Thread: Wild deer roaming Whanganui! C'mon people, where's the hunters?

There are some hilarious comments here. Tahr, I appreciate your measured views. We do have an issue in NZ, which is exponential reproductive rates of our ungulates. It's nothing new, we are back in the 1900s and our trajectory will, quite possibly, take us to the same place... which I hope everyone here knows is a significant reduction to very low population densities that we saw in the 80s and 90s etc. Fortunately the solution in most areas is simple, shoot a few hinds/does when you can, which will mean leaving some meat on the hill in many situations. Not ideal, I know, but we don't live in an ideal world. I would give more credit to someone showing me a photo of them standing over 10 dead hinds, than a photo of someone with a nice even 14 point red. The reason we will continue to have good, healthy deer is because of those that put a good number of ungulates on the ground. My goal is to shoot 100-200 ungulates again in 2026 (mix of species, deer/tahr/goats/pigs), knowing that population densities will still be increasing with that rate of removal.
This doesn't address increasing densities in peri-urban areas, but it's more important to protect the populations that we like to hunt, in the areas that we like to hunt. If DOC need to go in somewhere to cull unsustainably high densities, then we, as hunters, have brought it on ourselves due to our inability to maintain reasonable numbers. I have not yet heard a valid argument to counter that last sentence. Our wildlife management (introduced species) in NZ is incredibly amateur, but there are a few folk out there worth listening to. Hopefully we will learn before an extensive ungulate 'correction' is implemented. Sorry, borderline rant.