Deer Numbers

greengrasscork

Farmers in certain counties do have a problem with deer in their silage ground every night eating their crop and waiting til september for them to shoot the deer is no good to them farmers when their silage is cut in august and the crop is decimated they depend on one good cut of silage in poor ground and so t have a second chance to cut more silage.

sikahuntejack

Farmer says to hunter i seen deer eating my grass in that field for the last couple of evenings ,,Hunter says apply for a section 42 i will shoot the deer for ya ,,Farmer says but its the summer you cant shoot them, Hunter says you apply for the section 42 i will shoot all the deer because im a greedy **** and cant wait till the deer season to start like most of the other ordinary deer permit holders. This is reality my friends Ban section (42)

greengrasscork

Ok ban the (42)'s but what option does a farmer have when half a dozen deer are in his field in the middle of july or august and hes trying to grow a crop of silage for his cattle for the winter.

viper123

greengrasscork wrote: »

Ok ban the (42)'s but what option does a farmer have when half a dozen deer are in his field in the middle of july or august and hes trying to grow a crop of silage for his cattle for the winter.

They'd have to create a new addition to the wildlife act called a section 43 which will allow shooting of deer out of season if they are causing obvious damage to crops of course.
To be honest there is little you can do about it, you need to have the exemption, and you need to try not have it abused.
What I don't understand though is if I shoot a field more than once in a month the deer aren't long moving elsewhere, why is this different for section 42's in July? Do section 42ers stalk the land looking for deer to shoot or go in all guns blazing scaring off the deer on behalf of the farmer? Sounds like the former for the most part given all the conversations I've had with people holding section 42's who spend their mornings watching hinds slowly destroyiong a farmers crop from their hides while waiting on a stag to tun up which their section 42 allows them to legally shoot.

PL05

viper123 wrote: »

They'd have to create a new addition to the wildlife act called a section 43 which will allow shooting of deer out of season if they are causing obvious damage to crops of course.
To be honest there is little you can do about it, you need to have the exemption, and you need to try not have it abused.
What I don't understand though is if I shoot a field more than once in a month the deer aren't long moving elsewhere, why is this different for section 42's in July? Do section 42ers stalk the land looking for deer to shoot or go in all guns blazing scaring off the deer on behalf of the farmer? Sounds like the former for the most part given all the conversations I've had with people holding section 42's who spend their mornings watching hinds slowly destroyiong a farmers crop from their hides while waiting on a stag to tun up which their section 42 allows them to legally shoot.

Exactly, hinds destroying the crop so whats the point of section 42s, it can only add more pressure on stags that already get hammered. As said before tags are the way forward and if a ranger checks out land that a 42 is applied for and if he does his job and decides that, say two stags are to be taken out then two tags should be issued and anyone caught with an animal without a tag should loose their rights to hunt. Having said that tags can be tampered with also so there should be no excuses or mercy if someone is stopped and a tag is not properly secured on an an animal then the same should apply. I think this is a hard one to solve lads, but i cant understand why anyone would want to take more than 5 deer a season unless their selling. 2-3 is more than enough for my personal use and thats giving some to friends etc, so again as i said before 5 should be the limit,, for a few seasons at least.

rowa

I know people who have been issued section 42's on the premise of protecting crops , but in reality it was simply because they wanted to stalk deer all the year round. I find this completely unacceptable and selfish, give the animals a chance to breed and recouperate. I don't think there is enough scrutiny of applications for these off season licences.

PL05

I really enjoy deer stalking and to me its not all about getting a deer all of the time, the getting out and trying is more important to me than the killing part. i,ve often let deer go that i spent time stalking because id maybe have got one recently and seeing how close i can get to a deer without it knowing im there is enough for me. Thats what it should be about, not money or shooting every animal you see. But your always going to have greedy people and this is the unfortunate part of all this.

richiedel123

Is there any organisations or groups that we could raise these ideas to that could help in maybe trying to get the wheels in motion. I agree with all the posts in this. It's a joke how many deer some people take. There will be nothing for the next generation coming up. And I for 1 would love to be able bring the kids out after deer but if it stays the way it's goin they won't be there to be stalked in a few years

CJhaughey

Section 42's are not just for grassland. I have a friend that planted forestry this year and the deer were topping all the trees.
He applied for a sec.42 and was granted it with the usual condition of Stags only.
Fat lot of good that is if you have to watch hinds destroying trees and not being able to legally shoot them.
There is a need for 42's but they have been applied for and used improperly IMO.
I would think a better way would be for the sec 42 holder to have to show the killed animals to a ranger to verify the kills. Not just stags but Hinds as well as yearlings.
Its just the system as it is, isn't very flexible.

