NARRATION

Today, I'm going on a deer hunt. That's a sentence I never thought I'd hear myself say.

Colin Brumley

This is Anja. Steve.

Anya Taylor

Hello. How are you? Nice to meet you.

NARRATION

Killing animals is far from what I would consider a great way to pass the time. But as a regular meat-eater, I have to admit, I'm still a hunter of sorts. The difference is people like Colin take responsibility for the kill.

Steve

Scouty, wanna get a deer? Yeah.

Colin Brumley

It's a prey animals and I'm the predator. We don't just shoot them for fun. We want to eat them and we also respect them and we won't waste it. Alright, we're gonna drop off here, Steve.

Steve

Drop into there, you'll see a nice little wild cherry about there.

Colin Brumley

Yep.

Steve

Drop into there and then slowly pick your way down the gut there, then around to the right.

Colin Brumley

OK. Alright.

Steve

Good one.

Colin Brumley

Yep. Good hunt, mate. Cheers.

NARRATION

But many hunters also genuinely believe they provide an important service to the environment by controlling the numbers of feral animals.

Robert Brown

Evidence is there in terms of the numbers of animals that are being killed, the low cost to the taxpayer of those animals being killed. Conservation hunters are in there every day, every week, every month, every year, year after year.

NARRATION

Is this claim backed by science? Feral animals like foxes, cats and rats have been responsible for most of Australia's native mammal extinctions. Reducing their numbers is one of our greatest conservation challenges.

Dr Euan Ritchie

We've lost about 27 mammal species, which is by far the worst record in the past few hundred years anywhere in the world. We have a whole range of other species that are threatened with extinction as well.

NARRATION

More recently, hard-hooved animals started their assault on wildlife habitats. The most elusive and underestimated of these are deer. Their numbers have exploded in recent decades, and now they're getting a lot of bad press.

Roger Bilney

It's an animal that can browse up to six-foot high and it can also graze and it's taking everything.

NARRATION

It's sambar deer that are the largest and most destructive. The day before the hunt, Roger Bilney took me through East Gippsland Forest to point out why he believes they're one of our worst emerging feral pests. He published one of the first papers on their impacts in 2005.

Roger Bilney

This is Hazel Pomaderris. That foliage up there should be all the way through, but it's been heavily browsed. Even break down the main stems to get access to it.

Anya Taylor

So all this would have been a thicket.

Roger Bilney

Yes, an absolute thicket. See all these stalks. You shouldn't see the stalks. That should be all leaf.

NARRATION

Deer are selective, but not just for species that taste good. These yellowwood trees have been antler-rubbed to near death, apparently due to their lovely citrusy smell.

Roger Bilney

70 or 80% of these are in some state of mortality. They will soon die.

Anya Taylor

Does that mean you could actually lose this species from the rainforest?

Roger Bilney

Yes. There's only one threatening process of this plant, and that is the sambar deer.

NARRATION

Younger trees that normally grow to fill gaps in the canopy are overbrowsed and broken, leading to changes in moisture and light levels on the forest floor.

Roger Bilney

Well, the rainforest is a fire break. It's a natural fire break. And as it breaks up and we get other species and grasses moving into there, fire will travel through a lot more.

Anya Taylor

This is a classic example of what deer can do to a tree that they find tasty. This foliage would normally be all the way down to the ground, but the deer have browsed it up to here, which is as far as they can reach.

NARRATION

Studies on deer impacts from the US and New Zealand suggest forest understoreys can change dramatically and may never return to normal. Despite their impacts, in the south-eastern states where they're most common, deer are not listed as a pest species, but rather as a protected game species, and that's a major bone of contention.

Roger Bilney

To list them as a protected species is wrong.

Dr Andrew Cox

The hunting regimes that the government sponsor deliberately avoid the mechanisms that would be most effective, such as spotlighting and shooting at night and aerial culling of deer.

Colin Brumley

I believe aerial shooting for sambar deer won't work because of the nature of the deer. They're not a herd animal. They won't run, they tend to hide. Just check out this rub here. Um, this shows me that the deer has been here not so long ago.

NARRATION

Defence of deer as a game species is intense, and during my morning with Colin, I understand why - deer hunting is much more than a sport, it's a way of life.

Colin Brumley

Did you notice the change in the wind just now? It's coming from behind us now, which is really bad.

Anya Taylor

Oh.

Colin Brumley

If you hunt sambar in this country, you have to be observant. I think hunting is a very grounding experience. It's directly relating to nature and you getting back to basics and it's not some make-believe thing that happens on a computer screen.

NARRATION

The Shooters and Fishers Party say that by preserving and protecting the culture of hunting, conservation will also benefit.

Anya Taylor

Can you tell me the idea behind conservation hunting?

Robert Brown

You can call it conservation hunting in the context of Australia where you hunt feral animals almost as a contingent benefit of hunting animals that you want to hunt.

