THE DEER HUNTERS

Saturday, June 14th, 2014
By Stuart Rintoul
The Sydney Morning Herald

In Victoria, environmentalists and hunters have formed an uneasy alliance to eradicate an introduced pest.

Taking aim: Steve Garlick believes hunting is part of the “cultural imperative of man”. Photo: Colin Page

As he steps through the tangled brush of Victoria's Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve, picking his way around mountain swamp gum and manna gum, and thickets of manuka, melaleuca, pink heath, wattle and banksia, Bob Anderson says there is no doubt in his mind that the wild deer that graze in these hills need to be shot.

Anderson, 79, is a retired primary school teacher and passionate conservationist. He has devoted decades of his life to the preservation of Victoria's rarest bird, the small, yellow-tufted helmeted honeyeater, which is being bred back from the verge of extinction in the Yellingbo reserve, in the Yarra Ranges east of Melbourne. Deer, he believes, threaten its survival. "I don't have any antagonism towards the animal," he says. "They're just in the wrong place. It's just an inappropriate animal in a very delicate part of the world."

Targets: deer culling has inspired an uneasy alliance
between hunters and environmentalists. Photo: Colin Page

He walks from tree to tree, pointing out examples of damage and "devastation" where deer have scraped the velvet off their antlers, debarked young trees, trampled underbrush habitat. "Wherever you look, they're buggered," he says.

Yellingbo is a five-square kilometre stretch of remnant bushland reserved for wildlife conservation – in particular the critically endangered helmeted honeyeater and the tiny Leadbeater's possum, both of which are official state emblems of Victoria.

In March, Parks Victoria announced that deer numbers had reached such profusion and posed such a threat to indigenous wildlife that 220 sambar and fallow deer would be culled in three reserves not far from Melbourne: 130 at Yellingbo, 70 in Sherbrooke Forest in the Dandenong Ranges, and 20 at Warramate Hills Nature Conservation Reserve, about 20 kilometres north of Yellingbo.

The first shots were fired at Yellingbo on a cold and foggy night on May 13. With only one sambar hind brought down on that night, it will be many months before the last shots are fired.

The cull brings shooters and environmentalists together into an uncommon alliance, with environmentalists the more zealous of the two groups. Not only do they welcome the cull, but they are pressing for deer to be declared pests that can be shot at any time in all states and territories. (At present, deer are declared pests in Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory, but game in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania). Meanwhile, hunters want deer numbers preserved at sustainable levels for continued shooting.

Among environmental groups, only Animal Liberation has raised its voice in protest, with the group's Felicity Andersen describing the cull as "really sad". She questions the extent of damage caused by deer and says where the problem is significant, sterilisation or relocation should be tried.

But at Yellingbo, Bob Anderson describes the cull as "a good start" and "a godsend". Asked whether he would like to see wild deer eradicated from the Australian landscape, he replies, "Yes, I certainly would." He says relocation of deer is too hard and sterilisation would take too long, "and we can't afford to wait".

Steve Meacher, Forest Campaigner for the Friends of Leadbeater's Possum, also supports the cull. He says the habitat at Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve "is already so highly compromised that any further threat is automatically significant". Meacher recognises that deer are beautiful animals, "but at Yellingbo they are in the wrong place". In the Dandenongs, too, the Friends of Sherbrooke Forest are agitating for deer to be culled to protect the habitat of lyrebirds on the banks of mountain streams.

At the Invasive Species Council, chief executive Andrew Cox says deer are the most significant emerging pest on the eastern seaboard, pushing into bush and farmland, affecting habitat and crops. In Victoria, there are estimated to be several hundred thousand wild deer, mostly sambar – "the dominant transplant", as Arthur Bentley termed them in his 1967 book An Introduction to the Deer of Australia.

In 2012-13, Victorian hunters killed more than 50,000 deer. The animals have bred and spread, but are listed contradictorily in wildlife laws as a protected game species under the Wildlife Act, and a "potentially threatening process" under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.

At the Victorian National Parks Association, parks protection spokesperson Phil Ingamells says the association is "very pleased" about the cull and believes that deer should "absolutely" be declared a feral species across the nation. Eighteen deer species were introduced into Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most perished, but six – chital, red, rusa, fallow, hog and the asiatic sambar – survived to form viable wild populations. Ingamells dismisses, with brusque indifference, the colonial forces that brought deer to this country. "Time to move on, I reckon," he says.

The man co-ordinating the cull at Yellingbo is Steve Garlick, who provides advice on the management of wild deer and the maintenance of deer as a game species to the Australian Deer Association. A business analyst with the National Australia Bank, Garlick says that hunting provides "a level of calmness" in his life. He grew up hunting rabbit and hare, duck, quail, wallaby and fallow deer with his father in Tasmania. They are his best memories.

