Feral deer - venison anyone?
"giant-hoofed cane toads"
This is a photograph our neighbour across the road took a few nights ago - around 9.00 at night. I guess it's not a super photo, but it's final evidence that we do indeed have deer in this neighbourhood. Actually there was other concrete evidence because another neighbour's son ran into one on the way home one night. Other than that the evidence has been the damage - most devastatingly destroyed trees, and also footprints and the inevitable poo.
In our garden we now think it was a deer that destroyed the Christmas tree lovingly planted by our then two-year old grandson in the garden and signposted Baden's tree. One morning we found that one entire side had been stripped of its branches, many of which were still lying around. It survived - well pine trees are tough, but that side of the tree has never grown back, so it is very lop-sided, and was actually attacked again more recently. The deer also devoured the tops of two of my growing olive trees. So they are not a favourite thing around here. And seeing that photograph one would not want to tangle with them would you. It's big!
When I did my post on feral animals I said I would look at the individual pests now and then, so this photograph has kick-started that vow. I have read up a little bit on feral deer both here and in New Zealand, and their history, and this is what I have found.
A couple of sites actually seem to think that it is the greatest feral pest of Australia. The numbers are huge - in the millions. Although currently mostly in the south-east it has the capacity to colonise the whole of the country.
They have been labelled “ecosystem engineers” for their ability to modify ecosystem function at the landscape scale and are one of the world’s most successful invasive mammals." John Sampson - Invasive Species Council
They damage the environment in several different ways, besides eating the native vegetation and rubbing their antlers on it. These are the ones listed by one Rohan Bilney on a website called The Conversation which gave a pretty comprehensive view of the current situation.
facilitating access for introduced predators by creating paths in dense vegetation
maintaining elevated populations of wild dogs (which feed on carcases dumped by hunters)
competing with native herbivores
causing erosion, which affects water quality
trampling sensitive areas (such as alpine bogs, mossbeds, wetlands)
spreading weeds
hindering revegetation efforts
potentially spreading pathogens affecting agriculture (such as foot and mouth disease) and human health (including Leptospirosis and Cryptosporidium).
Let alone the damage they do to farmer's crops of course. Suffice to say that these beautiful animals are a major, major pest.
They are embedded in our psyche as either majestic and noble - they were exclusively for the aristocracy in England for many centuries, or as cute and vulnerable - think Bambi. But even in their native habitats around the world they are sometimes a pest.
They were introduced to Australia in the nineteenth century for the hunting, and also for their beauty apparently. There are currently six different types of deer here - fallow, chital, red, rusa, sambar and hog deer. I have no idea which was in our neighbour's garden - red perhaps? People still hunt them for sport, and I gather that deer hunting actually brings in an income in the millions. Indeed some hunters have been guilty of capturing deer from farms and letting them loose just so that they can hunt them. In Australia there is no centrally co-ordinated policy on what to do. It's up to the states. WA, Queensland, SA, NT and ACT currently class them as pests, but here in Victoria, in NSW and Tasmania they are not. Indeed in Victoria they are even semi-protected for the hunters!
"Effectively, the three south-eastern state governments hold that the desire of some citizens to shoot deer on public land for sport is of greater value than the conservation of our natural heritage and the burden imposed by deer on farmers." Rohan Bilney - The Conversation
Panic is beginning to set in though and here in Nillumbik, funded by the State Government, registered hunters have been called in to do some culling. Not enough though and not here in Eltham.
New Zealand, as always, seems to have been rather more effective.
"Introduced for sport in the 19th century, deer became a pest in New Zealand’s forests. Hunted first by government cullers, and later from helicopters in remote areas, today deer have also become the basis of a thriving farming industry." Ken Drew Te Ara
They actually catch some of the deer alive and take them to farms. I must admit that the last time I went to New Zealand I was overwhelmed by how many deer farms we saw - there seemed to be more than sheep. And there was venison on practically every menu. And there is regular, organised culling of the wild populations. Here in Australia there was a push for deer farming in the 70s - both for the meat and for the antler velvet, but most of the farms failed. Now there are very, very few, and not much venison on menus and certainly none in your local supermarket. I suppose it would be competing with kangaroo.
So we should eat more venison. Really we should. Before it's too late and they have overrun the country.
"Its ferrous, gamey flavour is far more interesting than flabby pork or cheap chicken. Gram for gram, it contains less fat than a skinless chicken breast. It has the highest protein and the lowest cholesterol content of any major meat. It's thoroughly sustainable and always free-range. Why, then, has it taken so long to become popular? "Oliver Thring - The Guardian
Yes indeed it is always free-range even if farmed. It's never cooped up in sheds. Currently you cannot buy it in supermarkets here. I'm not even sure I have seen it in the Queen Victoria Market. I must have a look next time I'm there. There are one or two game meat suppliers in Australia, but really not many. Any venison you may find will most likely be from New Zealand. Which is ridiculous really isn't it?
I'm not providing any recipes. Well you can't get the meat, so why bother. Unless you are planning on gunning down a deer stripping the bark off your trees in your garden.
But yes, they are pretty, no - beautiful.
