Australian hunters sponsor more practical deer research

Most of the research conducted on wild deer in Australia is effectively useless from a management perspective. We appreciate that it’s a big call…there is a lot of deer research happening, and it is sponsored with great fanfare from the Federal and State Governments. Most of it either makes predictions of ‘potential’ situations that are highly improbable or seeks to associate wild deer with disease risks that either do not exist or that are found to be inconsequential when put into their proper context. The research typically concludes with an incredible warning about ‘potential’ threats and an amorphous call for more research, and the story repeats. There is an entire industry now of Government-funded bodies keeping bureaucrats and researchers in jobs and taxpayer dollars flowing. It is a self-licking ice cream.

For researchers looking at ways to understand and manage wild deer in the Australian landscape, the funding simply isn’t there. It would seem that there is no real appetite within Government for anything that doesn’t advance the prevailing ideological agenda. Practical management, context, and nuance have no place there.

So it came to pass that researchers who wanted to conduct research that would help manage wild deer populations in the real world turned to the recreational hunting community for support. It makes sense you think about it. People with a deep and enduring interest in wild deer and a practical understanding of their interaction with the environment are the obvious people to turn to if your goal is managing deer instead of just finding new ways to say bad things about them.

Recording the age of harvested wild deer can serve as a useful management tool, particularly if conducted on a deer herd over a long period. Changes in average age classes can tell deer managers a lot about the overall health of deer herds, assist with modeling population increases, and serve as a measure of effectiveness for control or reduction programs.

Two common methods of aging harvested deer are ‘Eruption and wear’ and ‘Cementum Annuli’.

Eruption and wear aging involves examining a jawbone for tooth eruption, which can give an accurate age up to about 2.5 years old and then looking at wear and erosion in the tooth dentine and enamel to further gauge ages up to senior adults.

Cementum Annuli is a method of sectioning a tooth from a deer and then examining the growth of cementum, the connective tissue that surrounds the roots of teeth, that forms layers that can be counted under a microscope similarly to tree rings.

Sambar jaws were collected throughout the year as part of a more extensive ecological study during 2018 and 2019 from animals harvested during culling and venison recovery operations, as well as harvests by licensed hunters. Hunters were instructed to harvest animals whenever they were encountered to reduce any conscious bias toward target selection. At necropsy, technicians removed mandibles and recorded reproductive data, including sex, weight, and length of any fetus. Technicians also recorded lactation status as either none, moderate, or abundant milk in female deer.

The research concluded that both aging methods have relative strengths and weaknesses. However, eruption and wear (jawbone aging) is preferred for its relative ease and savings in both time and cost.

The research is published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin and was supported financially by the Australian Deer Association Inc., the SSAA Vic, and the Victorian Hound Hunters Inc.

Watter et al., 2021, Aging Sambar (Rusa unicolor) Using Cementum Annuli and Eruption and Wear: Implications for Predicting Populations. Wildlife Society Bulletin 45(3):383–389; 2021; DOI: 10.1002/wsb.1216