He quotes American environmentalist Aldo Leopold, one of the fathers of the wildlife conservation movement: "Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land", which the Australian Deer Association has adopted as its motto.

Hunters "participate" in nature, Garlick says. "We really understand the lower-level being in the environment, because you're part of the environment as a hunter. You're not a bushwalker, who just walks along and sniffs a few flowers and looks at things. You are participating in nature.

"Throughout the history of time, men have chased animals," he continues. "I think it just goes back to the general nature of man. Hunting is part of the cultural imperative of man."

Garlick talks about the solitude of hunting deer, alone or with a gun dog. "It is you and the deer. It is a pretty spiritual thing. Seeing a deer is a special thing." He talks about the difficulty of hunting sambar, whose natural predator is the tiger. And he talks about the elation of a good kill, the rush of dopamine, the heavy task of butchering and then hauling out the harvested animal, and "a certain element of sadness that you have taken a life", although it is a sadness excused by purpose. "It is a powerful thing to be able to take a life and you've got to do it with a level of respect for the animal and do it for the right reasons."

He tells a story about falling asleep under a tree one day when he was hunting and how, when he awoke, he startled four deer that had been grazing nearby, including a good stag. He had no shot to take, but waking among deer made it a "memorable hunt".

Garlick regards the cull as necessary management, although he is not looking forward to culling at night by spotlight. "It is not what we would call fair-chase hunting," he says. He expects the deer will quickly "wise up" and then they will have to hunt them, but it will be a long, highly controlled process.

Among the hunters taking part in the cull, these are common sentiments. John Mahoney is a fish researcher with Victoria's Department of Environment and Primary Industries, which he says gives him some insight into the battle between exotic and native species. He grew up hunting with his father in the hills and rivers of Alexandria, north-east of Melbourne. He started targeting deer 25 years ago, and says hunting "has always been about providing for the plate".

"I always feel sad taking an animal's life," he says. "I think you should always feel sad. It is a gracious animal and I've got heaps of respect for them. Taking any life, you've got to feel sad. If you don't feel sad, then there's a line you've crossed somewhere."

He talks about the way deer will lay up warming themselves on the northern faces of hillsides on warm autumn days. "The people that I hunt with, they love the bush," he says. "They love the birdlife and the animals. It's about ... I don't know ... connecting, or being a part of it."

Laurie Rees, 60, is a retired printer who started hunting seriously 28 years ago – long enough for him to recognise the musky scent of deer from a long distance away. He first hunted with his father when he was a boy, and says the experience taught him "the basics of life", and a connection with nature.

Rees's preference, he says, is to hunt for days at a time in the most remote areas, pursuing deer and solitude. "It's quiet, it's beautiful," he says. He recalls an occasion last year when he shook with adrenalin as he filmed a stag in a hollow, knowing that he could take the shot, but preferring instead to shoot with his camera.

Rees has 10 trophies on the wall of his home and another 26 antlers that he has found in the bush. Often, when people see the antlers, they ask, "How can you?" He tells them about the history of deer and that killing your own venison is no different to taking a fishing trip for dinner.

He insists the cull is sensible management, but also does not disguise his distaste for shooting a deer frozen in a spotlight. "There is no satisfaction at all in taking an animal under the light. I just feel sorry for the animal. There is no skill in it, there is no challenge, no enjoyment."

Mark Freeman is a quietly spoken 46-year-old teacher, a father of five who teaches design and technology, art and religious education at the Catholic school he attended as a boy. He says he is approaching the cull with "a sense of responsibility", to help manage deer numbers so that they can remain "a wonderful resource".

In his teenage years, he says, he was so much of a "greenie" that he refused to fish because he hated the idea of hurting them. "I had this real love of nature and I still do, but my perspective has changed completely and now I understand that we fit into nature as well, as a top-level predator. You still have this love for nature and you still have this love for the bush and you still love the animal. There is sort of a sadness at the demise of a wonderful animal. But I can see that it's not wrong. It's no different from a lion eating a deer.

"People ... say, 'Let animals live naturally', but how do you think they are going to die? There is no palliative care for wild animals. It would be a horrible way to die, alone in the bush. This notion of Bambi and that sort of stuff is all wrong. Shooting them, in a way, is humane."

He recalls hunting up a mountain one morning for several hours, shooting a sambar deer, butchering it, carrying out what he could, then hiking back down the mountain and bringing out the hindquarters on treacherous ground in fading light. "It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life," he says. "But that is what hunting is about, that's what gives it that really deep-seated satisfaction. It is like a primeval urge, that nature of ours, that is seeded in us. And from a practical side, we get meat for the family."

He recalls another day when three red deer trotted past him not much more than an arm's length away. "It was just wonderful," he says. "It was really special to be so close to them. That was just a wonderful experience, and I didn't want to shoot them at all."

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