Other Game
There’s no recording of this volume, so your phone reads it out, section by section.
Roos, pigs, goats and the rest: how to tell them apart in a spotlight, which ones the law protects, and what New Zealand adds to the list.
Three roos, one licence
Roos are the other half of the weekend. The plan is an esky with deer and roo in it, and the roos come out onto the flats as the light goes, the same as the deer.
Unlike the deer, they're protected. Every kangaroo, wallaroo and wallaby in NSW is a native animal under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016, and outside the commercial industry, shooting one is only legal under a licence to harm issued to the landholder. That licence doesn't just say kangaroos. It names the species and gives a number for each.
So you need to know which one is in front of you before you squeeze, not after. Shoot a species the licence doesn't name and National Parks has to be told within 24 hours. The landholder also keeps a record of every shooter's name and firearms licence number, so it's their name on the line as much as yours.
Eastern grey kangaroo
Macropus giganteus- 1FaceDarker than the body. The rest of the coat is soft grey, paler underneath.
- 2BuildLong and lean on long legs. Males reach about 70 kg, females about 35 kg.
- 3TailOften black at the tip. On the move it hops with its head held high and the tail curved up.
- 4CountryGrass country with woodland or scrub for shelter. Out from dusk to dawn, feeding on grasses and herbs, often in mobs of ten or more.
Common wallaroo
Osphranter robustus- 1NoseA large patch of bare black skin around the nostrils.
- 2ShouldersVery solid shoulders and forearms on a male, and a stance all its own: shoulders back, elbows tucked in, wrists raised.
- 3CoatDark grey on a male. Females are lighter, bluish grey, and less than half his size.
- 4LegsShorter limbs than a grey, on a solid, heavy-set body. Males rarely go over 50 kg.
- 5CountryRock. Wallaroos live along both slopes of the Divide wherever there's rocky ground and water, mostly alone, mostly at night.
Red-necked wallaby
Notamacropus rufogriseus- 1NeckA red-brown wash across the neck and shoulders, over a grizzled grey coat. Hence the name.
- 2FaceA white stripe along the upper lip, and a black muzzle.
- 3PawsBlack paws, and black on the biggest toe.
- 4SizeBody up to about 89 cm, and less than half the weight of a big grey.
And the swamp wallaby
Dark brown above, yellow to orange-brown underneath, a dark face often with a pale stripe. The giveaway is how it moves: it hops with its head and shoulders low and its tail held out flat. Thick forest undergrowth, and more about in daylight than other wallabies.
The code that comes with the licence
Anyone shooting under a NSW licence to harm has to follow the national code of practice for shooting kangaroos and wallabies for non-commercial purposes. In plain terms: a scoped rifle, sighted in on a target before each session. No self-loaders. Nothing from a moving vehicle. The animal standing still and clearly visible, and the rifle aimed at the brain, nowhere else.
You avoid a female with an obvious joey. If you do shoot a female, you check her pouch straight away and deal with any young the way the code sets out. The Law in NSW has the detail, and Ethics has the why.
Q fever
Kangaroos, wallabies and goats can carry it, and feral pigs are suspected. The Australian Immunisation Handbook recommends the Q fever vaccine for people who cull or process kangaroos, after a screening test. If you're going to make a habit of this, talk to your GP. Gloves on regardless.
Lore
The fastest kangaroo on record was a female eastern grey, clocked at 64 km/h.
Roo is also about the leanest red meat there is. A raw kangaroo loin fillet carries under a gram of fat per 100 g, against 1.5 g in lean venison. Under the licence it can go in your esky, but no part of it can be sold, swapped or traded.
The pests
Five animals that came with European settlement and never should have stayed. All five are pests in NSW. On private land none of them needs a game licence, just the landholder's say-so and your firearms licence.
That doesn't make them targets of opportunity. Each one has its own risks to you, its own sign on the ground and its own way of wrecking country. The landholder will usually want every one of them gone, and will tell you which ones matter most on that block.
Never move them
In NSW it's an offence to keep, move or release a live feral pig, fox or rabbit, outside approved pest control or research. Illegal releases are one of the ways pigs keep turning up in new country, which is why the rule exists.
Feral pig
Sus scrofa- Know itDescended from domestic pigs, but built like wild boar: sparse coarse hair, a heavy neck and shoulders tapering to short hindquarters. Black, rust, or black and white spotted. Sows 50–60 kg, boars 80–100 kg. Poor eyes, a very good nose.
