Fenced In

"I protected them," said Alan. "When the helicopters came, I waved them off. The local pilots came to respect my boundaries, but elsewhere the conflict escalated."

Indeed. One pilot caught a bullet in his buttock for chasing deer on private land. The choppers began lifting off at night…

Red deer were introduced to New Zealand in the mid-19th century by Britishers who thought the islands needed big game. By the 1930s they had so increased in number as to damage native range. The government established a bounty on them and furnished rifles and ammunition to hunters. These men were a tough breed. They penetrated the dense rainforest on foot, packing carcasses down the river basins--or leaving them in the bush. In the early 1960s they started using helicopters to both find and retrieve deer. Escalating prices for venison, domestically and abroad encouraged aerial shooting. In three decades New Zealand hunters killed 2 million red deer, mostly with iron-sighted .303 SMLEs.

As herds diminished, demand for venison continued to climb. Farmers and hunters got the idea of capturing deer to stock herds that could be held in pastures and managed like cattle. Helicopters made capture possible. Net guns built in farm shops and powered by .303 cartridges were mounted on the belly, then the skid. A "gotcha gun" held by a gunner in the right-hand seat took skin off his knuckles but could be pointed like a shotgun to follow deer dodging through thickets. Malfunctions maimed shooters and even brought down a helicopter or two. However, gear and techniques got better. Nets proved more practical than darting or aerial bulldogging.

The net-capture methods perfected by the bold and enterprising New Zealand helicopter pilots of the 1960s and '70s were later adapted by North American wildlife agencies for transplanting big game.

"Those guys were real cowboys." Alan shook his head. "Some were killed chasing deer in steep places and diving through canopy to net stags in cover." Night runs through mountainous terrain, with the skids a few feet off the deck, qualified as suicidal.

Deer capture got easier over agricultural land, so confrontations between farmers and pilots were inevitable. When venison prices reached $1 per pound in 1973, the disputes were not just over damaged fences and crops trampled by panicked deer. Farmers were attempting to build their own herds. The first licensed New Zealand deer farm began operations in 1970. Soon deer had become an industry--one that would eventually bring $260 million into the nation's coffers annually. Hills once white with sheep turned sorrel. Stags used for breeding also yielded antlers to Asian buyers. Then sport hunters showed up, willing to pay handsomely for a chance at a big stag.

Alan Stewart and his wife, Sue, run Leithen Valley Trophy Hunts. Fifty years ago, when deer in the valley were all wild, Alan remembers spotting thirty-two stags in one group below the homestead. "One of the first releases in the area, in 1913, put deer on the Pomahaka River just over the ridge. Even after the helicopters began killing and capturing deer, we had sixty hinds on open range around the farm." He and Sue, and later their daughters and son, altered their sheep and cattle operation to include deer. At first it was just for meat to satisfy a lucrative venison market. Then they took a sport hunter onto wild land. That was twenty years ago. Now the Stewarts host sixty stag hunters each year. Inside and outside the fences, they've killed some of the biggest red deer in the record books.