stags are worth more not just because of greater carcass weight but also because of by-products - pizzle, sinew, velvet
The outcome that I would like could be easily attained by putting annual area take limits on Waro - for example remove 200 hinds and no stags for Mount Hutt / Nth Ashburton

200hinds in there do you reckon???? must be fair way back from the front country.....

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

Sorry for double post above. The delete button never works and removing all content from the double post doesn't work.
But back on topic, Waro can make a justifiable argument that each deer they take has a nett export income value of five hundred dollars for the country, whereas each animal taken by recreational hunters results in no nett gain apart from the offset of meat not bought at the supermarket by hunters being available for export.
What the above means to me is that recreational hunting needs to result in a better outcome for the country than Waro and that the Waro income is a baseline for setting a trophy fee for overseas hunters.
Those readers opposed to any fee might consider that the stags they want to shoot are already being sold to overseas buyers anyway - via Waro

I don't believe things have to be justified financially and I hate it when we try to make it sound justified by finances. I agree things that make money stick around but somethings should exist just because they do. Financially it probably doesn't make sense to worry about the more fragile native birds or any of the wildlife that not directly adding to the economy etc.

Originally Posted by hunt08

I 100% agree with you that's what would happen or the other thing that would be a high chance of happening is the animal groups will stop hunting couse they against hunting for trophyies & your saving the doc land for trophy hunting & they will work away at the government & public here & oversees & that's probably where the big push would come from ie if you want us to keep buying your meat you have to stop hunting for trophies & hunting will come to an end look at the live shipping ban but when hunting for meat it has a better understanding with the rest of the public

I disagree it would end up just foreigners shooting the mature animals as its an easy solve by limiting % of foreign hunters and by making them pay more so less foreigners apply. Keep local prices low and subsidised. Just like how the NZ university system works. A 25k degree for a kiwi is a 100K degree for a foreigner. The foreigners money subsidies the degree for kiwis along with taxes. While I think unis are a disgrace in terms of being a left wing idealogical brainwashing camp but that irrelevant. (funny that off topic in the off topic thread.)

That is a good point about anti hunter groups but what stops them making the same claim about Fiordland or The ballot blocks?

Something I've come to realise is its not the Hunters of the anti hunters that are important. It's the majority that aren't either as they make up 90% of the population. We are only allowed to continue hunting as long as on a whole the non hunters agree with what we are doing. We can try convince them hunting a good thing and the antis obviously do the opposite. I think if the system was instituted similarly with improvements on the FWF we could show the benefits of hunting on conservation. And as long as the focus is put on mature animals not just points and antlers then it's a feasible option. But it's a great point to add to the discussion as it definitely needs considering.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

200hinds in there do you reckon???? must be fair way back from the front country.....

I'd say they probably have more than that although havent in there only takes a couple deer a catchment that wouldn't even cover the deer in a single catchment in some places.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

200hinds in there do you reckon???? must be fair way back from the front country.....

Just using hypothetical numbers to illustrate a point, although in my defence it is a big patch with all the Rakaia facing country included.

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

Sorry for double post above. The delete button never works and removing all content from the double post doesn't work.
But back on topic, Waro can make a justifiable argument that each deer they take has a nett export income value of five hundred dollars for the country, whereas each animal taken by recreational hunters results in no nett gain apart from the offset of meat not bought at the supermarket by hunters being available for export.
What the above means to me is that recreational hunting needs to result in a better outcome for the country than Waro and that the Waro income is a baseline for setting a trophy fee for overseas hunters.
Those readers opposed to any fee might consider that the stags they want to shoot are already being sold to overseas buyers anyway - via Waro

yeah fair points there too mate,
here , illegal thermal an spotlight shooters are also taking more than a fair share of trophy deer in our 'back country' as alot of it has 4x4 tracks through it, over time it does take its toll.

