Fallow Deer at Tapanui

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Fallow Deer at Tapanui
West Otago deer farming started in 1869 when the Council of the Acclimatisation Society, Queenstown branch, imported twelve fallow deer from Tasmania, Australia at �9 10s each. They suffered badly and were in poor condition from the shipping via sea and overland in Otago. The surviving seven were given to Mr. Wentworth and John McKellar, for release in the Tapanui district. They put them in a sheltered, fenced 100-acre paddock close to the homestead ensuring they had enough protection from the weather as well as dogs, which were tied up at night. In the homestead paddock of chiefly birch, black pine, white pine, totara and broadleaf, there was sufficient water and feed from the vegetation. After they had bred once or twice and were well acclimatised, they released them but the herd stayed quite close to where they had been penned.

McKellar amassed as many men as possible and herded them up into the gullies and mountain spurs. Within five years McKellar estimated a herd of 50 to 60 lived in the surrounding hills and valleys, the spring of 1874 possibly adding another 20 to 25 head. In 1871 an extra hind arrived from London via the 733-ton ship �May Queen�, a sole survivor of six that were from R. C. Lippincott Esq., Overcomb, near Bristol, having been reared in Bristol by Messer�s. Mather, Gardner and Co., and donated to the Acclimatisation Society.

When the Acclimatisation Society approved of licenses, deer hunting became a common pastime of Tapanui locals for the venison. The first deer hunt taking place the week after New Year 1875 when a buck of 210lbs was shot. On Boxing Day the same year a second deer-stalking event took place for John McKellar and friends when four bucks were shot. The heaviest buck weighing 290 pounds with horns weighing 40 pounds.

The Acclimatisation Society also imported Red Deer from the Earl of Dalhousie�s Scotland estates, releasing seven at Morven Hills and eight at Bushy Park 1870 and 71. Mr F D Rich released Axis deer at Bushy Park in 1867. They increased rapidly from seven to nineteen within two years. Of four fallow deer released on Morven Hills in 1867 one pair, a buck and doe killed themselves by attempting to jump a fence. The other pair bred well.

Deerstalking was a popular sport in Tapanui and unfortunately poaching became excessive when Miller managed Brooksdale. Several licenses were issued when the season commenced in 1892 and a ranger was stationed permanently in the town during the time. A rabbiter on the Blue Mountains while meeting with Ranger Burt one morning discovered a nine point stag caught by it's antlers in snowgrass standing at the edge of the bush. The tussock was so tough and stringy that when a horse was tethered to it with a proper hitch, the plant was impossible to pull out of the ground or break. Catching it by the hind leg, the two men cut it free and finding it in top condition took it by dray to a loose box in the stables at Brooksdale. It became one of a consignment collected for the Lakes Acclimatisation Society.

Hunters shot over thirty stags during the season, some travelling from Dunedin and Southland taking home good antlers. The season ran from March 1 to April 31 and a license cost �3 for red deer and �2 for fallow deer with a limit to four heads. From the time the fallow deer were released, the herd had increased to about 500 with 100 stags in 1894. Up to twelve stags in one mob frequented Black Gully including a piebald and a white stag with black antlers, moving up into the mountain just before daylight and appearing on low country again after nightfall. A deerstalker during the 1894 season bagged a stag with 16 points, having already shot one in 1883 with 21 tines. The white stag released in the first mob managed to elude hunters and still roamed the slopes, moreover another stag called "King of the Blue Mountain" reputed to have horns over three foot long.