A group of ADA members toured Victoria’s sambar country in January 1980 to show Max Downes and Clare Speedie (L) the key environments that the deer occupied.
LOOKING BACK Ken Slee
A look back at past ADA activities and successes.
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In the late-1960s and through the 1970s the Australian Deer Association was a young, dynamic and rapidly expanding organisation that had grabbed the attention and the enthusiastic support of the majority of the deer hunters in the country. It also had at its head five extremely competent and committed Victorian ‘deer men’ - Arthur Bentley, Geoff Moore, Peter Stuart, Mike Harrison and Andrew Houghton, who were keen to see deer recognised as valued wildlife and as an important hunting resource.
At this time, the deer scene in Victoria (and Australia-wide) was very different to today; deer hunter numbers were much lower but growing rapidly, deer were relatively rare and occurred in localised areas, 4WDs and technology were much less dominant, deer farming was just commencing, native forest logging was a very significant rural industry and ‘conservation’ had just started to gain the attention of governments and the public.
Under Arthur Bentley’s guidance a wildlife biologist, Max Downes, was employed by the ADA in late-1978. Max’s role was to implement a research project into Australia’s then dominant deer species, the sambar, under the title The Sambar Consultancy. However, his employment was soon broadened to providing advice on managing fallow deer in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, hog deer in Victoria and red deer in Queensland.
Then, building on this initiative, ADA approached the Forests Commission of Victoria in 1979 to suggest that they consider sambar habitat management and hunting as part of the multiple-use of selected Victorian state forests. More on that proposal later, after we return to the sambar!
Unlike the fallow and red deer of Europe and the whitetail deer of North America, which had been intensively studied for decades, if not centuries, the biology of sambar had been little investigated when Max started his work for the ADA. Because of this, his first task was to search the literature to find out what had been published about sambar, both in their home range in India and Sri Lanka and in Australia, the United States and New Zealand where they had been introduced.
Max had a magnificent library that held many books and other documents that containing details relevant to sambar and game management. Those by George Schaller ( The Deer and the Tiger- University of Chicago Press), Sir Samuel Baker ( The Rifle & the Hound in Ceylon– The Abercrombie and Fitch Library) probably being the most accessible these days. Max also obtained an unpublished study on sambar in a New Zealand flax swamp and a comprehensive scientific report on sambar on St Vincent Island in Florida.
From his reading, Max was able to start assessing and assembling a great deal of basic information on sambar in their native range as well as in New Zealand and the United States. T he question then became “Given what we know from overseas, how does this compare with the Australian situation?” It was time to engage with hunters in Victoria to define how sambar fitted into the local scene.
To this end Max recruited ADA members who were experienced sambar hunters to provide their insights into the deer, the forest types that they favoured, important hunting areas and hunting methods. As part of this work Mike Harrison took a leading role in developing and conducting ‘Sambar Sign Surveys’ in the Aberfeldy, Big and Mitchell Rivers to better define how sambar were using these environments. Numerous ADA members supported this work to identify deer tracks, game trails, wallows and preaching trees, bedding and feeding areas and escape cover and then trying to put together a coherent picture of how the area was being used and to gain an indication of the size of the deer population.
At the time, Geoff Haggard at Woori Yallock near Melbourne had a population of sambar in a high-fenced enclosure on his property Pendleside and Max spent a considerable time watching these animals and discussing their behaviour and needs with the experienced deer-hunting members of the Pendleside Cooperative.
Max also wanted to know about Victoria’s sambar country first-hand, so a tour of key hunting locations with keen hunters was high on the agenda. In January 1980 ADA’s Peter Burke escorted Max and his assistant, Clare Speedie, and a number of other hunters on a 4WD convoy through some of the then-important sambar hunting areas in the watersheds of the Macalister, Moroka, Wonnangatta and Crooked Rivers. This trip traversed country that varied from dry riverine forest to alpine snow gum clearings, and from rocky escarpments to prime river flats – all areas more-or-less utilised by sambar and of growing significance to sambar hunters.
