The era of live deer capture had an aura of glamour to it. But the reality for those involved was very different.
The era of live deer capture had an aura of glamour to it, much as ground hunting and aerial venison hunting had previously.
But the reality for those involved was much different. Families lost their fathers. Wives lost their husbands. Some such as pilot Dave Richardson carried lifelong injuries suffered in crashes.
"And I lay there and I thought, 'oh god, I've smashed my bloody machine'. And I thought, 'I'll just lie here for a bit and then I'll get up' and I went to get up. And there's no one at home to get up. I just couldn't move. And I thought, 'oh, god, I've broken my back'."
But the industry itself was about to crash in the most dramatic way when on the 26th of July 1995, then Finance Minister Roger Douglas introduced a standard deer price and a reversal of tax write offs to take effect immediately. The bill had an immediate and catastrophic impact on deer farmers and those holding onto deer while building up a herd for the future. Predictably, the Queen Street farmers vanished overnight and their money with them.
Some heavily indebted deer farms went into bankruptcy. Many people like Harvey Hutton were ruined overnight, losing both land and house. Even today those who were caught out are bitter about the way the legislation was brought in with no consultation or the chance to prepare.
Today deer farming in New Zealand is a $300 million industry, the largest in the world. Some 2,000 farms hold 800,000 deer, all of it built on the back of these pioneers.
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