- SignGround turned over like a rotary hoe went through it, which is rooting. Wallows and fouled water at dams and soaks. Tracks with two rounded toes and dew claws set wide behind them.
- DangerA boar's tusks, if you walk up on one that isn't dead. And brucellosis: feral pigs in northern NSW can carry it, and NSW Health rates pig hunting the biggest risk for it in the state. Gloves and eye protection to handle or butcher one, steer clear of swollen joints and testicles, leave a sick-looking pig alone, and cook the meat right through. Freezing doesn't kill it.
- DamageThey kill newborn lambs, eat and trample crops, tear up pasture and native ground cover, foul waterholes and spread weeds. Farming alone loses more than $100 million a year to them, and if foot-and-mouth disease ever reached Australia, feral pigs could help spread it through livestock country.
- ControlAerial shooting, baiting, trapping and fencing, with ground shooting on top. Numbers can jump 86% in one good year, so control has to take about 70% of them every year just to stop the growth.
Lore
Pigs have no sweat glands, so they can't take the heat. It's why you find them wallowing, and close to water and shade, on a hot day.
Feral goat
Capra hircus- Know itAny colour, often patched, with a beard. The billies grow long ridged horns that sweep up and back. Highly social, so where you see one there are usually more.
- SignDroppings that are pointed at both ends, where a sheep's are dimpled or rounded. Tracks of two long toes, rounded at the front.
- DangerQ fever. In one Australian study more than half the feral goats tested, 52%, had been exposed to it. Gloves when you're dressing one.
- DamageThey strip shrubs and pasture and compete with stock and native animals. The damage is worst on small islands. Livestock farming loses about $25 million a year to them.
- ControlMustering and trapping at water, then sale. Aerial and ground shooting. Judas goats to find the last mobs in rough country. They're a resource as well as a pest: the commercial harvest is worth about $29 million a year, and a young one eats beautifully.
Lore
A Judas goat is a feral goat fitted with a radio collar and let go. Goats hate being alone, so it finds the nearest mob, and the shooters follow the signal. Then it's left to wander off and find the next lot.
European rabbit
Oryctolagus cuniculus- Know itGrey-brown above, white-grey below, with long ears, long hind legs and a short fluffy tail. Adults weigh 1–2.25 kg.
- SignWarrens in well-drained sandy soil, some of them 3 m deep and 45 m long, and the droppings around them.
- BreedingFrom four months old, five or more litters a year in a good season, up to five young a time, and a pregnancy of 28–30 days. That's the whole problem in one line.
- DamageAustralia's most widespread and destructive vertebrate pest. They graze seedlings to the ground, compete with stock and native animals, and strip the cover that holds soil in place.
- ControlRipping and fumigating warrens, baiting, fencing and shooting, with two deliberately released rabbit viruses, myxomatosis and rabbit haemorrhagic disease, working in the background.
Lore
Thomas Austin let wild rabbits go on his property near Geelong in 1859 so he'd have something to shoot. By 1886 they were in NSW and Queensland, and by 1900 in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. No colonising mammal anywhere has spread faster.
European red fox
Vulpes vulpes- Know itA small dog's frame, 4–8.3 kg. Rusty red with dark legs, big pointed ears and a bushy tail with a white tip.
- SignA daytime hide in an enlarged rabbit burrow, a hollow log or thick scrub, and territory edges marked with urine and droppings. Most active at night.
- DangerHydatid tapeworm. Foxes carry it, so gloves to handle a fox or its droppings, and wash your hands after.
- DamageThey take lambs, and native mammals in the 350 g to 5.5 kg range, the size that has suffered worst since Europeans arrived. Fox predation is a listed key threatening process under NSW and Commonwealth law.
- Control1080 baiting, den fumigation, trapping, and shooting, often at night with a spotlight.
Lore
Foxes were let go in Australia from the 1850s, for sport, and the releases that took were in southern Victoria in the early 1870s. They then followed the rabbit, their main prey, right across the country, and reached Western Australia by 1915.
Feral cat
Felis catus- Know itThe same species as a pet, living, hunting and breeding wild. 2–8 kg. Tabby, black, ginger or patched. In the light, a long low body and a long thin tail.
- SignThey usually bury their droppings, but where there are rabbits they often leave them on top of the warren.
