In 1980, there were about 50,000 feral deer in Australia and by 2002 the population was estimated to have grown to 200,000. Now, the population is likely to have reached more than 2 million.
Saying it’ll be the “next rabbit” etc.
Knew we had them, never knew they were becoming such a huge pest.
We are in outer suburban Melbourne. A woman at the pub last year had her work Ute written off when a deer ran across the Princes Highway in a built up residential area adjacent to some unmaintained bush and hobby-farm-land.
Later last year, my SIL was taking my niece to work and a huge 12-point stag was dead on the side of the highway at the same location. By the time she went to pick her up from work, some dirty Bogan had decapitated it (in daylight), obviously to mount it on their Mancave wall.
Back in the good old days, hunters used to cull the feral deer, take them home and butcher them.
Professional taxidermists used to mount their racks, and they would take pride of place in their lounge room.
It would be in violation of HACCP for a Professional Butcher to prepare feral venison steak and sausage, but it would be a a good Cash-In-Hand income stream.
I saw some in the woods in upper Ferntree Gully a few weeks ago.
[telephone ringing]
“Roadkill Café, you kill we grillTM. May I take your order?”
“Roadkill Jerky Service, You make them Fly, We make them Dry”
In Alaska there’s a lottery where you get permission to take a hit moose home for the freezer. I’m not kidding. It’s called the Roadkill Lottery and it’s government official.
And since one can feed a family for months people will be excited for you if you get that call, like to them it’s a stroke of luck and good news.
Seems weird and I’d worry about hygiene/storage/disease (there are concerns about humane killing and hygienic transport with roos) but in a place with such food shortages it would be a shame if some idiot just took the horns and left the rest to rot.
Statute of limitations, I used to work for a butcher.
They did occasionally butcher a buck or two for a buck or two, which was not HACCP certified.
They also used to have an annual holiday to the NT for goat culls. The carcasses would be dressed and frozen, progressively on-sold to the Halal butchers cheap (even though they weren’t dressed as Halal).
I know that other local butchers in the region did even more dodgy stuff, a few were closed down, and the Halal and Kosher butchers were just as bad, if not worse (their customers had higher expectations for them).