Roar ready: Busy season underway for taxidermists and wild game butchers

Based in Tarras in Central Otago, taxidermist Oliver Garland mostly receives red stags, fallow bucks, chamois and tahr during the hunting season. Photo / Oliver Garland

By Gianina Schwaneke of RNZ

Taxidermists and butchers are in the middle of their busy season, the roar.

The roar, or rut period, runs from late March through until early May, when red and sika stags will roar to ward off rivals and attract females.

This makes it a popular time for hunters to get out into the bush and nab a prime pair of antlers for their wall.

“Once the reds start roaring, it really, really gets busy,” Oliver Garland of All Over Taxidermy said.

Based in Tarras, Central Otago, and a keen hunter himself, he became a fulltime taxidermist five years ago after getting into it as a hobby.

Garland described it as “sculpture with an unusual medium”.

He mostly has a lot of red stags, fellow bucks, chamois and tahr through his studio.

“The trouble with being a taxidermist is I have to be home during the busy season.

“In terms of what comes in, I had 10 animals in February. I had about 35 come in March, and I’m expecting 120 to 150 in April.”

Garland said mounting a red stag can take over 25 hours, but it can’t be done all at once, which means his turnaround time is usually within a year.

His advice for hunters?

“Get it to me as soon as possible, and if you can’t, get it cold.

“If it’s going to be more than two days in a chiller, it needs to be frozen.

“The other one would be, don’t drag it on the rocks, on the ground.

“It’s real easy to damage hair when it’s being dragged around.

“Skin it in the spot where you killed it, if you possibly can, and then carry it.”

For the non-hunters, Garland said there was a misconception that taxidermy might smell bad and be a bit gross.

But he said it was actually a very clean process. If it smells, the animal’s already ruined.

Jordan Hamilton-Bicknell of Wild Game in Hastings said the business did a lot of homekill as well as venison processing.

“[It’s] very, very hectic. We’ve had a fire at the shop, so we didn’t get back into our processing plant until the 30th of March, which falls on a short week,” he said.

“And every Easter is when 80% of the hunters will do their annual road trip to their family, friends, or into the public land.

“So we just get inundated with stags and hinds and all sorts.”

Oliver Garland of All Over Taxidermy.

Also a keen hunter, he said he had definitely noticed an increase in the ongoing cost-of-living crunch.

“With the huge population of deer around the country and the price of meat, there’s lots of people trying to utilise what they’re catching and harvesting.

“And in turn, they bring it in, and we specialise in turning sort of smelly stags into very good tasty products, which is sort of what everyone’s after.”

Hamilton-Bicknell said they had a minimum of 8kg per batch, it meant that if a hunter brought in a “well-dressed big stag”, they could get up to four or five different options from that animal, including patties, sausages and mince to fill up the freezer.

He said these could be especially good options for red stags, which could “get tough” and are “a little stronger” – his tip for masking this, though, is using plenty of garlic, especially in mince dishes like spaghetti bolognese.

Oliver Garland likens taxidermy to sculpture with an unusual medium. Photo / Oliver Garland

“Regardless of what meat you deliver to a butcher, even if you’re cutting it up at home, go into the hills prepared,” he said.

This meant having a sharp knife to bone meat out, and the appropriate bags to put it in.

Hunters could even take bits of string to be able to hang legs up so they were not boning things out on the ground and getting them covered in contaminants.

“Focus on getting it cooled down straight away.

“The big one is getting the animal cold, so as soon as possible, and looking after that meat.

“All those little details, in turn, help us when it comes in.”

Hamilton-Bicknell expected things would just start to settle down on the deer front as hunters moved into duck shooting season.

– RNZ