The benefits of breeding and letting animals grow out

[Wapiti]

Some pics my wife sent me today.
We had a bit to do with deer management from our trips to Wanaka in NZ, and it's a fascinating subject. When you do a bit of research, particularly from the old books about the introduction of deer into NZ in the later 1800's by such greats as D. Bruce Banwell, David Yerex, Jack McKenzie (Mr. Wapiti), and the way when they just bolted and fed up on the different and way better plant species in NZ that had never been browsed by animals before... The result was stunning.

Even the Brits and Scots went apesh*t at how a few pregnant hinds and the odd reasonable Scottish and Brit royalty-bred stuff that they thought was exemplary, morphed over a few seasons into animals never seen in quality before. People from all over the world rode ships to hunt there.

And now, with the ability to hide these animals away from poachers, bring in the best examples from other areas, captured by nets from helicopters and shuffled about, the results are unreal. This is nutrition and management.
No different from the best examples of humans, athletes and nutrition. Or the breeding of the best bulls in a cattle breed, or sheep, or race horses.
It's amazing also, the jealousy and the bullsh*t that is in internet comments, by uneducated "deermasters" that haven't ever bred an animal, decry hunting something completely wild yet well bred, but are quite happy to pretend that the animals they pose for with pictures that, to me, are very ordinary, aren't saved for them and that they paid for too, just like the bloke in these pics.

Anyway, enjoy these 4 pics. If you want to know where they came from, or the country, search Venator, Wanaka, NZ. The centre of the most incredible scenery and opportunity I reckon is out there.
Unfortunately, doing this capturing, breeding, protecting and managing these animals costs a lot of money and time, so it doesn't come cheap if you want to kill one of these animals for your personal ego. The proof of how many people are fighting to pay whatever it takes tells you there's plenty who will. There are 1000's more on the list to have a go than there are animals.

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This mightn't be your thing, nor can some people get it that this is naturally how these animals with the right climate and nutrition, and being allowed to mature, can result in.
If some people want to mistakenly say, oh it's hormones then just add to the facebook comments from people who have never managed a breed of anything, probably their own health as well.
Most Australian hunters just don't have the patience of the discipline to see this through. This stuff just spurs me on and reinforces to me why I'm doing this stuff too because it's a challenge in a thousand ways. Each to his own!

[bigrich]

JESUS FREAKIN' CHRIST ! never in my life could i have imagined a set of antlers like those two . that is quite astounding . i've seen a 22 point red up at crows nest , was a fellas breeding stock stag , beautiful impressive animal . i've had a mate tell me the climate and available browse for deer in NZ is far better than OZ . read somewhere they tried introducing moose into NZ . didn't do too well though, all died out . there is the occasional sighting apparently . i'll take both those views with a grain of salt

[Wapiti]

The area wasn't suited for the moose Rich, there's a whole book on it. I have one from D. Bruce Banwell where he and others way back lived down there in the completely unsuitable, basically terrible conditions.
In 1900, Moose (really called Elk but this term was incorrectly given to Wapiti by US hunters and over time it stuck) were released in the Hokitika Valley but failed to establish, mostly thought to be because of the lack of waterways, lakes and suitable energy feed.
Back then it was, have a go, hindsight comes later.
Then in 1910, in Supper Cove in Dusky Sound down the bottom of Fiordland, another liberation took place but again, the area was just not allowing sustenance and support, and the conditions sucked the energy and ability to thrive out of them.
In fact, in the opposite of what I described above in my original post about conditions and feed quality, minerals and calcium, the "Moose" that did manage to breed and mature had virtual sticks for antlers, with none of the large palmations attributed to the same strains in North America, even North Asia. Then the poachers moved in.
See the link? Nutrition and conditions.
T.E. Donnes' book from 1924, that I have a copy of, states that the area was expected to provide a hideaway for them to spread and breed up before hunters got to them and stuffed it all up. Like with Wapiti, hunters got wind and started poaching which nearly wiped them out but the government brought in strict penalties and permits only initially issued after solid game management.
Blah, blah, right?

I chased these books from all over the world from strange little bookstores and they are precious possessions of mine now. When I kark it, I'm sure nobody will give a stuff about them but oh well.

What I reckon really sums this up, was this last week. My wife is the Facebook person, she puts up all our bull breeding pics and does all that, I find it to just be repulsive place full of pretenders. But you gotta be in it nowadays, to my disgust.
She showed me this post from one of the premier hunting mobs from Otago, where this young lady having taken this incredible fallow buck after a long hunt in the tops. There's a lot of young hunters in NZ, who are true hunters, not "shooters". They find what we call shooters as despicable; it'd just the way it is. This animal had been managed in a huge area where the managers had kept people away from this animal for years with hard work and security and years of allowing it to grow out, and she and her guide found it when finally they decided it was up for taking. After they ghad established it was of quality and had been given a few seasons to sow it's seed out there for the future, and before it went backwards with age.
The comments on Facebook were disgusting, all of them saying "How'd they photoshopped the fence out" or "They did well photoshopping this pic onto a shot of the tops" or "can you see the lumps all over it from the hormone injections"
Truth is, these jealous and uneducated commenters know nothing about game management, are probably overweight slobs punching from a keyboard that couldn't walk a kilometer, and comment just to feel a part of the other gutless mob that hides behind a screen. Gotta be a pleb amongst the crowd to feel part of it all today eh?They show how much they hate the people who spend a life making it happen, or the fit young people with the drive to actually work for the opportunity and fitness needed to have a go.

