| JabaliHunter |
| (.400 member) |
| 08/05/09 08:21 PM |
Re: NZ hunt with Wilderness Quest New Zealand
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Quote:
not to mention us hunters who prefer NOT to micro manage individual animals to the point where one European "keeper" I hunted with knew every male deer almost by number and medal rating.
An interesting form of hunting, but not for all of us.
This is actually not that difficult and does not mean micro-management in a negative way. Some species of deer are very territorial and also predictable. For example, I am very fortunate to be able to stalk on an area of about 5,000 acres for roebuck and muntjac deer. This is very big for southern England I can tell you. It is not fenced in any way other than some enclosed stock fields (sheep) but deer have no problem moving freely throughout. Furthermore it is surrounded by other large arable farms and woodland. Simply by being on the ground regularly and spending time watching deer, the stalker (read gamekeeper for deer) knows where the trophy deer are because they can be patterned. As the general herd management plan is to sustainably cull approximately 60% females, 20% young males, 10% middle aged bucks and 10% old bucks, the age structure of the herd has been dramatically improved, which in turn means that when a trophy head is taken, you know that there will be middle aged bucks to take its place. On an area that size, if a trophy is taken, that block of woodland might not be stalked again for a couple of years, but you can be fairly certain that the territory will have been taken over by another old age class buck or a middle age buck that can be stalked or left to grow on.
You might think that this is ridiculous on an area this size, but once you get to know the ground, it is pretty straightforward. Despite the lack of fences, the trophy bucks don't wander or get pushed out of their territory because the number of young and middle aged bucks is controlled. If every hunter goes in and tries to shoot an old aged trophy buck, then the age structure of the herd is skewed towards younger and middle aged bucks, which increases competition and actually results in more habitat damage too (tree fraying etc)
On the other hand, muntjac on this place seem to be much less patternable. You can stalk where a gamekeeper may have seen a big buck hanging around when he has been dogging in the partridges or pheasants, but there is not the same degree of certainty that he will still be there.