StephenToast
Well-Known Member
Good luck! Don't hold back!
Managing muntjac
- Thread starter EssexBigMac
- Start date
Good luck! Don't hold back!
Uncle Norm
Well-Known Member
Good advice this. I would also include February until the spring flush, as they have to travel to find food. Certainly a productive time in our woodlands.
Some of our (wealthier) members have bought thermal scopes and had success in that period from one hour before sunrise to the time when standard optics enable shooting. I would imagine the same situation exists for them in the period of half and hour after sunset to one hour after sunset.
A rather expensive way of getting a few more Muntjac though.
Muntjac stop and browse on their route so they will be feeding also they can live in a small spinney with out any one knowing where they rest sleep.
The thing is just because they don't pass the camera and the farmer doesn't see them does not mean they are not there.
I shoot a few! and when out with my elderly friend on his 2 fields and we see nothing he questioned why we never see any that time.
The answer is "Tony" they are here just not when we are so that leaves 11 more hours they could be shot in and in the summer months a lot more. That "1" came from the "few" who escaped in Bedford and are breeding/looking to establish, I have shot 40 in Tony's 2 fields in 2 1/2years who started to pass through.
What you said does not go with what you posted below.
Managing them I would say is probably not the right word and controlling may be more appropriate given the vast numbers, reproductive rates and happiness to be out in the dead of night.
StephenToast
Well-Known Member
Good advice this. I would also include February until the spring flush, as they have to travel to find food. Certainly a productive time in our woodlands.
Some of our (wealthier) members have bought thermal scopes and had success in that period from one hour before sunrise to the time when standard optics enable shooting. I would imagine the same situation exists for them in the period of half and hour after sunset to one hour after sunset.
A rather expensive way of getting a few more Muntjac though.
As long as you stay within the hour before and hour after you can use a torch/lamp. Doesn't have to be NV or thermal.
Loler UK
Well-Known Member
Leave the bucks until they are clean then only let wealthy clients / guests shoot medals and leave the young bucks to grow & never shoot females to maximise income
alternatively
shoot on sight (maybe leaving does that have followers)
A criminally undervalued deer if you ask foreign trophy hunters, an alien invasive damaging pest if you ask some ecologists. Their carcass value is basically £0 by the time you factor in your time etc. I have some woods where I have never gone out with a rifle and not shot a mjd or watched a client fumble / say where, where I cant see it!
alternatively
shoot on sight (maybe leaving does that have followers)
A criminally undervalued deer if you ask foreign trophy hunters, an alien invasive damaging pest if you ask some ecologists. Their carcass value is basically £0 by the time you factor in your time etc. I have some woods where I have never gone out with a rifle and not shot a mjd or watched a client fumble / say where, where I cant see it!
Not being "Pro-active instead being Re-active is why they continue to thrive so well, while people are attending meetings and watching slide shows the Muntjac Buck is out looking to make baby's.
classic points from the countryside.
Farmer sees pigeons on his rape so puts a gas gun out and is quite happy.
Pigeons go down the other end of the field out of sight and chew off that corner.
Farmer sees one Muntjac takes no notice, 2 years later the Muntjac come in his garden eat all her flowers
"Charles" shoot it...lol
1+1=3
I know where they live, just off the farm, the route they then walk is alongside a bridle path where there is no safe shot, round the boundary of the farm then over to the adjoining farm where there is another small spinney, you may remember it from when we visited the farm together, even the tracks for them are few and far between on there but ive identified where there may be a chance to get them but it is just that, a chance due to the safe shooting areas on that farm (with footpaths/bridleways and the flat nature of it) and the routes they take, as you can't shoot them if they aren't there when you are. Ill admit when im out 9/10 its early morning instead of the evening due to the family life / work and evenings may be more productive, but the cameras / intel from the farmer indicate the wee hours that they come through
Id stand by what I said, it is control for muntjac more than management, or it should be. I.e. instead of trying to get big heads it should be a more holistic overall numbers on the ground approach
I always thought that if a buck is following a doe intently she is in oestrous so has a very young dependent kid about, or do you always make sure you find those?
Jono 4
Well-Known Member
I find them fascinating and interesting little deer, but they do an incredible amount of damage to native woodland. I run cull teams in one of my woods and we shot 117 muntjac last winter out of a wood just under 650 acres, three years of doing it and we are starting to see some natural regeneration. My team members are told to shoot every muntjac buck below 7cm and every doe/follower, I have the 7cm rule as I don’t want them waiting for a big buck, in fairness to them they all get stuck in. February and March are our most productive months numbers wise.
Noppy
Well-Known Member
That's interesting re. Numbers I'm in a small syndicate and we are shooting about 70 muntjac a year out of 700 ish acres of woodland not a solid block of woodland, fields breaking it up. Are you hitting those kinds of numbers every year or seeing a drop ?
Bavarianbrit
Well-Known Member
Do your cull team get paid? Or is this mainly clients that are paying to shoot them? Just asking for a friend. I am amazed that more than 117 can exist on just 650 acres (263 h) my hunt here is 350 h and we shoot a few roe plus boar but no munties in Germany "yet".
The density of muntjac in some areas has to be seen to be believed. A single bramble clump provides territory for a whole family of the little beggars.
NoIDeer
Well-Known Member
In theory muntjac can reach densities above 60 per square kilometre so your 350 h could hold 200+ of the little blighters.
Norfolk is a wash with MJ, you look at some of the youtube videos and they are running around with the client on the sticks and the guide saying no not that on the one to the right.
With that 117 it is 1 every 3 days so shoot a couple then the other younger bucks will be poking around at the scrapes themselves.
I have shot 4 from one field and 36 in the field next in 2 years only going every so often with 3 on 3 trips.
That field is 7 acres do the maths...
We have too many pigeons but no one goes out and shoots them lol
Jono 4
Well-Known Member
Consistently around 100 a year for the last 3 years.
Jono 4
Well-Known Member
I don’t pay them in this woodland, but I do on other ground, I don’t take clients, not my thing, everyone is my guest.
Bavarianbrit
Well-Known Member
Good to hear that, thanks, goes around comes around eh?
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