Obviously, the grasses, shrubs and trees of India and Sri Lanka are very different to those of Victoria and for this reason Max was keen to obtain some authoritative information on the important plants that maintained the sambar populations in Victoria. Peter Burke took on this role and delivered a comprehensive report that was published in a 1983 edition of Australian Deer. This information is still relevant to the present day and aspects of it have since featured in this magazine and can be viewed on the ADA’s website. As a description of Peter’s findings were published in Looking Back in the March 2025 issue of this magazine, they won’t be further covered here.
Following ongoing lobbying by the ADA, in January 1982 the Forests Commission of Victoria employed Max Downes to investigate and report on:
The conservation of sambar habitat and the improvement of opportunities for legal hunting of sambar in the Big River and Bunyip State Forests; and
The progress of the Koetong Fallow Deer Project.
The Forests Commission was conscious at the time of the increasing popularity of deer hunting in state forests and their need to make provision for public recreation while protecting the forest environment and engaged Max to advise on this special activity. The emphasis of the study was placed on the habitat requirements of the deer and what might be done by the forester to improve the habitat for both the game and the hunter. Max’s investigation and written report to the Forests Commission was given the title The Forest Deer Project.
The work that Max and ADA members had already done on sambar provided a solid basis for a comprehensive report to the Forests Commission. One obvious gap that was of key importance to the Forests Commission remained to be filled – whether recreational sambar hunting was really the significant use of state forests that ADA claimed it to be.
To gauge how significant deer hunting was in relation to other uses of public land, Max, in cooperation with Forests Commission staff, organised ADA members to man checkpoints on access tracks in the Big River State Forest in late-April 1982 and again in mid-July. Unsurprisingly (at least to hunters), these surveys demonstrated that hunters were the major users of this forest over the cooler months of the year, outnumbering sightseers, campers and fishermen and highlighting the significance of recreational deer hunting as a use of public land.
Forest Deer Project was completed in late-1982 and gave ADA and hunters some great insights into sambar and their hunting and it remains the most important report into this deer species. Unfortunately, it did not lead to the Forests Commission of Victoria conducting a program to see how an area of forest could be manipulated to favour deer and hunting as was originally envisaged. However, it did give ADA additional information that supported its campaign to have recreational deer hunting considered when new national and state parks were being proposed.
Forest Deer Project 1982 report was published by the Australian Deer Research Foundation in 1983 and an updated version with a 40-page introduction targeted specifically at hunters and the public was published in 2007. Unfortunately, both paper editions have now sold out, but the 2007 report can be downloaded from the ADA’s website and is well worth studying by anyone who is interested in sambar and their hunting and management.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Among all of the doom and gloom about the future of firearms ownership, hunting and game management in Australia there have been quite a few successes – successes that all too often go unrecognised by the great majority of hunters. These successes were invariably due the hard work of largely unsung heroes donating their time in organisations like the Australian Deer Association, Field & Game Australia and the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia.
By knowing the history of where we have come from and of past successes, we can take heart that we are not without a voice in the hunting and deer debate and are able to influence our futures.
This article, and others in the series, describe some of the good work that has been done in the past, those that have taken a major role in this and how these successes continue to deliver to the present time. Hopefully, these stories will also encourage younger hunters to join one of the major hunting organisations (naturally we suggest that that is the Australian Deer Association) and to step up and ‘give it a go’ to influence our collective futures.
Max Downes, a wildlife biologist, was employed by both the ADA and Forests Commission to investigate the biology of sambar in Victoria.
Max reviewed what was already known about sambar as his starting point. The Deer and the Tiger and The Rifle & the Hound in Ceylon are both great reads.
The Wonnangatta Valley was ‘the’ place to hunt sambar back then – (L - R) Lu Cervi, Mike Harrison, Peter Stuart, Glen Cervi and Peter Burke.
The map produced by Max Downes in 1982 that showed the distribution of sambar and where the most productive hunting was to be found.
Checkpoints on roads around the Big River area demonstrated that sambar hunting was a major use of this forest and this information was used in ADA’s efforts to retain hunting in state and national parks.
The late Nils Toivonen (R) discussing the Big River Survey with a Forests Commission Victoria employee.
The 2007 edition of Max Downes’ report to the Forests Commission of Victoria can be downloaded from the ADA website.
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