Scientists coming to the aid of deer hunters

Press, 9 February 1983, Page 23

Scientists coming to the aid of deer hunters

Hunters pressured the Government for recreational hunting areas to protect their sport. Now scientists are looking at ways to make them work.

A survey team, headed by Mr Graham Nugent of the Forest Research Institute in Christchurch, is spending three weeks in the Blue Mountains R.H.A. counting deer pellet droppings along a 200-km line in an attempt to estimate the numbers of its fallow deer herd. The 22.000 ha area between Invercargill and Dunedin is the first of nine R.H.A.s now established in New Zealand.

The survey, first of its kind in a recreational hunting area, started on January 25 after suggestions that better game management was needed. Methods and findings from this and later surveys planned there during the next four to five years may mean changes in the Blue Mountains and areas like it.

Recreational hunting organisations that feared for the survival of their sport against commercial operators lobbied for the Wild Animal Control Act that led to the gazetting of the Blue Mountains in 1980. But any doubts then about whether sportsmen alone could control deer numbers in the area have vanished.

, “They are well on their way to severely reducing them," Mr Nugent says.

The number killed there dropped by 20 per cent last year and past surveys of pellet droppings suggest that the herd is declining at an even faster rate.

Hunting parties, mostly from Dunedin, take each of the 34 hunting blocks almost every week-end without fail. “But the deer population seems to be holding its own remarkably well in spite of the intense pressure — more so than the deer in other areas," he says.

It was the herd's stamina to last through decades of hunting that made it fit the study bill. They were also fairly isolated from outside interference. No commercial hunters operated in the area and Mr Nugent doubts that any proaching is worth while because of difficult access and the small size of the deer.

“There is no possibility that a helicopter will come over the hill and wipe out your study," he adds.

At present the only real difference between recreational hunting areas and other State forest hunting areas is the effort to stop commercial poaching.

“Most game management practised in R.H.A.s has been concerned with managing the hunter." Mr Nugent says. “Apart from that we have basically let them go.where they like when they like, without any controls on the number of animals they shoot.”

Statements such as these words in the latest annual report on the Blue Mountains prompted the study. “Mutual respect has continued but may begin to erode if national hunting organisations maintain their critical

By

JANE ROSKRUGE

stances towards Government management of RHAs. More disturbing locally is the decline in kills despite increased hunting pressure."

The report went on to argue for more intensive game management, suggesting the closure of some hunting blocks during the Novem-ber-February breeding season and a ban on shooting of hinds and fawns for certain periods.

Groups such as the New Zealand Deerstalkers’ Association might disagree with that, but the institute has adopted a "wait up" attitude. It wants a lot more information from the study during the next few years before voicing any opinion on the best and most economial way to manage R.H.A.s.

"What I am doing is measuring everything I can possibly measure about the herd." Mr Nugent says.

His six-man team from the institute and the Otago forest conservancy are searching 100 circular plots marked along the survey line and counting the number of droppings to establish the number of fallow deer in the area.

Hunters are also co-oper-ating with forestry staff to give more data. Kits are available for them to take a small sample of the gut content from any deer shot and they are also being asked to bring in the jaw bone of the dead animal to determine its age and physical condition.

Another change was to the standard kill return forms which were revamped in November to ask more questions about the type and number of animals sighted or killed.

Mr Nugent says he has spoken to a large number of local hunters and has been surprised at the number who seem to accept that they might have to limit their hunting now for the longterm benefit of a breeding deer population.