SSAA NSW

Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (NSW) Inc. 15 It has been almost 2 years now since we were invited by the North Coast Local Land Services (NCLLS) to join the Hastings Wild Deer Working Group to discuss how our organisation could assist local land managers by providing accredited shooters to remove wild deer from areas where they have been reported to be causing negative impacts within the region. The Hastings Local Council have been collecting information and details from rate payers about the effects wild deer have been having on the community. The council have reported that wild deer have been causing signifi cant costs to landowners through lost productivity, environmental damage, property damage and motor vehicle accidents. They estimate that there could be more than 10,000 deer east of the Pacifi c Highway. Through a dedicated Branch Coordinator, members of the SSAA NSW Port Macquarie Branch have been invited and given the opportunity to join the wild deer management group through completing a general accreditation course that has both theory and practical components, including marksmanship, fi rearms handling and a brief induction about the standard protocols that were expected to be employed for the duration of the project. As this program involved the management of deer, a declared game animal in NSW, all members are therefore required to hold an R-licence and the accreditation for this licence was available to all group participants. "We provide a safe service to better control the growing population. We have certifi ed hunters. We sit down and go through all the aspects to do with hunting, not just going shooting. We're talking clothing, footwear, safety gear, respect for fi rearms, respect for other people, respect for land owners, respect for animals", said Don Little, Hunting and Conservation Coordinator for SSAA NSW Port Macquarie Branch. "The Branch wild deer management group, since August 2017, has so far managed to successfully remove 9 problem deer and we have seen about 25" "Carcass management has been carefully considered and at every opportunity members of the shooting group are encouraged to utilise and enjoy the harvest of fresh venison as a supplementary reward for assisting land owners" "There aren't too many deer around at the moment. When there is plenty of water around you don't see too many come out from the wetlands, rather just a few small pockets of deer on the fringes" "A structured approach like the one that we take is proving to be positive for the individual land owners and properties that we have access to, but cannot be quantifi ed as an effective process at a landscape scale as there is a lot of land that we cannot get access to" Interestingly the NCLLS, Local Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service have been conducting their own control action for wild deer in the Hastings Local Government Area. For the 2016/17 period it is estimated that they have removed some 90 deer. The comparative size of the land that NCLLS, council and NPWS manage versus that of which the branch has access to is probably in the order of about 10,000:1. When the offer was made to the local council for our teams to provide ongoing monitoring and scouting on council lands, obviously without using or carrying fi rearms during the activities, they declined our offer. "Don and the team from the SSAA NSW Port Macquarie Branch are doing a stellar job and are to be commended for their ongoing professionalism and community support approach. We have high hopes that this type of model, using suitably qualifi ed volunteers, will be accepted by other regions and therefore replicated to involve more Branches and members. Whether it be wild deer, foxes, pigs or rabbit, SSAA members can play a pivotal role of wildlife management in NSW and thanks to the size of our membership and dedication of our members, we have the capability to provide a sustained management approach, not just one-off culls that produce initial knockdown and reduction in wildlife impacts, only to result in those negative impacts reoccurring to the same, if not a worse level than before the control measure was put in place", added Guy Pitchford, SSAA NSW Hunting and Program Manager. Port Macquarie Wild Deer Project

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