Warwick's Corner

A few years ago while on one of our Saturday Sambar monitoring trips we came across a guy dressed in blaze orange cammo gear. From head to toe, blaze orange! Being a good old Kiwi bloke, used to hunting in the good old jean shorts and green 'swannie', I thought this guy a bit of a joke and remember commenting after that "He'll never get lost". I didn't think at the time, that he also wouldn't get shot or even get shot at. I wasn't into cammo and took a lot of convincing that it was of any use for deer stalking.

Deer have relatively poor eye sight as far as colour and shape, but will pick up any movement. This, I have proved with my deer at home on many times. I can sneak up on them, make a noise and stand up in full view. They stare and try to identify the source of the noise. Even at 30 metres they sometimes don't recognise me and become panicky. But if they can smell me or I say something they recognise me straight away and come running. I've tried all sorts of tricks with different coloured clothing and am convinced my deer can't recognise any colour whatsoever.

I was totally convinced a couple of years ago when I took the son-in-law to be, on a short Sambar photo trip. Shortly after first light I put him in a position to stalk in close to a big old hind. She was about 50 metres away and unaware of our presence and quietly feeding. Steve crawled to within 20 metres and while she had her head down eating he stood up in front of her. Because he was wearing an orange 'swannie' I thought she would raise her head, take one look and be gone. Up came her head, looked straight at him, took a couple of steps toward him, put her head down and kept on feeding. Steve took 6 photos before she woke up to him and shot through. That sure proved to me that deer don't recognise colour or shape.

Which brings me back to the guy in the blaze orange. I know the deer couldn't recognise him by colour, but other hunters can. As far as safety is concerned the blaze orange is a great choice and I would like to see every hunter wearing at least 1 item of clothing with blaze orange. We should all be thinking of hunter safety.

Hunting in N.Z. is something most of us take for granted. We tend to moan about trivial things like access, huts, tracks, D.O.C., helicopters, but leave it to someone else to do something about it. Yes, it's always someone else's fault if it's not done. Get off your bum and do a little for everyone, not just yourself join an organisation and do it as a group and be proactive. Set yourselves some goals and you could be surprised what you can achieve.

During this year's roar I checked out some of the local road ends to see who was hunting, and where. It also serves another purpose - 'car security'. Sooner or later I'm going to catch some riffraff breaking into cars. It was during one of these visits I met a chap returning from an unsuccessful hunt. While we were chatting he asked if I was heading in for a shot. My answer was no, but I might go and give the track a bit of a trim. He offered to help, and that's how I ended up track cutting with a total stranger. Isn't it amazing what a little encouragement will do. "Thanks mate".

Last Sambar season was much the same as all the others - many hours on the telephone and many days in the field. I talked to a lot of people and also met a lot of them. But the general high-light for me was meeting several Asian hunters. They are so interesting to talk to, especially about gun ownership and hunting in their countries. We don't know how lucky we are. One chap I spoke to was telling me where he came from, there was a total ban on hunting. The only animals exempt from the ban are rats. Gun ownership is a privilege, not a right, with less than 1% of the population owning a firearm. The price being one reason.

Last year's 'Warwick's Corner' covered the ongoing tree damage in Santoft Forest. Although more deer were taken in this block than ever before, the problem still exists and we are still working on it. I must thank all those people who responded to that article. There were many letters, emails and phone calls from people expressing their views and experiences. Most interesting was a paper I received from the Forest Research Institute titled:
    "Repellents to protect trees from cattle, sheep, deer, rabbits and hares.A review of the literature "
        by R.L. Knowles and Susan Benson-Cooper.

It is a review of all the research that has been done all over the world dating back to 1950. It proves this is not just a local problem but world wide and an amazing amount of research has been done to find a repellent. None has been found.

Somewhere in the British Isles red deer had moved into exotic forest during winter months and started bark stripping. The foresters, thinking they were hungry, started to feed them hay. This only attracted even more deer. The end result was even more bark stripping.

Other than my thoughts that it is a learned habit ( something to do with winter boredom), I am still none the wiser. Meanwhile our Sambar are not making friends with the tree farmer. Again many thanks to those who responded.

Have a good season.

Warwick