Recreational Deer Hunting
The popularity of recreational deer hunting in Australia continues to increase as more people develop a passion for wild deer, the great outdoors, and seek to become more connected to their food source. This leads them to the wonderful world of free-range, nutritious, and sustainable wild deer, a valuable source of high-protein red meat.
Recreational hunters play a crucial role in wild deer management, harvesting the most significant number of wild deer and, importantly, consuming this sustainable resource, helping to provide population control on public land that allows recreational hunting.
There are many ways to hunt wild deer, from stalking with a bow to week-long backpack hunts in remote alpine country. Each offers a different experience in the great outdoors.
Local legislation and regulation define legal hunting methods. Hunters will likely adopt multiple approaches throughout their journey as their lifestyle, skill sets, time, or curiosity change.
What doesn’t change is the importance of animal welfare, regardless of the method of hunting; ensuring that you humanely harvest the deer is of the utmost importance. Hunters are encouraged to develop and maintain their firearm skills through regular practice.
Beginning your hunting journey can be daunting, as there is much to learn. But it doesn’t have to be that way. To help hunters learn more about wild deer and hunting, we offer two courses in New South Wales and Victoria. These courses are a fantastic way to speed up your learning and cut years off your learning curve.
An array of branch-related activities complements this, providing you with learning opportunities year-round, from branch camps to guest speakers on all things wild deer at branch meetings.
The ADA also hosts the Shelley Camp in North East Victoria. Hunters nationwide use this fantastic opportunity to enjoy hunting in some great country and share their stories of adventures with fellow deer hunters around a fire at night.
We also regularly publish stories from hunters who share their knowledge from their latest Hunting & Adventures as well as in-depth Gear & Reviews so that you can stay up to date with the latest equipment.
Join the Australian Deer Association today and begin your wild deer hunting journey, today!
STATE HUNTING INFORMATION
Click on the links below to view each state's hunting information, specifically relating to Deer Hunting:
Fair Chase Hunting
The Australian Deer Association promotes "Fair Chase Hunting", where individuals define fair chase according to their values within the law. This approach respects and values deer as wild animals and sustainable resources to be shared.
Over the years, the ADA has defined “Fair Chase Hunting” as the ethical, sportsmanlike, lawful pursuit and taking of free-ranging wild deer in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper advantage over the animal.
One of the clearest and best thinkers in the management of wild things was Aldo Leopold, a dedicated hunter often recognised as the father of modern-day wildlife conservation. It is no coincidence that the Australian Deer Association adopted as its motto a quote from one of his writings:
Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.
More is implicit in this simple statement than the total content of many books devoted to the subject.
As a hunter, Leopold clearly understood the temptations sometimes encountered in the field, and in defining hunting ethics, one can do no better than to quote him:
“There is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called “sportsmanship”. Our tools for the pursuit of wildlife improve faster than we do, and sportsmanship is a voluntary limitation in the use of these armaments. It is aimed to augment the role of skill and shrink the role of gadgets in the pursuit of wild things.”
“A particular virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.”
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