When Southern Rural Life called Drew last week, he was writing a letter to Wallis’ wife Prue, Lady Wallis.
“I knew Tim well.”
An enduring memory of Wallis was when the Invermay deer research project got a permit to capture a dozen wapati [elk] from Fiordland in 1978.
“I wanted to have a look at wapiti-type animals because there were people arguing they were different species of animal from red deer and wouldn’t interbreed, and I didn’t think that was the case.”
From a helicopter, Wallis inspected about 600 wapiti before he captured the best to create a research herd at Invermay.
Wallis was a “fabulous guy to work with”.
“Tim was a wonderful guy. He was such a personable guy.”
Deer were once considered noxious pests, and Wallis had helped transform the pest into a high-value product by capturing live animals for farming, he said.
Former Invermay research scientist and deer farmer Tony Pearse, of Dunedin, said Wallis “always did things with panache and scale”.
He recalled Sir Tim’s son, Toby, calling him on the morning of a celebration of 50 years of deer science at the Invermay Agricultural Centre in Mosgiel last year.
“Toby rang me and said, ‘According to Mum, Tim has woken up with that glint in his eye and wants to go to Invermay — can you have a look around for somewhere for a helicopter to land?’”
Wallis arrived in a helicopter, which “blew all the cherry blossom off the trees”.
He was “sharp as a tack” at the celebration.
“It was real thrill.”
From his travels, Wallis discovered how much velvet elk produce, and he started importing live Canadian elk to New Zealand.
Some of that herd was gifted to Invermay from the Canadian government.
Pearse was working as a technician for the deer research project from 1983.
“Some of those early wapiti had some pretty gnarly temperament problems.”
Parallel importing between the countries began when Wallis flew 1000 red deer for farming in the United States and Canada.
Pearse worked for Wallis for a year in North America in the late 1980s.
That time was the most interesting in his deer farming career, Pearse said.
In the job, Wallis would fly him to farms across North America.
“You never knew what you would being doing each day. Tim was exciting to be around, but he was very practical and he was always thinking.”
An enduring memory was Wallis inventing a trap to capture live deer, which was a giant net that closed automatically when a large animal entered it.
Never one to do things by half, Wallis bought enough equipment to build 1000 traps.
“That was the magic of Tim.”
The trap was proven to work at Invermay and was exported to many countries, including Canada, Japan and Thailand.
Other countries to use the trapping technology were the United Arab Emirates, to capture oryx, and Hawaii, to catch chital deer.
“It was an interesting time.”
Wallis was the first president of the Elk and Wapiti Society of New Zealand.
He was knighted in 1994 — after initially declining — for his services to the deer industry and the founding of the Warbirds over Wānaka airshow.
Two of Wallis’ four sons, Matt and Nick, died in helicopter crashes.
He is survived by Lady Wallis and sons Jonathan and Toby.