Farming is no different, there are others in my district who will gladly rubbish everyone else's' success from failures and having a go for years, but a look over their fence tells you how little right they have to comment. But we are all born with a mouth.
Some people will never stop making things happen, it's what they are all about, and then there are those who are the gimme-gimme and sit back expecting others to do it all. But still bitch about the results. They will always despise those who have a go, it's the only way they can stay breathing.

[Fester]

Interesting to read as I don't really know much more than what I see in the local forests.
I wrote a big response and must have timed out and lost it, I hate that.

Some reds with huge heads are shot by some of the better hunters around here.
Profty, "Aussie Bush Harvest" shot a couple, from memory, heaps of points and public land herds.
Maybe they get that way naturally, maybe the genetics come from the farm, NFI really.

What are your views on fallow body size variation? I have shot a handful from the same herd with good genes from what I have seen.
I once shot a huge old doe and was way to big to carry out like a small fallow meaty.
Tougher eating than smaller, younger does.

Blokes say fallow are like goats, but not where I hunt, they can be small, medium, and too big to carry out whole.

[Wapiti]

See that's the thing - the meat hunter will take the biggest, most healthy looking animal from a mob everytime.
I mean, why not? Why is this a dumb idea?
These "influencers" have everybody fooled, that's certain. They are just causing the breed to turn backwards, better to take two lesser animals, and leave the best examples to breed. When anybody makes a video doing this it just influences others.

Yeah, so what the "management" breeding thing is, rather than shoot the ones with bigger palms with all the points, they let them spread their genes. The better ones from that effort, years down the track, are left to breed also and on it goes. The exact same thing for females. half of the improvement circle is with them.

See there is always a throwback, a great example, back from the past, that is born, and if either by chance, luck, or the management of a heap of landowners that the better animal has as it's range - in keeping it alive - is just allowed to spread it's genes the resulting animals born is improving. Keep doing this and the general herd improves and starts exponentially getting stronger.
As well as that, too many animals results in an environment where (we can't see it) the most nutritious and mineral filled plants are eaten and the herd goes backwards.
That's why the quality of the animals, Reds particularly, in NZ had their quality and health rise up so much in just one or two breeding years, and in 15-20 years was the best in the world.

Only problem with this is the hunter component, unfortunately.
I always say this and it really annoys some people, but the truth hurts bigtime, and it hurts egos. Because egos is what drives this self-defeatin g practice, not trying to be a part of making improvements for everyone.
The Rut each year... hunters love the rut because the males they seek for their walls are distracted by the breeding season - they only have at best two fertility cycles of the Hinds - usually only one - to continue their bloodlines and it is the females who decide which male gets to mate with them.
If the "hunter", who's been told by all the "deermasters" that that's when the best males are killed drops the male when he's roaring and hasn't yet mated, these best males are killed before they make the herd one step better again.
It's the dumbest, most self-defeating idea, only people with no idea, and a big ticket on themselves, do this and then tell everyone how great they are at improving herd quality AND a future for others. I just shake my head.

Three examples of this working, and not working done wrong:
1. Our cattle stud - the Mrs puts up pics of our calves on the Facebook site and mostly only other breeders look at it, we get comments like "Oh my goodness, look at that chunky bull calf" or "When can we buy that bull calf - he has all the attributes of the best of the breed" and it's not a bull calf, it's a little heifer. Too much to explain there but breeders will get it.
When you compare those calves with the ones next door where the bloke picks up twenty weaners from the sales and thinks he'll make it big growing them out and at the same age as ours, when his are 300kg in X months, ours are 500kg in half that time. Deer are no different.
2. The feral fallow deer in the Stanthorpe region near me - hunters come out from Brisbane onto properties out here they have been allowed access on and try and get the best examples, heads mainly. Well, the heads are appalling quality out here now, the best animals are big-bodied when conditions are good, but all the males with the best attributes have been killed before they could bring the breed back and they are now all spindly things. And when conditions go backwards, like now, when I've spoken to hunters in town, they pull back thinking that it's a good thing, whereas it's actually the worst thing they could do.
3. The Brisbane Valley - yes there are some good heads up there but they aren't for the everyday hunter unless he's won the lotto - the amount of 4x5 and 4x4 spindly heads I see dead in magazines appals me. the people managing them somehow manage, with their BS, to convince paying hunters that they are "managers", truth is that they are in it for the money, walk around with their pockets inside out and have everyone fooled.
There's a bloke from down south pulling up here Monday to drop us off a dozen animals of two breeds, from lines with mid-20 point stags for us to improve our efforts and refresh the blood in ours. It costs us big, sure. I'm benefitting from someone else who's been improving these animals for over 50 years. Gotta do it, just like cattle. In his front compartment he's got some reds for a prominent YouTube "manager" up around the Bne valley that are being brought up to just shoot and for this bloke to keep up the myth that he is the big man in deer management, they are not the best examples, but they are the ones the breeder is dumping cheap because he has rated them not fit to breed from and this is a long-standing deal he has with this "manager". But they will be released up there and SOLD to hunters for big profit as wild. And nobody knows any better, and so it all continues. The hunter will think he has had "fair chase" because this bloke will convince them, well? Good or bad?
And they leave educated by a bloke laughing at them as they leave.

And then there's the people who say all introduced animals are "feral" and they should have unlimited access to blow them all down, as fast as possible. If the gun owners want to lose that part of their sport real fast, that's a good self-important way of going about it.
Umbrella up now for the sh*t to start being thrown.