Looking Back

LOOKING BACK Dr Matt Draisma

The Ada Sambar Project 1974-1977

A look back at past ADA activities and successes

I became a member of the recently formed Australian Deerhunter’s Association, as it was then called, in 1972. At that time, scant data on sambar was available in Australia; there was only that found in Arthur Bentley’s book An Introduction to the Deer of Australia and some zoo-based observations. However, unbeknown to me, a study and survey was being made of wildlife in India by world-renowned zoologist Dr George Schaller, which included sambar, the results of which were later published in the book The Deer and the Tiger. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in sambar because of the wealth of observations that it contains. I eventually met up with Dr Schaller in 2004 while I was working on a Mongolian white-tailed gazelle project for his conservation group.

The ADA’s Victorian Research Committee was formed in mid-1973 as they wanted to do something about our lack of biological data on sambar. The group consisted of me, John Cardell, Graham Keath, Ken Dunn and Stuart White. We decided to ask members to collect samples from shot sambar and thus the ADA’s Sambar Project was born.

Our group had no experience in deer research, although I had absorbed a smattering of scientific methods during my veterinary degree studies. We had to design and make simple hunter-friendly sample kits and data sheets and ensure that the various samples were properly preserved until they could be examined.

The project was enthusiastically embraced by the ADA membership, and particularly by hound crews headed by such men as Mike Harrison, Lu Cervi, Cyril Bennett, Les Young, Jim English and Bob and Len Bingham. Other contributors included John Robinson, Barry and Kevin Lees, Geoff Freeman, and Ron Bowden. These names stand as a record of some of the finest sambar hunters of that era.

To maintain interest, we published our findings in the then-new Australian Deer during 1976 under the title ‘Data Analysis - Sambar Deer’ (Volume 1 Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 6), which was enthusiastically received and boosted the status of the magazine.

To further promote the project, retired deer hunter and professional photographer Roy Berryman produced a 16mm colour film The Sambar - Who Cares? which showed sambar habitat, sambar hunting with hounds and the subsequent sampling of a sambar hind taken, thus recording activities seldom before filmed. The logistics behind this production, executed in a single day, required the co-operation of some 20 sambar hunters, who are now preserved for posterity in that film.

It was no mean feat bagging a deer on demand in those days, but we did just that. In the movie, I demonstrated the measuring of the deer, the sampling techniques and the data recording. It was shown at branch meetings with great fanfare. As a result, more sample kits were assembled and distributed to keen hunters.

The project collected body measurements, since weighing intact animals in the field was near impossible, diet via paunch sampling, gut parasites via faecal sampling, external parasites via skin sampling, age via lower jaws, shin bone samples and antler data. Reproductive status was examined by collecting ovaries and testes, by measuring foetuses and by noting antler development. Anything else that could be wrung from situations, including weather conditions on the day was also asked for.

Sample kits soon started rolling in, with only the odd one containing stinking surprises and most containing high-quality material, a credit to participants. Collecting continued over four years during which time I spent many free weekends dealing with kits and refurbishing them, recording the data from each animal and analysing the results for hunter feed-back, a vital part of the strategy to keep the samples coming in. All this was fitted around work in a very busy two-man country vet clinic, a young growing family, and the very occasional sambar hunt.

By early 1978 we had collected sufficient material and the project was ended. This would then, theoretically, also allow me more deer hunting time (hallelujah!), which I was craving after four years of being tied up with the project.

We were very fortunate to have two knowledgeable members who took on the task of aging the jawbones: Ian Humphries and a mate Dennis Rowler. To make a start we assumed that sambar dentition would closely resemble that known for red deer. We found that, like reds, sambar calves are born with one permanent tooth, the fourth molar, which erupts from the gums after birth and is thus as old as the deer. Annual deposits of a substance called cementum is laid down between the roots of this tooth to compensate for loss of crown material. This fact had already been used to age many other mammals at this time.

These fourth molars were extracted, bisected, their cut surface polished to be viewed under a microscope to count the annular rings of cementum to determine the age of the deer. Fantastic stuff!

Using this information, an equivalent age per tooth wear chart was developed. This chart was later refined using jaws of known age sourced from the ADA’s Sambar Study Enclosure at Tonimbuk. The average age of all the deer over the sampling period was 3.8 years with a range of 0.75 to 12.5. This had the potential to be used in the long term to measure hunting pressure by viewing upward or downward trends. This same system is presently in use for fallow deer management in Tasmania and for Victoria’s annual hog deer season. The tooth aging process was also the key that unlocked the sambar antler cycle.