Grizzly 45

greengrasscork wrote: »

Ok ban the (42)'s but what option does a farmer have when half a dozen deer are in his field in the middle of july or august and hes trying to grow a crop of silage for his cattle for the winter.

Deer repellant scent,deer repelling ultrasound devices,deer repelling lights.
THOSE are your only option on the Continent as a hunter/farmer in the off seasons.They seem to manage ok with it.
Edit.
IF you do have game that needs culling under the Sect 42 guise then it should be a NPWs offical doing the cull,nobody else.It should elimiante the market hunter and hopefully be done abit more scientifically.

viper123

CJhaughey wrote: »

Fat lot of good that is if you have to watch hinds destroying trees and not being able to legally shoot them.

They only stop if shot?

The Aussie

Can I ask, how many people have actually contacted the NPWS about their concerns so far arising from this thread???

One shot on kill

I'd take a guess and say no one because there afraid t will affect there license and there land.

CJhaughey

viper123 wrote: »

They only stop if shot?

Pretty much, you can scare them off a few times but they will come back after dark when you aren't there.
If its good enough to shoot the Stags why not the Hinds?

The Aussie

One shot on kill wrote: »

I'd take a guess and say no one.

I would say your right.

When ever a Poaching Thread comes up there are a lot of Hunters showing due consternation jumping up and down chest beating.



When in all realism it's just faux outrage and no one wanting to put their head above the parapet, its quite sad really.

PL05

The Aussie wrote: »

I would say your right.

When ever a Poaching Thread comes up there are a lot of Hunters showing due consternation jumping up and down chest beating.



When in all realism it's just faux outrage and no one wanting to put their head above the parapet, its quite sad really.

Agree with ye here, but it has to be down to the individual to do something about this. would anyone be prepared to bring attention to their permissions? for example if the land owner knows that poaching is going on and say he knows the people involved would you contact npws or gardai and risk your own permission. As said here earlier about the powers that be not being interested in pursueing these issues, then these issues would have to be reported above the heads of these departments, afterall there are laws in place here that have to be observed and the npws and even the gardai dont make these laws but are supposed to enforce them. its a though one but i think that if the deer on my permissions where at risk of been wiped out, then i would,nt have anything to loose and i would,nt hesitate to report this.

rowa

The Aussie wrote: »

I would say your right.

When ever a Poaching Thread comes up there are a lot of Hunters showing due consternation jumping up and down chest beating.



When in all realism it's just faux outrage and no one wanting to put their head above the parapet, its quite sad really.

Report what you like, it won't make the slightest difference. In one of these anti-poaching threads someone mentioned they had called the ranger due to lamping or poaching of deer on his land, the ranger responded he had no diesel for his jeep or money to buy it and simply couldn't visit. The poaching of deer is waaaaaay down the list of government priorities with squeezed budgets in all departments. Do you honestly think the rangers, npw , etc don't know poaching is rampant and out of hand ? If a ranger doesn't know massive amounts of deer are being lamped on their patch then they shouldn't be rangers.

If they were serious about stamping this out all they would have to do is visit the gamedealers and find out the shooters are who are bringing in massive amounts of carcasses, visit these shooters and ask how they are able to shoot 300 or 400 deer a season.

The Aussie

rowa wrote: »

Report what you like, it won't make the slightest difference.

I'm not talking about reporting, like at the moment I'm asking why the NPWS are still issuing Deer Licences to people convicted of Poching, they issue the Licences, its akin to someone being convicted of drink driving and driving themselves home from the Court House, 3 emails and 1 phone call and still no solid answer yet.

Btw, there is something about the Ranger and the Deisel story that has the hallmarks of being born in a Pub.

rowa wrote: »

If they were serious about stamping this out all they would have to do is visit the gamedealers and find out the shooters are who are bringing in massive amounts of carcasses, visit these shooters and ask how they are able to shoot 300 or 400 deer a season.

Agreed. If they were serious they would have the Shooters PPS number logged along with their Licence with every Deer and hand it over to the department of Social Welfare to see if the Shooter in question are State Sponsored (working while on the Dole) and also to the Office of Revenue Commisioners, so as soon as they pass the €2000 threshold you can earn from Sporting Endeavours they can have the joy of the Revenue after them.

