18 | Foveran team delighted with the result Jordan was placed 2nd in the four year old rising stars. The one of 9044 was placed 3rd in the three year old rising stars. Richard Loader DEER » Foveran Deer Park North Otago deer darling, Foveran Deer Park has just celebrated a successful sale of fifty of its stud stags, scooping the top price of $35,000 followed by $30,000 for the next highest. Foveran’s Manager Barry Gard says while the prices achieved were not as high as some studs, he and his team were delighted with the result given the number on offer. He says following the sale of the $30,000 stag, the new owners were asked if Foveran could retain the antlers measuring 612 inches of antler without burs and spread, for entry in the Rising Stars Antler Competition. “We achieved third place, which was very satisfying. The $35,000 stag went to its new home with antlers on, but he looked bigger to us. We sell everything with the antlers on in the sale, but the biggest problem we’ve got is that the antlers are getting quite wide, so we have trouble moving the stags around the shed where they are displayed for sale. It’s not a bad problem to have, but we’re going to have to change the shed I think because there were some deer we couldn’t put up in the selling room.” Foveran Deer Park is located in the Hakataramea Valley, 55 kilometres inland from Oamaru, and encompasses 2646 hectares. Three generations of the Robertson family have owned the property, and Barry has been part of the Foveran story for 38 years, with a good number of those years as manager. “We have about fifteen hundred recorded Red deer with a fifty/fifty split between hinds and stags, and all with sixth generation pedigrees, though some go back further than that. The main focus of our business is breeding live Foveran Park stud animals, that will be selected to go into our deer sales. We sell stags in the summer and hinds in the winter. We velvet about five hundred stags a year, and this year we sold upwards of a hundred trophy stags.” Barry says not all stags are sold at the annual on-farm sale and those stags end up going out as top-end older trophy animals. “Those stags would usually been velveted by us for three or four years until they are old enough to go into the trophy market as five year olds and upwards. We are finding with the new genetics we can get shootable trophy stags at five years old.” With most trophy hunters coming from Europe or America, when Covid came along and the Are proud supporters & Agronomists for Foveran Deer Park. Hawker Deer DEER VELVET & ANTLER BUYER Graeme Hawker: M: 027 432 3453 E: louisehawker@hotmail.com Proud to be associated with Foveran Deer Park borders shut down, the trophy hunting industry stopped completely for two years and when the borders opened last year it was too late for much of the hunting fraternity to come. “This year there are quite a number of hunters coming but what has also happened is that we have a lot of high scoring stags that have been growing while the hunting has been on hiatus. So there are quite a few of the bigger trophy stags on offer and that has impacted on the price. We are not achieving the premium prices we were prior to Covid, but we are feeling positive about the industry and our mission is to grow bigger and better stags each year. There is always a demand for attractive looking stags, which we produce.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=