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

Originally Posted by Stocky

If people are really so broke you can't afford a total of $100-$120 for hunting permits allowing you as much meat as you can hunt if suggest do you really pay that much tax?

This isn't really fair on my behalf. I was in a bad mood at the time due to unrelated events. It doesn't add to the discussion and isn't helpful at all. I don't really think it matters how much we all pay in tax as to our input on issues (most people pay too much as far as I'm concerned anyway when you see how it's spent). Your point is a valid one however I do think most people can make this work considering the other related costs to hunting such as travel, ammunition, gear etc and the fact we can always work out what is affordable to most before implementing anything. But the above comment was not called for as such Im sorry for being snarky it and unfair.

Originally Posted by hunt08

We do pay for hunting nw it in out tax we should not be paying for any thing else to hunt doc hunt couse it starts out small then it will go up & up till it a rich man's sport my family couldn't afford to pay the the $30 for 3 months there me & my wife has her on rifle & hunts by herself & 2 kids coming along yes it would start of small then on 10years it be $500 like everything it just keeps going up until it unaffordable then the deer numbers will rise & it would get dump & go back to what it is now to get people in the bush hunting what we have nw works well but yes people need shoot more hinds & the chopper guys shouldn't be shooting stags & we need more access points into doc land so it easy for people to get in & bring meat out but I think that's all that needs to change

I dont foresee a cost being applied to meat hunting in ordinary RHA's. Only for Main Divide Trophy producing areas. These areas cost a lot in time and finances to access relative to close at hand areas where we would meat hunt anyway, so paying a fee of some sort to have the assurance that the stags weren't bombed up in late Jan by Waro seems like no contest to me.

Reflecting on this further, it seems that uncontrolled / unrestricted Waro is the biggest issue.
It is the biggest issue because the areas that are favoured by Waro - the open gully heads and scrubby alpine faces are the areas that produce the best wild trophies and are also the places that deer are the easiest to take from a machine. Waro would have by far the biggest impact on deer population and herd composition in the headwater catchments relative to recreational take.
So incorporating a herd management component into Waro in those specific areas seems like the most important step.
Instead of Wild animal Recovery Operations ( WARO) How about Wild animal Management Operations (WAMO)

Originally Posted by gimp

One important observation relevant to this thread is this chart - ungulates are increasing in occupancy, i.e. are found in more places across public land (any individual site on the scale of the monitoring - 8km grid - has a higher probability of having ungulates present).

In the areas where they are found they are not necessarily increasing in abundance (as a national average) but there is higher occupancy. This is objective fact supported by data collected through a scientifically robust monitoring system.

This increase in occupancy may contribute to the perception amongst managers/green groups that "deer are out of control" which is the greatest threat to hunting in New Zealand in my opinion - if it is more widely perceived amongst the public in general that deer are a huge acute ecological threat, the social license to maintain viable populations for hunting will dwindle and hunters will be viewed as anti-environment reactionaries.

I'm gonna go have a look at that....thanks for the link.

Being innately suspicious of anything DoC says, I wonder if ungulates are being found in more places cos they are looking in more places? And I wonder if they drop off places where they observed pellets in the past and haven't more recently?

FWIW, I know that there are deer populations on PCL now in places where there weren't previously, but nevertheless do think its useful to question DoC on its data.

Originally Posted by Maxx

I'm gonna go have a look at that....thanks for the link.

Being innately suspicious of anything DoC says, I wonder if ungulates are being found in more places cos they are looking in more places? And I wonder if they drop off places where they observed pellets in the past and haven't more recently?

FWIW, I know that there are deer populations on PCL now in places where there weren't previously, but nevertheless do think its useful to question DoC on its data.

In the South Island very large areas have been retired from grazing through tenor review so it makes sense to me that the space created by the removal of domestic stock would be filled to some extent by feral animals. Including this new DOC area with the existing lands would skew the figures on paper

Originally Posted by Maxx

Being innately suspicious of anything DoC says, I wonder if ungulates are being found in more places cos they are looking in more places? And I wonder if they drop off places where they observed pellets in the past and haven't more recently?

Nope.