the heli culls here were just shot an left.... so no gain just major expense from the govt, which if you read any number of books on NZs history its very clear that without a buyer its Stupid to heli cull deer... period.
an recreational shooters, or actual legit, harvesters for a meat trade, if conservationally were only allowed to target an weigh in Female deer, a boom an bust industry (no different to any of the other attempts) would do a huge impact on deer numbers particularly private land/fringeing forest land.... back country, well same as NZ AU needs someone to be studying more the effect or lack of it these deer have and what it is they impact etc, not just try and eradicate them all in 12 months worth of heli culling fire regrowth herds..

like its all backwards, but perhaps someone who reads these sorts of things is in a higher place to throw another idea into the mix toward that Sweeter happy medium outcome.

Originally Posted by Stocky

I don't believe things have to be justified financially and I hate it when we try to make it sound justified by finances. I agree things that make money stick around but somethings should exist just because they do. Financially it probably doesn't make sense to worry about the more fragile native birds or any of the wildlife that not directly adding to the economy etc.

The first problem is that Waro is already entrenched, provides jobs, export dollars and more than likely political donations.
And the problem with that is that deer have to be wrested away from Waro to let recreational hunters shoot at them, the same recreational hunters who cant control numbers in the existing RHA's and want more places without Waro ??

I don't think the statement that is commonly made that recreational hunters can't manage deer numbers is necessarily accurate; a more accurate way to describe the situation in the Sumner RHA or Ruahines for example might be that hunters haven't been incentivised to try to manage deer numbers. Hunters as a group don't have the specific goal of managing numbers to a target in any area, so of course they haven't - but these targets don't exist for deer, neither does any monitoring to determine populations at a park level like this in most places.

You could say the same about tahr as well, although target intervention densities do exist there, the system has not worked well in terms of ongoing monitoring informing direction of recreational hunter effort, and then that effort actually being applied.

There are plenty of places particularly in the South Island where deer numbers remain low (based on my anecdotal experience rather than formal data) since they were reduced or eliminated by WARO in the 70s, and one could safely say that some of this is due to recreational hunter effects as there really isn't any data to support any other assumption over that.

Clearly the difficulty of managing deer numbers will vary significantly with different landscapes. Fiordland much more difficult than the Two Thumb Range.

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

The first problem is that Waro is already entrenched, provides jobs, export dollars and more than likely political donations.
And the problem with that is that deer have to be wrested away from Waro to let recreational hunters shoot at them, the same recreational hunters who cant control numbers in the existing RHA's and want more places without Waro ??

nailed it.

thats what they see... with lots of deer around....
because i feel we dont kill enough hinds (overall). if we kill enough hinds, theres less percieved populations.... no need to waro or all out assault on the not so populated deer , less problem etc.

that part is hard to express? or get across, to the majority of (in my scenerio/ 55,000 hunters) which is where it starts lol.

and to also show the Govt Rec hunters would actualy put money into community an govt whilst taking care of the deers in the same time... as opposed to the bulk spend up. you guys have the waro to offset the cost to aireil cull

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

The first problem is that Waro is already entrenched, provides jobs, export dollars and more than likely political donations.
And the problem with that is that deer have to be wrested away from Waro to let recreational hunters shoot at them, the same recreational hunters who cant control numbers in the existing RHA's and want more places without Waro ??

DOC is probably the biggest supporter (in policy/advocacy terms, not financial) of continued WARO (As a generalisation at an organisation level), largely based around the belief that it is a critical tool to help control deer numbers. DOC doesn't have a mandate to care about the economics of it, it is purely supported for the perceived benefit of killing an average 15000 deer annually on public land. It is believed that this is the key contribution to keeping numbers low in many places. These beliefs are assumptions and may or may not be partially or wholly accurate.

Data on recreational hunter kills is very sparse but there are some numbers available from studies that put recreational hunter deer kills, although not exclusively from public land, at around 50,000 (1992) -135,000 (2010s) a year so one could safely assume that recreational hunters actually currently kill at least 3 times as many deer as WARO on public land, but probably many many more.

