Vale Max Downes

Vale Max Downes

Max Downes was without peer as a game manager in Australia.

From 1953 to 1968, he worked as a biologist and held the position of Superintendent of Game Management during a critical period for waterfowl conservation in Victoria. In that role, Max was able to convince the Government that the real risk to game bird populations was the loss of habitat and climate, not recreational hunting. Victoria’s network of 200 public land state game reserves owes more to Max’s vision and drive than it does to any other individual or group.

Max has also worked extensively on deer population, firstly during an eight-year stint in Papua New Guinea in 1968, doing the first research into the rusa deer population.

Following that, he came and worked with the still young ADA, work that culminated in the seminal publication, the Forest Deer Project.

“I came back in 1976 and worked for the Australian Deer Association as a consultant, which was a difficult job because little work had been done in Australia at that stage,” he said.

“Game managers at the time tended to confuse research into game with game management: game management is the application of knowledge, research is discovering how to do it, and they are distinct activities that require different sorts of people and training.”

Max’s later years were spent creating and curating the Australian National Hunting Archive, Max’s Australian National Hunting Archive includes the personal collection of his dear friend, the late Arthur Bentley.

Max passed away on Thursday, 17 October 2024, eleven days before his ninety-seventh birthday.

The Australian Deer Association extends its sincere condolences to Max’s children Greg, Malcolm, Elizabeth, and Eleanor and our sincere thanks to them for sharing their remarkable father with a grateful hunting community.

Home is the hunter, home from the hill…Vale Max Downes.

Max Downes on Heard Island during the 1951 Artic Expedition.