PL05

rowa wrote: »

Report what you like, it won't make the slightest difference. In one of these anti-poaching threads someone mentioned they had called the ranger due to lamping or poaching of deer on his land, the ranger responded he had no diesel for his jeep or money to buy it and simply couldn't visit. The poaching of deer is waaaaaay down the list of government priorities with squeezed budgets in all departments. Do you honestly think the rangers, npw , etc don't know poaching is rampant and out of hand ? If a ranger doesn't know massive amounts of deer are being lamped on their patch then they shouldn't be rangers.

If they were serious about stamping this out all they would have to do is visit the gamedealers and find out the shooters are who are bringing in massive amounts of carcasses, visit these shooters and ask how they are able to shoot 300 or 400 deer a season.

As far as i know and again this is coming from word of mouth and 1 or 2 reports in the media, there has been a big clamp down and a few successful prosecutions on poaching in the wicklow area. Now if this is true, why cant it be the case in other counties.

rowa

PL05 wrote: »

As far as i know and again this is coming from word of mouth and 1 or 2 reports in the media, there has been a big clamp down and a few successful prosecutions on poaching in the wicklow area. Now if this is true, why cant it be the case in other counties.

Thats true. Two reasons, 1. Wicklow is the county that most deer are shot in legally (open to correction on that) so that county probabily has the largest poaching problem too. 2. The new Garda superintendent for wicklow is Paul Hogan who is a well known deer stalker and shooter himself, he decided to crack down on poachers last year. Sadly its the courts who drop the ball on this topic and hand out pathetic punishments when someone is up for this carry on.

http://youtu.be/Q25fI6TZ3BI

http://youtu.be/2H5uI58CYnE

robo-deer

http://youtu.be/Ez_bnJLaGXg

sikahuntejack

Got my second deer of the season a nice sika pricket it was in a field with 2 nice 8 pointers shot the pricket 150 yards heart shot took 2 hours to get him back to the car . Shot a 8 pointer last year the meat tough even after it was hung for 2 weeks so decided will not shoot any big stags for the table anymore

jmrc

Having read this thread with some very valid points I have a feeling it all boils down to a complete lack of knowledge and joined up thinking from the decision makers....
the NPWS have no clout, they are afraid to approch mountain bikers let alone poachers... and wouldn't blame them.
Gardai don't have the resources to fight crime in our towns... so the side of a mountain is way down the list.
Courts, well these are the decision makers and the poachers are laughing at them, cos if they do get caught they know nothing will come of it.

All we can hope is the market for Venison drys up... a marketing drive on Mad Deer disease???????

Cass

Thought i'd bring this back up as i've noticed a serious drop in deer numbers over the last 3 weeks to the extent i haven't seen deer, tracks, scat, etc in the last 2 weeks.

Anyone else suffering a drop?


At first i thought maybe a bit of poaching going on, but given the numbers i have being seeing up until the second week of November i doubt any poacher, no matter how good, could completely do away with the numbers i was seeing.

There has been a lot of changes in my permissions recently. My permissions border some Coilte land, and they have been felling/logging the last month, and the land owners have started to use fields/land that have sat idle/in pasture for years.

The Aussie

Deer of any variety don't like change, the extra external pressure is sure to have put them on the move, but in saying that they turn up in amazing places as well, I've seen them on edges of main roads and a few Kilimeters from cities without a bother from them, after Women they are the second greatest mystery.

wexfordman2

Seen a serious drop in some of my areas, but others are still looking good.

One area that has dropped a lot I heard from the farmer he had seen people lamping in the coilte forest at 5am a few mornings back.

Also heard that a game dealer was travelling up our direction once a week now, from wicklow. And I'm in the South West so he can't be travelling for small numbers

Larry60

Speaking for the areas I shoot, I have seen more deer this season than on previous seasons and in the middle of the day commonly. Also this season I have seen more big stags than on previous ones. I saw very few deer in both September and in December of last season. I saw very few deer in the first few weeks of this season.
I actually see more deer in the last few years than I did say twenty years ago which seems to be the opposite opinion to most of posters of this forum.
In conversations with some othe older gentlemen where I live, they commonly tell me that there were little or no deer about locally when they young lads.

If gangs of poachers, who are hammering the deer population are a problem in some areas of the country then it comes down to more carefull monitoring of the game dealers. It would be far easier for the Dep. to audit game dealers than to try to patrol the countryside 24x7.