Life
As populations of feral deer increase across the country – spilling out of forests, where they cause significant damage, and into suburbs – the conversation about management needs to shift. By Alice Bishop.
The real problem with feral deer
When threatened, sambar deer give off a ghostly, guttural honk. It’s a haunting sound, usually heard at dusk or through the night. The booming, almost nasal call is known as a pook among the local deer hunters – their dogs caged at the back of their mud-flecked, taxpayer-subsidised HiLux trucks. Brindle scent dogs, I imagine, with names like Tinny, Bud or Blue.
The first time I heard a sambar deer’s eerie alarm, I flinched. My own woolly, burr-decorated dog stopped on the familiar bush track ahead, looked back, then ahead again. I felt my chest unclench when I saw the shadowy body appear through damaged wattle. There was a sense of awe seeing the lone, antlered animal, strong-bodied and the size of a small horse. I excitedly approached my parents back home: “Would you believe I saw a deer?”
Since then, my naive awe has shifted to concern: deer sightings in the outer suburbs of many Australian capital cities – Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and the Gold Coast – are increasingly common, in line with the animals’ national population explosion.
Deer were first introduced to Victoria by white settlers in the 1860s for recreational hunting – with a lack of care for existing people, plants and animals – and to make the country feel more European. Their population later bloomed in the 1980s following the collapse of the deer-farming industry. Now there are four feral species of deer across the state: sambar, fallow, red and hog deer.
Where I’m from, Christmas Hills – Wurundjeri Country – on Melbourne’s outer north-east fringe, signs of sambar deer are evident in ringbarked eucalypts. Young bucks scar the bark as they rub velvet from their antlers and mark their territory. The deer also trample access to water sources, erode soil and strip back regenerating plants.
The round-leaf pomaderris – a medium-sized native shrub with dark, shiny leaves and creamy white flowers that bloom from October to November – is endangered in the area. Having survived in the Kinglake National Park after 98 per cent of the reserve was destroyed by the Black Saturday bushfires, it’s now threatened by deer browsing.
Deer are not only making their presence felt in the bush; they are increasingly seen in built-up areas. Neighbours have put deer-proof fences around fruit orchards, drivers have hit deer late at night on suburban roads, and wildlife carers are taking more calls about injured deer, putting strain on an already underfunded service for native animals.
I have driven by so many more dead deer – stiff-legged on the roadside with pink, fluorescent crosses across their hides – even in places such as Doncaster, home to one of the largest Westfield shopping centres in Melbourne.
Jack Gough, chief executive and advocacy director of the Invasive Species Council, says this spread of deer will push up car insurance premiums. He blames the powerful shooters lobby for the lack of serious and coordinated deer control at a government level. Efforts for a front-loaded campaign to stop feral deer spreading are being thwarted by hunting advocates who want to protect them for sport.
Victoria and Tasmania are the only two states or territories in Australia that continue to label deer “wildlife” under their regulations. Everywhere else they’re considered pests or feral and can therefore be culled more routinely – with respect, through coordinated and carefully considered eradication programs.
This month, the Victorian government was broadly criticised for opening 130,000 hectares of national park to recreational deer hunters instead of taking appropriate steps toward eradicating feral deer entirely.
Gough is frustrated at the lack of action long after the 2023 release of the National Feral Deer Action Plan, which suggested feral deer would be Australia’s “next rabbit”.
“People think if there’s 1000 deer in an area and we kill 250, surely we’ve stopped population growth,” Gough says. “But no, not at all: there’ll be more than 1000 next year. We have to massively frontload the investment. You have to kill or remove at least 35 to 50 per cent of the animals to even stop population growth; deer reproduce that quickly.”
The complex feral deer problem in Victoria is yet another example of Australia’s damaging colonial legacy. Where now it’s the shooting lobbies encouraging deer populations, previously it was the acclimatisation societies of the mid 19th century – white settlers who introduced non-native species across the country, including rabbits and European carp, with disastrous impacts on local wildlife.
Wiradjuri river guide and educator Richard Swain has devoted his life to caring for Country. He says it’s important not to conflate ethical hunting with the shooting lobbies maintaining the deer’s protected status. “It can’t be us versus them or we’ll continue to get nowhere. We have to work together.”
Swain, who is also an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society, actively campaigns to save Kosciuszko National Park from the damage of feral horses, amid other environmental advocacy work.
Swain doesn’t want division to further stall real action, collaboration and change. He sees uncertainty over Australian identity getting in the way of caring for Country.
“Feral animals are not only avatars of Australia’s continuing colonial dominance but our crisis of national identity,” Swain says over the phone, the light chatter of his kids playing in the background.
“Country is desperate – it’s calling out for Aussies to fall in love with it,” he says. “And don’t get me wrong, hunters have a place in feral animal control. But just letting huge areas of Country be destroyed because of hunting lobby groups who don’t seem to be prepared to follow the science or put Country first, then we’re not doing the right thing.”
Unlike ethical hunters, Swain says, hobbyists will walk past 10 deer to shoot the one they want for a trophy photo. “They’re not there for the feral animal control,” he says.
“Where did hunting go awry? When I was a kid, it was about getting rid of ferals. When I was a kid, we ate the rabbits. I whistled that many foxes in my life because I didn’t want foxes in the landscape – we shot that many.
“And I have nothing but respect for those animals, but I was protecting Country, not protecting my hobby.”
Out walking again after these conversations, I catch sight of a dark shadow through shrub. I pause, waiting for the familiar guttural pook, the stamp of hard hoof on compacted earth.
But there is no threatened call on this cool July evening, no nasally honk.
Instead, the small body of a dark, grey-muzzled wallaby is paused – camouflaged among gold-dust wattle and candlebark seedlings. I wait, breathe in. Then listen to the soft thump of its stealthy hop retreating through lilac-tinted dusk.
Professor Richard Swain’s words come back to me: “Just wonder what this country could be if we came together; if we nurtured a national identity that really cared for it.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 19, 2025 as "The colonial echo".
For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.
All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.
There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.
Subscriber exclusive
Send this article to a friend for free.
Share this subscriber exclusive article with a friend or family member using share credits.
