Start with what helps. Every deer in Victoria is classified as wildlife, and six species are considered game, but a separate order declares deer unprotected on private property. You may destroy deer damaging your property, crops or livestock at any time of year, with no game licence and no permit. All that's required is a firearms licence. Spotlights are allowed on your own land, anyone acting for you just needs your written permission, and you keep the meat. Hog deer are the exception.
So the practical reality is better than most landholders assume. The legal situation, however, is odd. Rabbits and foxes are declared pests, obliging every landholder to control them and providing a funding stream for the task. Deer have no such declaration. Every other mainland state has made one. Victoria has not, so there's no duty for landholders, no basis for coordinated action across boundaries, and no funding. Peter Jacobs of the Victorian Deer Control Community Network put it plainly: landholders receive no government support, funding or advice for control.
The cost is only counted where there's a receipt. Feral deer cost Australia $91.3 million in 2021, $69.1 million of that to agriculture. One projection put the cost to Victoria alone at $1.5 to $2.2 billion over thirty years if numbers aren't brought down. Neither figure includes an understorey browsed out over twenty years, a pugged creek crossing or a failed direct-seeding line. The authors of the Victorian projection said the biodiversity cost would likely be enormous and couldn't be priced. What's left out is the very part Landcare exists to protect.
In October 2025, the Victorian Government responded to the independent review of the Wildlife Act. The review recommended declaring all deer a pest animal. The government marked the recommendation "not supported", largely due to hunting interests: the Australian Deer Association argued that losing game status would cost 50,000 recreational hunters their access to public land and the Game Management Authority most of its revenue. That argument prevailed. The Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill 2026, still before Parliament, merges the authority into a new body and leaves the status of deer unchanged.
The frustration is statewide. At the Landcare Forum in Pakenham, the deer session attracted the largest crowd, and Johannes Wenzel of the Victorian Deer Control Community Network described the same trend across every catchment: numbers rising, landholders left to manage deer alone. The one group that has found a way forward is at Cape Liptrap in South Gippsland, where Jillian Staton's neighbours formed the Cape Liptrap Community Deer Control Group. Every landholder signs a permission form, a map shows whose gates are open, commercial harvesters are paid, and a communications plan is published. None of this required a change of law. Nearly all of it could be adapted to Sunday Creek or Dabyminga, and the South Gippsland network has offered to share their paperwork. The one line they don't cross, and nor would we, is vetting or placing hunters on other people's land.
Our own representatives have said little. Annabelle Cleeland, Member for Euroa, has not raised deer in the Victorian Parliament. Sam Birrell, Member for Nicholls, has not raised them in Canberra. Of the five Northern Victoria members in the upper house, Gaelle Broad has come closest, asking the Minister for Agriculture on 17 June what more would be done about weeds and pests, deer among them, on Crown land. Senior Nationals argue in Parliament that deer are a serious pest and that more recreational hunting is the answer. Expect to hear that argument.
There is no inquiry, consultation or petition open, so a letter to your member is the available avenue. A letter won't change the law on its own, but it puts a named constituent, with an address in the electorate and a paddock of evidence, on the record against a position the member hasn't yet had to defend locally. Enough letters make the position harder to hold.
Write to Annabelle Cleeland, and to Gaelle Broad and Wendy Lovell in the upper house. For the National Feral Deer Action Plan, write to Sam Birrell. Keep it short and personal: where you farm, for how long, and what deer have done on your property: the trail camera count, lost seedlings, damaged fences, creek crossings. Ask for three things: declare deer an established pest animal, remove game status so control is not tied to hunting seasons, and fund control across property boundaries, because deer roam thousands of hectares and cannot be managed one paddock at a time. Ask for the member's position in writing. Send it before the election on Saturday 28 November. If enough members want to go further, an e-petition can be lodged with the Legislative Assembly and I will draft it.
