Shot and left to rot: Tasmania grapples with deer dilemma as invasive pest numbers soar

Tasmania’s deer population could balloon from about 100,000 to 1 million by mid-century without active management. Photograph: Bruce Miller/Alamy

On a farm in Tasmania’s central midlands, Scott Chorley crouches in the short grass. He fires a single shot. It rings across the flat pasture, hitting a fallow deer clear between the eyes. It’s his 50th for the evening – and almost 400th this year. Every year, Chorley, one man in a team of seven commercial hunters, shoots about 900 deer. He then leaves them to rot.

“I just kill them and leave them on the ground,” he says.