I think without DOC support for WARO it would look like a small sad industry generating a fairly minor economic contribution (estimate 10 million annually) at a high carbon footprint for few full-time jobs.

Language is important, words have power, and may have connotations outside of what we intend.


I feel that it's wise to avoid referring to deer or other wild animals as pests (they're legally classed as wild animals under the Wild Animal Control act 1977), and talking about managing numbers in order to reduce ecosystem pressures or achieve ecological outcomes is better than talking about control.

I use the word control selectively above - I prefer to avoid it for myself but that is the DOC perspective in general even if it is just selective language on the department's part in order to mollify anti-wild animal lobby groups

Originally Posted by gimp

Language is important, words have power, and may have connotations outside of what we intend.


I feel that it's wise to avoid referring to deer or other wild animals as pests (they're legally classed as wild animals under the Wild Animal Control act 1977), and talking about managing numbers in order to reduce ecosystem pressures or achieve ecological outcomes is better than talking about control.

I use the word control selectively above - I prefer to avoid it for myself but that is the DOC perspective in general even if it is just selective language on the department's part in order to mollify anti-wild animal lobby groups

Something I learnt from a tutor on a farming course I did “people talk about learning to control the grass growth....no, we need to talk about managing grass growth....”

Good call gimp


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Last year before going south i had a couple areas of interest so i made contact with doc and ask to speak with a field officer, I wanted to get a idea of animal numbers in a couple areas. They were completely useless and had no idea and were of no help. .
This day and age you should be able to go on there web site load up one of there maps and all the overlays should have the information on it, also should have a tahr and waro overlay.
Like if you bring up x valley all the over lays they have should show recent 1080, high animal numbers or culls they have had in that area
I have found you have to jump backwards and forward trying to gather information on there

Originally Posted by bigbear

Last year before going south i had a couple areas of interest so i made contact with doc and ask to speak with a field officer, I wanted to get a idea of animal numbers in a couple areas. They were completely useless and had no idea and were of no help. .
This day and age you should be able to go on there web site load up one of there maps and all the overlays should have the information on it, also should have a tahr and waro overlay.
Like if you bring up x valley all the over lays they have should show recent 1080, high animal numbers or culls they have had in that area
I have found you have to jump backwards and forward trying to gather information on there

In general, most DOC district offices don't have any formal wild animal monitoring programmes to inform answers to this sort of question. Individual staff may have personal anecdotal knowledge but you'd be relying on finding the right person to talk to.

The only thing that really exists is the Tier 1 monitoring. This is a Nationwide broadscale monitoring program of biodiversity, and the work includes faecal pellet counts which give a relative abundance index of ungulates.

It's important to note that it is only measured to the level of "ungulates" - which includes deer, chamois, tahr, goats - not to a finer level of specific species.

More about the Tier 1 program and results can be found publicly available on the DOC website - https://www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/mon...-level-report/


This isn't the most user-friendly system but it's publicly available monitoring data on ungulate abundance on PCL.

You can select an individual monitoring plot from the interactive map, e.g. I have selected a plot on D'urville Island



If you then scroll down and use the drop-down menus you can generate a histogram that shows that this plot has an ungulate FPI (Faecal pellet index) of 184.95, and this gives you a visual representation of where that figure falls across the range of FPI on plots nationally - it appears to be towards the higher end.



You can then scroll down further and see a table of what mammal species were observed to be present through sign, sightings, or DNA sampling - in this case no possums (unsurprising as there are none known to be on D'urville island), pigs, and ungulates.

It's also horrifically complicated to find, but there is an interactive map generated that plots all the FPI data as heat maps, either plot level/park level so you can visually see where ungulate relative abundance is higher or lower nationally. https://www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/mon...tes-2019-2020/

You can see that most of Kahurangi National Park for example has low densities of ungulates, but Marlborough is much higher.