WAR ON DEER.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 10

WAR ON DEER.

STALKERS PERTURBED. NECESSITY OP CULLING. TAUMARUNUI HERD AN EXCEPTION. Auckland stalkers arc perturbed at the suggestion by the State Forest Service that the timo has come to exterminate the various deer herds, and support the decision of the Auckland Acclimatisation Society to have the position investigated as far as the principal red deer herd in the Auckland Acclimatisation area is concerned. This particular herd is in the high country near Taumarunui Mr. C. A. J. Eandrup, a well-known Auckland stalker, said to-day that the Taumarunui herd had only 'become properly established, and it was too soon to cull. The deer kept to high, scrubby country above the bushline, and lived principally on tussock and feed found along - the borders of creeks. The suggestion had been made that war on deer was necessary for the preservation of New Zealand bird life, but the argument could not apply where there was not a forest. Last season Mr. Eandrup shot in the Kaimanawa country, where the Hawke's Bay Acclimatisation Society gave permits for an unlimited number of red deer stags to be taken. .On the high ranges of the mid-island there are mostly beech forests, and it was noticed that New Zealand birds were very plentiful, including robins, parrakeetj, bush canaries and the more rare whio and North Island crow. In the Kaimanawas tlie deer had destroyed a great deal of the undergrowth, but they did not damage the forest trees, and it was the berries of the latter that most of the New Zealand birds sought. Mr. Eandrup said that the best solution would be heavy culling of red deer, where they were too numerous, under proper supervision. This necessity was realised by sportsmen owing to the number of malformed heads that were developing