Sambar Browse Plants - Introduced Plants and Trees

Given the wide range of native plants and trees that are known to be browsed by sambar in Victoria, it is probably not surprising that the deer don’t mind a wide range of introduced ones as well.

We have dealt with some of these in the past, periwinkle ( Vinca major ) in Sep/Oct 2014, white clover ( Trifolium repens ) in Jul/Aug 2015, wild rose ( Rosa rubiginosa ) in Sep/Oct 2016 and blackberry ( Rubus fruticosus ) in May/Jun 2017. These four are extremely widespread in sambar country and therefore quite significant, but there are others that are less widespread which nevertheless highlight the versatility of the sambar. Most are garden plants or trees and I will deal with a few that I know of, even though most are of ‘interest’ only.

Years ago, I heard that lemon trees were very attractive to sambar but it wasn’t until very recently that I was shown lemon, mandarin and orange trees in a couple of house-gardens in East Gippsland that had been damaged by deer. The lemon tree had pretty much been torn apart and browsed leafless by a sambar stag. Both locations were in farm country with native forest not that far away but the deer still had to travel to reach them and had done so under the cover of darkness. Neither landowner was terribly impressed with the nocturnal visitors to their gardens, probably made more likely in recent years by the unprecedented increase in sambar numbers.

Another standout in my memory is the hydrangea ( Hydrangea macrophylia ). When the Thomson Dam was being built 40-odd years ago a village, Rawson, was built to house construction workers. Included in the village was a large area of lawn and garden beds planted out with a range of introduced species, amongst which hydrangeas were prominent. And the deer absolutely loved them! The ADA used to hold its hunter education course at Rawson and it was always interesting to walk around the lawns and gardens looking for deer tracks and droppings and evidence of browsing. The deer lived in the deep, dark and leach-infested bush gullies below, where they were very safe, and fed up into the facility at night. In autumn, the hydrangeas were browsed almost leafless and their fleshy stems were reduced to thick stubs.

When hunting over the hounds in nearby Morning Star Creek years ago there was a garden plant in the long-abandoned mining settlement that always showed evidence of browsing – chewed off leaves and pencil-thick stems. I have always wondered what it was and whether it was planted and maintained as a precious reminder of civilisation by a gold-miner’s wife stuck in a wet and very isolated wilderness of native forest. I photographed it at the time but that photo now appears to be lost.

Pine trees ( Pinus radiata ) seem to hold an almost magnetic attraction for sambar, not as a food source but rather as a tree to rub on. I assume that it is the sticky and strongly scented sap and timber that is the attraction, as trees often show evidence of being repeatedly rubbed over many years. Even trees that are long-dead may show evidence of polishing by the deer with nearby tracks and scrapes. It is always worthwhile diverting to check out an isolated pine tree in the bush, on farmland or at an abandoned house to see what evidence there is of use by deer.

The handful of plants described above are probably only a minute fraction of the many hundreds that have been introduced into sambar country since white settlement. Few will be the key to successful sambar hunting, but despite that they add interest to many a day spent wandering around in the mountains.