DEER PERISH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1940, Page 9

DEER PERISH

MANY WIPED OUT BY SNOW. EXPERIENCES IN SOUTHLAND BACK COUNTRY. About two-thirds of the deer population in some of the higher parts of the Greenstone Valley were wiped out by the heavy snow towards the end of last winter, according to an estimate by a party of four Southland sportsmen who have just returned from a three-weeks’ deerstalking trip in the back-country. They state that, particularly in the Highburn Valley, great trees have been uprooted by the weight of the snow, and avalanches have taken everything before them. Many carcases of deer were lying about in places where the snow had obviously lain in drifts, and as many as four carcases were seen side by side. The owner of the country, Mr G. Shaw, lost 37 cattle in the snow, but the deer obviously suffered more heavily. The party, which comprised -Dr G. H. Orbell, of Invercargill, president of the New Zealand Deerstalkers’ Association, and Messrs H. A. S. Orbell (Waikouaiti), G. Mulvey (Invercargill) and G. Widdowson (Invercargill), met with only one or two deer on their first morning in the Greenstone, whereas last year they had seen 68 on the first morning. There were many deer seen in the Highburn Valley last year, but only a stag and a hind were discovered there on the recent trip. Twenty fallow deer, all but two of which were stags, were shot by Dr Orbell in the Greenstone Valley. The best fallow stag was a 21-pointer, but none of the deer had much in the way of blades, which fact pointed to the heavy snow having had an effect on growth. Mr Mulvey secured a fallow deer and a 14-pointer red deer, and Mr Widdowson shot two fallow stags, which included a white one seen the previous year, and a 12pointer. Mr H. A. S. Orbell’s best trophy for the trip was a nice, even 12-pointer with a spread of 38 inches, which was brought doLn at the back of Lake Te Anau.

An outsize in boars fell to Dr Orbell’s rifle near the mouth of the Eglinton River, where the party hunted for pigs. It was declared by a local runholder to be the largest to have been shot in the district for many years. The boar was 6ft 10 inches from the snout to the tip of the tail, 81 inches round the curl of the tusks, and weighed about 4501 b. The four men could scarcely lift it from off the ground.