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.
Chorley can take some meat for personal use, but because of a law protecting the deer, he is not allowed to sell any of it. As a result, an estimated 15,000 deer are shot in Tasmania each year and their carcasses are left in pits.
To shoot deer in Tasmania, landholders need to apply for a crop protection permit and hunters have to have a game licence – which only allows them to shoot through a limited season. Otherwise they are considered a protected species.
“I am sick and tired of killing animals and leaving them,” Chorley says. “I commercially sell our native animal, [the] forester kangaroo. No one complains about that. The forester kangaroo is only in Tasmania.
“The deer has been introduced 190 years ago, and it is all over the world; forester kangaroo isn’t. I can go out and shoot 50 tonight and sell them, but I can’t sell one ounce of venison – it makes no sense.”
Environmentalists, farmers and hunters are not often bedfellows, especially in Tasmania. But on this they agree – there are too many deer.
It’s believed there are now 100,000 of them across the state, with reports the population has spread into the world heritage area. The deer population is expected to continue to balloon – hitting one million by mid-century if there is no active management.
Farmers hate them because they wreck fences and grazing ground, environmentalists are worried the animals are encroaching on the state’s wilderness, and commercial shooters are frustrated from watching meat rot.
Tasmania is the last state to maintain a ban on commercial selling of deer meat, after New South Wales and Vic changed their regulations in 2019.
Chorley shoots the deer to help farmers out – in exchange, they allow him to hunt other animals he can sell.
“If I go back 20 years, I was excited if I saw three deer a night. If I go out now, if I don’t see 50-100 a night, I think it’s strange,” he says.
He says he has seen pits filled with 2,000 dead deer on farms. One has an annual event where hundreds of animals are herded into a gully and shot.
While Chorley would like to earn money from killing the animals, his main concern is population growth and he hates the waste.
“It’s become uncontrollable – one plus one equals two, two plus two makes four – you imagine what’s it going to be like in the next five years if we don’t get it under control.”
John Kelly, a pioneer game meat producer who runs Lenah Game Meats, buys carcasses of other animals from Chorley, but says he pays a premium to import venison.
“We import several tonnes a month,” Kelly says. “I have just received half a tonne from Queensland. All the stuff we import is wild harvested venison.”
Kelly admits commercialising the meat would not have a huge impact on deer numbers, but it would stop the waste and create jobs.
“I’ve taken a load of venison, which is worth $16,000. I could employ someone for a quarter of a year on that money – generate jobs here, produce a quality product here and help farmers.”
He says there is “a micro minority” of recreational shooters who see hunting deer as “their birthright”, and who have successfully lobbied for deer to stay protected from commercial shootinng.
“They’ve always had the ear of the minister,” Kelly says. “That micro minority have said the commercial shooting will kill off the deer population, but that’s nonsense.”
Donald Riddell, senior vice president of the Sporting Shooters Association in Tasmania, says recreational shooters are against selling the meat and want to be “able to access commercial butchering” so the meat shot by his group can be used more widely.
“Hunters generally don’t support the Kelly proposal and haven’t for a long time – it is not a ‘micro group’,” Redell says.
“Much of the broader game management in Tasmania depends on arrangements with hunters using deer as a carrot. Commercialisation threatens these structures.
“Also deer are very mobile creatures and it is quite difficult to harvest large numbers in a short period of time. The commercial business model to many hunters seems disruptive, with benefits [only] to a very few.”
Commercial harvesting has been recommended by several inquiries in Tasmania. There is widespread agreement over the number of deer, but commercial sales are a contentious issue.
Andrew Cox, the chief executive of the Invasive Species Council, says the push for commercialisation “is a big distraction”.
“[It] could undermine what we are trying to do, which is to stop deer spreading,” Cox says. “It does the opposite – it entrenches and encourages their proliferation. You have a financial incentive to introduce more deer.”
The council, along with the Greens, wants the species listed as a pest and culled.
Cox says the deer have expanded out of the highlands in the past 15 years and are now everywhere, including in urban areas just outside Launceston and Hobart.
They are in Ben Lomond national park in the state’s north-east, down through to the Douglas-Apsley national park, and have moved into Freycinet national park – the home of Wineglass Bay. There is even a herd on Bruny Island, in the state’s south.
“They’re moving into the world heritage area,” Cox says. “We have people who have spotted deer scats and footprints in the Walls of Jerusalem national park [next to Cradle Mountain national park in the north-west].”
In February, the state’s Liberal government announced a five-year plan to manage the population.
The state has been split into three zones. In zone one, which covers central Tasmania, nothing changes. In zone two, which encircles zone one, “sustainable hunting practices” will be allowed. Everywhere else, a “no deer” policy will be put in place.
There will also be a trial to evaluate the potential for deer farmers to supply products to restaurants, though no timeline has been set.
Tasmania’s new primary industries minister, Jo Palmer, would not respond to questions, but a spokesperson for the government says the protected status was important so the “deer can be managed in line with government objectives”.
“[The plan] outlines a balanced approach to managing wild fallow deer, taking account of the outcomes desired by numerous stakeholders including farmers, foresters, conservationists, recreational hunters and the general community,’ the spokesperson says.
The government has “a clear focus” on eradicating deer in the world heritage area and was trialling “aerial control methods” in the Walls of Jerusalem national park, they say.
But Cox says the plan is not up to the task – the deer will still be a protected species under the Nature Conservation Act.
“And we don’t think there’s going to be the required effort on the ground to remove isolated populations,” he says.
The leader of the Tasmanian Greens, Cassy O’Connor, agrees.
“To really make a difference, the Liberal state government must treat feral deer as a pest,” she says. “Rather than trying to get their numbers under control, however, the Liberals are maintaining deer’s status as a protected species, and actively encouraging population growth to provide sport for hunters.
“We know the Liberals struggle to listen to conservationists, but we hope they’ll hear farmers and business owners. It is critical to ensure our island’s environment and economy are protected from the ravages of a feral deer population which is getting out of control.”
• This article was amended on 19 July 2022 to add quotes from Donald Riddell of the Sporting Shooters Association that were supplied after initial publication.