Microscopic examination of the ovaries and testes was carried out at the Regional Veterinary Laboratory at Bairnsdale, while faeces were searched for intestinal parasite eggs on my kitchen bench.

The next task was to analyse and type a report on the 262 sambar examined, a mammoth task as personal computers did not exist at that time. The report was titled Some Aspects of The Biology of Wild Sambar Deer in Victoria, Australia. It started with a brief background and historical section, plus a general description of the sambar as a species and continued with a detailed section on methods and materials as is customarily required. I then started on the findings, which ended up covering 15 close-typed pages, and finished with a conclusion, summary, and acknowledgements, five attached appendices and a full page of references.

My report shed light on the key elements of this magnificent and superbly adapted species of deer and turned some long-held ideas about sambar on their heads. For example, the paunch sample showed a great diversity of browse plants but, surprisingly, the bulk content was grass. The sampled deer were also found to be extremely healthy, with little evidence of parasites or disease, a great plus for hunters and the species itself. The reproductive data correlated well with what was already known by hunters but because of the large sample size was enormously more definitive.

Triggered by information on antlers from the project, I started analysing the Douglas scores and measurements of sambar in the ADA’s Antler Trophy Register, supplied by the then Trophy Registrar Peter Stuart.

Looking at the average spread figure for these recorded heads it was found that most tended to be overspread when compared to those in the New Zealand Deerstalker Association’s register, so that most lost points under the Douglas system. This also raised the question of whether we had different sub-species, particularly as there was already speculation that Victorian sambar populations may have had deer of both Indian and ‘Ceylonese’ genetics with differing antler characteristics.

Meanwhile, ADA learned that the NZDA was holding an International Game Congress combined with their Annual National Conference in early July 1978 in Wellington and were seeking an ADA presence. On learning of our sambar project, they agreed that I was to travel to New Zealand and be their International Guest Speaker. It was also seen as an opportunity for me to have a meeting with Norman Douglas regarding our sambar overspread issue.

What a fabulous opportunity this was to showcase our own sambar work, and what an honour it was for me to present the findings of our project and show them our movie of sambar hunting in Victoria. A departure day was set but my sambar presentation was not complete. Thus ensued a hurried colour slide photography session to produce visuals and the final pages of the report were completed at midnight the night before departure. Talk about cutting it fine!

The Congress was held in a conference centre attached to a huge pavilion in which were collected the top trophies in their registry of reds, wapiti, fallow, moose, sika, sambar, rusa, wild goats and sheep, chamois and tahr as well as a collection of international game species. It was hard to imagine the logistics involved in tracking down and transporting such a huge number of trophies, but the Kiwis are can-do people!

I had the honour of meeting with Norman Douglas, a gentleman indeed. Our discussion concluded that the New Zealand sambar grew longer antlers and so fitted perfectly into his scoring method, whereas our sambar were not reaching their full growth potential, presumably because of nutritional factors, thus causing the common issue of overspread.

My presentation in the evening of the last day drew a packed audience. Sambar are highly prized in New Zealand because of their limited range, scarcity and elusiveness. We did ADA proud, and the final applause was deafening. I presented a copy of the paper to their Executive for publication, but they lacked the funds to do so, and archived it. Sometime later their sambar were put on the protected list for several years and their forestry people used our findings to assist in a rehabilitation project.

Back here in Australia our study was little known, although a number of reports had been published in Australian Deer. Then in 2004, when Geoff and Ian Moore were working on sambar reproductive studies in the Sambar Study Pen at Tonimbuk, Geoff digitalised the paper and quoted it in a multiple-authored paper.

This article has been the first opportunity to really tell the story behind this amazing project and the rewarding personal journey of those early years and how a tiny band of ADA members made possible such a huge increase in our understanding of the ways of Australia’s most significant game animal, the mighty sambar.

It is expected that a copy of the film The Sambar, Who Cares? will be digitised and loaded onto the ADA’s website in future months. While modern videos of sambar hunts are now rather passe, this film from the 1970s is undoubtedly a rare, if not unique, peek into the ways things were back when deer hunters were few and our knowledge of sambar biology was in its infancy.

About the author 

Dr. Matt Draisma was awarded ADA Honoured Member status in 2015 for “outstanding service to the ADA and the conservation of wild deer in Australia”. He was also commended for “extraordinary services to hunter education in Australia” by the ADA in 2014. He is the co-author of the NSW Hunter Education Handbook currently used for their R License test, and author of some thirty wildlife and deer related scientific writings, as well as over 100 hunting adventure/educational orientated articles published in various hunting publications over the past twenty years.