LOOKING BACK Peter Burke
A look back at past ADA activities and successes
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The Australian Deer Association has a proud history of advocating and participating in research to better understand and manage our wild deer as a sustainable hunting resource. Before we go too far, the word sustainable must be clearly understood, especially in today’s conservation and biodiversity context.
Sustainable has two contexts with deer and deer hunting:
- Sustainable harvest allows for the hunting of a species while still maintaining a healthy and viable population.
- Sustainable within the environment is when deer are not having an unacceptable or adverse impact on the environment.
The late Max Downes, a professional wildlife biologist, was employed by the Australian Deer Association in 1978 to develop a better understanding of the sambar, their biology and interaction with the environment. This in turn led to Max being employed by the then Forests Commission of Victoria to study the sambar with a view to investigating how they could be best managed as a hunting resource in the huge areas of state forest in Eastern Victoria. This work became known as the ‘Forest Deer Project’.
As part of his work Max recognised the need to better understand what sambar ate in the Victorian bush and whether there were plants that were critical to their survival, productivity and distribution. As I was spending a lot of time hunting and observing sambar at the time, the ADA’s Victorian State Executive approached me to help him with his investigations and I agreed – this was the start of my involvement in what became known as ‘The Sambar Browse Project’, a ground-breaking effort as nothing like it had been done before.
Prior to the Sambar Browse Project, Arthur Bentley in his book An Introduction to the Deer of Australia had listed 15 plant species that they ate and ADA, through the coordinating efforts of Dr Matt Draisma, had also collected rumen (stomach) contents from a small number of sambar with a view to further identifying their diet. However, the need to pay a professional botanist to examine the collected samples meant that this had never been carried through to a conclusion. In any case, the small number of rumen samples limited the information that could be collected from different areas and through the seasons.
To better come to grips with the sambar diet, Max made the decision to use my hunting skills to track deer, observe what they had been eating (direct observation of feeding deer was not practical), collect plant samples and then have them properly identified by the National Herbarium in Melbourne. Once plants had been professionally identified, two reference sets of dry-pressed examples were to be made, one for me to hold and one for Max to keep.
Max’s approach, based as it was on the sign left by feeding sambar, required great care and keen observation skills as other animals use sambar habitat and leave feeding sign. It was important to exclude other animals such as wallabies, wombats, kangaroos, rabbits and even cattle from consideration. For this reason, the fresh tracks of individual deer were followed and evidence of their feeding was recorded. Fresh deer tracks were fundamental, and they had to correspond to fresh feeding sign.
There is a distinct difference in tracks made by a walking or running deer and those of a feeding deer. A mature sambar, when walking, leaves tracks that are evenly spaced at about the same distance apart as those of a walking human. When a deer stops to feed the track spacing is broken and the feet are shuffled as it takes up a comfortable position.
After talking the program through with Max, I developed a rigid procedure that involved tracking, observing, identifying and recording what the deer were doing. When questions such as ‘it could be’, ‘it might be’, or ‘it was possibly a deer’ arose, these situations were ignored, as only verifiable observations were recorded.
Three areas north-west of Licola were selected based on the knowledge that they supported a viable population of sambar – a recently logged area (elevation 1300 metres), the headwaters of a creek system adjoining a previously logged area (elevation between 900 to 700 metres metres) and a ridge system (elevation 700 metres). All three areas received moderate hunting pressure from both stalking and hunting with hounds.
A search pattern was followed in each area to cover the various habitat types until fresh deer tracks were found and then the deer was tracked and observations recorded.
Sambar eat a range of plants. When feeding on the foliage of shrubs and trees, they are said to be ‘browsing’ and while feeding closer to the ground on grasses, herbs and forbs are said to be ‘grazing’.
When browse sign was encountered it was easy to identify the plant eaten, but grazing often involved a mix of species and individual components could often not be identified.
After three years of bi-monthly observations between June 1980 and June 1983 the field project concluded having generated a great deal of very useful information and my results were published in Australian Deer and included in Max’s very comprehensive report to the Forests Commission. This report, The Forest Deer Project 1982, was published by The Australian Deer Research Foundation in 1983 and is now also available on the ADA website.
Conclusions from The Sambar Browse Project:
- Hunter skills could be used to understand the behaviour of sambar and their interaction with the environment.
- Sambar are opportunistic feeders that can utilise a wide range of plants subject to availability and palatability.
- Although sambar utilised a very wide range of grasses, forbs, herbs, shrubs and trees, about twenty species were commonly observed to be eaten.
- Sambar habitat utilisation changes through the seasons and is influenced by the change in palatable plant communities – for example in summer there is a shift towards grazing and in winter a shift towards browsing.
- When sambar are at a low population density their impact on the vegetation is difficult to observe, especially by those who lack the appropriate observation skills. However, we now know that this changes with a high population density or over abundance.
- Generally, sambar browse individual plants to a small extent and then move on to another plant.
- Selective feeding, a preference for heavy feeding on specific and individual plants, did occur but was not common in the areas studied.
- While sambar initially increased their usage of an area after it was logged, this usage dropped away, presumably because feed quality declined over time.
The Sambar Browse Project, like so many of ADA’s projects and activities, relied on member participation that was freely volunteered. It was run at minimal cost to the Association with maximum return. This is one of the strengths of a successful organisation when members want to contribute. We should not lose sight of the fact that it was deer hunters who were leading the way and initiating research into deer and employing a biologist at this time.
The Sambar Browse Project that I undertook had a terrific pay-off for sambar hunters. We were able to identify the most significant plants eaten by sambar and to make this information available to all deer hunters via Australian Deer, branch meetings and at hunter education courses.
The Forest Deer Project also gave some great insights into sambar and their hunting and is perhaps the most important report into this little-studied deer species. Unfortunately, the Forest Deer Project undertaken by Max Downes did not lead to the Forests Commission of Victoria conducting a program to see how an area of forest could be manipulated to favour deer and hunting as was originally envisaged, even though there was initial in-principal approval by government. This was due to a government being elected that had different priorities. Such is politics! Maybe we will see a return to more enlightened sambar management sometime in the future!
EDITOR’S NOTE
Among all of the doom and gloom about the future of firearms ownership, hunting and game management in Australia there have been quite a few successes – successes that all too often go unrecognised by the great majority of hunters. These successes were invariably due the hard work of largely unsung heroes donating their time in organisations like the Australian Deer Association, Field and Game Australia, and the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia.
By knowing the history of where we have come from and of past successes, we can take heart that we are not without a voice in the hunting and deer debate and are able to influence our futures.
This article, and others in the series, describe some of the good work that has been done in the past by ADA, those that have taken a major role in this and how these successes continue to deliver to the present time. Hopefully, these stories will also encourage younger hunters to join one of the major hunting organisations (naturally we suggest that that is the Australian Deer Association) and to step up and ‘give it a go’ to influence our collective futures.
Australia Deer magazine Editor