NARRATION

The term 'conservation hunting' was used by the recently abolished New South Wales Game Council to promote recreational hunting as a form of pest control.

Robert Brown

In those State forests since 2006, I think they've decked around an average of about 20,000 animals a year.

NARRATION

But the science on the reproduction rates of pest species suggests it's not as simple as a body count.

Dr Euan Ritchie

A lot of our invasive species can actually increase their populations very quickly, so a fox population, as an example, can increase by nearly 100% per year, and so to actually reduce that population to a point where you can actually remove it completely or at least reduce it to a large degree. You have to kill about 70% of that population every year, which is a huge effort.

Dr Andrew Cox

Probably the best study that's been done on this was a study in Victoria when the introduced a bounty system on foxes, and the best that they could do is 4% of the population, and that effort wasn't directed at the right places, so what point is that? It's like swatting flies and thinking you're making a difference.

Robert Brown

160,000 dead foxes is 160,000 dead foxes there for everybody to see.

NARRATION

Contrary to claims of reducing the populations of feral animals, there is evidence that in some cases, hunting helps them spread. At Murdoch University, Dr Peter Spencer has been studying the DNA profile of various feral pig populations, which are a favourite target for WA shooters. Wild pigs from different regions were found to have distinctly different genetics.

Dr Peter Spencer

The other thing that we found, which was an absolute surprise, was that there were genetic signatures of some pigs that we found in some populations that were very, very characteristic for pigs that we would expect to find in another very different population. But where we found this happening was between an area of about... there's about 400km of open country where pigs just simply don't exist, so they're not moving across that landscape, so that the only explanation was that they really must be actively being moved into these new populations.

NARRATION

A survey in 2000 found that more than half of all deer herds had been established due to illegal translocations. Deer were observed in no less than 30 new locations between 2002 and 2004.

Robert Brown

You know, there are criminals in every walk of life. It is illegal to transport feral animals. In fact, the fines are up to, I think, $55,000 per offence. The scientists that have given you that information, what's their answer? Let's have a look at species extinction in this country over the last 10 or 15 years. Let's have a look at the impact on agriculture of feral animals over the last 10 or 15 years. Have their methods been effective? No.

NARRATION

Although it sounds like they're at loggerheads, there is evidence that scientists and hunters working together can achieve feral animal control.

Dr Andrew Cox

I think we're not opposed to hunting per se. We're all about effective feral animal control. Volunteer shooting by skilled hunters in a targeted way through a coordinated program can be an effective component of a feral animal control program.

NARRATION

Goat culls in Victoria are just one example where a united effort has brought down a pest species dramatically and reduced impacts on the environment.

Colin Brumley

If there's deer that are a problem in an area, we would certainly be available to deal with that. We've got people who are trained and accredited that can hunt the deer safely and ethically and remove the deer from the area, or certainly reduce the numbers.

Dr Euan Ritchie

Yeah, I think most scientists and ecologists would agree that if there was a strategic plan to actually go and shoot a population and bring its numbers down, then certainly professional hunters potentially could be quite beneficial in that sense, but I think letting recreational shooters go into areas and using that as a form of pest control is going to be largely ineffective.

NARRATION

Without a careful strategy, the well-intentioned random shooting of feral animals can actually have harmful consequences.

Dr Euan Ritchie

As an example, if you kill foxes, cats will increase because foxes actually are very effective control method for cats, and so when you're managing species, you have to actually think of all the species in that system, and you actually have to manage them at the same time, and it's very difficult to do that as a hunter. It's very difficult to go in there and say, 'Let's shoot pigs, foxes, cats, all these species at the same time.'

NARRATION

Controversially, Dr Ritchie argues that in some areas, the best solution may be leaving animals like dingoes in the landscape.

Dr Euan Ritchie

If you actually have native predators in the landscape, they're actually essentially doing that service for you. They're doing it 24 hours a day, they're doing it seven days a week and they're doing it for free.

NARRATION

But where does that leave farmers who lose livestock to predators? One of the suggested solutions is guardian animals, which have been successfully used to protect both native populations and livestock.

Dr Euan Ritchie

Essentially they protect the flock, again, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so the farmer can basically sleep at night knowing that their flock is protected. Maremma sheepdogs are very effective at protecting sheep against wild dogs. We've used alpacas as well against things like foxes, and they have a fantastic benefit in that they can actually protect the stock while also not having to go and shoot things like dingoes at the same time.

NARRATION

But dingoes and foxes don't prey on deer. How to control their growing populations is an argument that's likely to go on for some time.

Anya Taylor

Ooh. Somebody got something.

Colin Brumley

Yeah.

Steve

She was dead as soon as I pulled the trigger. She just rolled straight down.

Colin Brumley

A deer like this will last about two to three months of good eating. Our family will enjoy that. Man and hound, well done.

NARRATION

Among these men, there's no talk of any conservation service performed today. It's just hunting for its own sake.