PRESENT CONDITION OF DEER IN NEW ZEALAND 
wiped out. A New Zealand gentleman summed up the whole matter in 
one sentence six years ago. His remedy was drastic, but it was the right 
one. He boldly said: “The Morven Hills, Timaru Creek, Lower Dingle, 
Mount Jones and Longship districts should be practically cleared of deer.” 
Many good stags, some of them very good stags, are killed annually, but 
such a state of things will not go on for ever. 
The great thing to do is to stop the wave of migration, and I hear that 
the runholders, who have taken up new leases in the vicinity of the Morven 
Hills, talk of taking matters into their own hands and killing everything 
they see. Such a step would probably do more good than harm. 
I could quote endless statements made by different stalkers as to the 
spread of the “rubbish,” but it is unnecessary. Anyone who knows the 
country knows that the evil is there and that it is spreading. 
I do not wish it to be thought that I am condemning New Zealand as a 
stalking -ground. Many fine stags with splendid heads still exist there and 
will continue to exist for many years. The view that I wish to enforce is 
this. Every year the “ rubbish ” accumulates and every year it is more 
difficult and more expensive to get rid of. With every fresh birth in certain 
localities the impetus to wander will become greater and the difficulties 
in the way of restricting the migration of bad stock greater. If allowed 
to go unchecked, the numbers of deer, and consequent inbreeding, will 
increase to such an extent that the whole deer country will be affected and 
the condition of the deer sink to that which prevails in Scotland at the 
present time. There will, however, be this difference. In New Zealand 
there will be no wealthy private owners of forests to lavish money on the 
care of their animals, and good stags’ heads will be a greater rarity there 
than they are at home. 
New Zealand is widely advertised as a paradise for the visiting sports- 
man, apart altogether from the magnificent prospects it offers to those 
who have made their home there, and who are a nation of sportsmen at 
heart. Deer-stalking is one of the finest sports in the world, especially 
as carried on in the hills of North Otago. If the Otago Acclimatization 
Society and the Waitaki Society combine, with the help of the Government, 
to check an evil which I believe is still increasing, they may in future 
years still make good their boast that they have in their keeping one of 
the finest red deer herds in the world. 
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