PRESENT CONDITION OF DEER IN NEW ZEALAND 
beasts. One was a royal which I failed to secure, the other two, a big 
nine -pointer and a twelve -pointer, I killed. A friend of mine saw a great 
many malforms, and another stalker no less than five stags in one corrie 
with only one horn apiece. A great many deer were in poor condition. On 
these facts I based my indictment. A heated argument followed in the 
press, but the general consensus of opinion justified my plea that very 
drastic measures were necessary to improve the stock. 
Various reasons have been assigned as the cause of the deterioration. 
Many people think that the malformed heads, etc., are due to the rough 
nature of the ground. They say that the deer, forcing their way through 
thick undergrowth and over steep and rocky ground, injure the antlers 
while they are still soft. That this view can be maintained I do not believe 
for a moment. In my opinion it is due very largely to inbreeding and to 
the numbers of the deer being out of all proportion to the extent of ground 
they are called upon to inhabit in this particular locality. The best stags, 
finding food scarce, wander further afield, and as all the best heads are 
killed at the other end of the range I do not think this view an unreasonable 
one to assign as the cause of the deterioration. 
At any rate it was decided that large numbers of deer must be destroyed, 
a course which I had advocated from the outset. Mr Allan Gordon Cameron, 
whose name is familiar to all stalkers, in a letter to Mr E. Hardcastle, an 
enthusiastic New Zealand stalker who shared my opinions, wrote as 
follows: “ There cannot be the least doubt that you have adopted the only 
scientific method of raising the quality of your stags, viz., to weed out the 
rubbish by an organized effort directed by a committee of experts.” This 
was in 1908, after my old guide Buckley, with another good shot who 
knew the country well, had been out after malforms and killed, in something 
like six weeks, over a hundred “rotten” beasts. At a rough estimate one 
in every four seen was killed. They advised a great many more being killed 
than they were allowed, and were willing, to shoot. In the latter part of 
1909 they were employed to shoot a limited number of deer, and again in 
the early part of 1910 they were allowed to shoot more and retain the hides 
for sale. In this way they hoped to recompense themselves for their work 
and defray the cost of ammunition and other expenses. In the end they 
were losers. In 1911 they made an offer to kill a thousand deer for £130. 
This offer was refused. With each year that organized operations are 
delayed the difficulties will increase and though a committee visited the 
locality under discussion on behalf of the Society, and “were satisfied that 
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