Aerial shooting takes chunk out of feral deer population but more needed

Last month the NSW Government's Hunter Local Land Services worked in collaboration with Upper Hunter Shire Council to destroy 2500 deer in an aerial shooting program near the New England Highway at Murrurundi and Wingen.

NSW National Parks also removed a further 720 deer from the nearby Liverpool Range.

However, just how effective these latest culls have been is difficult ascertain. Herds of more than 100 deer has been reported in the Upper Hunter.

The Hunter Regional Pest Advisory Committee chair, Brett Miners, said the mobility of feral deer made them a "devilishly difficult" population to estimate.

"Normally when you do pest control like this you want to reduce the population by 70 to 80 per cent," Mr Miners said.

"If you're not reducing it by 70 to 80 per cent then you're not keeping on top of natural reproduction.

"We're pretty confident we can go into areas like Murrurundi and have a big project and reduce the population, but certainly no one is pretending that you've reduced it to even five to 10 per cent because there's just too many deer out there and they're incredibly mobile."

Feral deer are not purely an Upper Hunter problem.

Mr Miners said there were known populations of feral deer south of Forster near Wallis Lake and Sandbar and in Werakata National Park in the middle of Hunter Valley wine country at Lovedale.

Recently the Hunter Regional Pest Animal Committee coordinated a cull of 48 deer from private and public land in Ferodale, north of Raymond Terrace.

European fallow deer are the most common species found in the Hunter, but most concerning is the recent culling of 176 red deer near the Golden Highway. Red deer are one of the largest species and adults weigh up to 200 kilograms.

Feral deer are increasingly becoming a danger near major roads and highways due to collisions with vehicles, and Mr Miners said the introduced species is also impacting conservation efforts to boost koala populations.

"Some of the conservation groups who are doing koala tree planting are finding they're getting survival rates as low as 40 per cent from different planted trees," he said.

"The big impact has been from deer browsing."

In 2019 the NSW Government introduced laws allowing all gun licence holders to shoot feral deer on private property.

Mr Miners said landholders should report any feral deer sightings through the FeralScan online portal, contact Hunter Local Land Services or take steps to remove the animals.

"Deer are feral in NSW and every landholder has an obligation to control and reduce biosecurity threats and risks," he said.