- DangerToxoplasmosis, which cats spread, and which is a serious risk to an unborn baby. Gloves.
- DamageA feral cat in the bush kills around 791 animals a year. Across Australia, cats kill about 3.2 million mammals, 1.2 million birds and 1.9 million reptiles every day, and they were a primary cause in more than two-thirds of Australia's mammal extinctions.
- ControlBaiting, trapping and shooting, and predator-proof fences around refuges for threatened animals.
Lore
Feral cats barely need to drink. They get almost all their water from what they kill.
Hoof prints are the sign you'll find most, along creek banks and in the soft ground round a dam. Four animals leave two-toed prints that look alike at a glance: deer, pigs, goats and the landholder's sheep. A field guide written for NSW National Parks gives the differences.
Tap a print. A deer's is usually the biggest of the four.
Deer
Two long, pointed toes with a slight gap between them at the back. In soft ground the dew claws print too, close together just behind. Usually bigger than the other three.
Pig
Two rounded toes, often with scuff marks. When the dew claws show, they're set well apart, out to each side behind the print, not tucked in close like a deer's.
Goat
Two long toes, rounded at the front end where a deer's are pointed. Check the droppings to be sure: a goat's are pointed at both ends.
Sheep
Two long toes with pointed tips, like a deer, but with little or no gap between them. It's the landholder's, so it's the one print you never follow with a rifle.
Who's in the light
Off the back of a ute, the first thing you see is eyes. Two lights in the grass, sometimes a dozen. Eyes are not an identification. Cattle, sheep, dogs and horses all shine back, and so does a reflector on a gate.
The rule never changes: you only shoot an animal you've identified, the whole animal, standing clear, with nothing behind it you're not sure of. The NSW hunting code of practice says exactly that, and the kangaroo code says the animal must be standing and clearly visible. If the spotter can't tell you what it is, it isn't anything yet.
What gives an animal away in the light is the same short list every time: how it moves, how big it is, what its tail does, and what it carries on its head. Run the list below on a mystery animal. Then tap it to see who it was.
Eyes are never enough
A pair of eyes at 150 m could be a fox, a calf or a dog the landholder has had for twelve years. Get the light on the body, wait for it to move or turn, and if it won't, let it go.
Nothing fits that combination. Clear one of your answers.
Lore
The rabbit is the odd one out on the hopping side. Run the list with Hops and Under 10 kg and it's the only animal left, which is why a rabbit bolting across the light can look like a tiny roo for half a second.
Five more deer
Fallow are the deer of Silent Grove, and The Animal covers them properly. They're one of six species running wild in Australia. The other five are red deer, sambar, rusa, chital and hog deer, and three of them are close to this country now.
The regional pest plan for the Northern Tablelands says fallow are the most widespread deer here, with red, rusa and their hybrids scattered through the eastern side. Chital are becoming established along the Queensland border, from Queensland herds. Sambar are on the watch list but not established.
Chital matter for another reason. Their calves are born in two windows, April to May and September to November, so a chital hind in October may well have a young calf hidden nearby. More on that in Ethics.
Fig. 6Bars run to the top of each range.
Red deer
Cervus elaphus- Antlers
- Round in section and multi-tined, six to eight tines common. No palm.
- Look
- Reddish in summer, grey-brown in winter, a lighter rump patch and a small tail you barely notice.
- Here
- Scattered through the east of the tablelands.
Sambar
Rusa unicolor- Antlers
- Heavy, three tines a side.
- Look
- The biggest deer in Australia. Uniform dark brown, big round ears, and a bushy tail that goes up with the rump hair flared when it's alarmed.
- Here
- On the watch list for this region, not established. Elsewhere in NSW, tall wet forest.
Rusa
Rusa timorensis- Antlers
- Three tines, lyre-shaped, the rear tine of the top fork the longer one.
- Look
- Coarse coat, reddish-brown in summer and greyer in winter. Stags are often maned.
- Here
- With the red deer in the east, and on parts of the coast.
Chital
Axis axis- Antlers
- Slender, usually three tines.
- Look
- Reddish-brown with white spots all year, a striking white throat patch, a long tail and a high-pitched alarm call. Spotted like a fallow, but no palm.
- Here
- Becoming established along the Queensland border.
Hog deer
Axis porcinus- Antlers
- Short, 30–35 cm, usually three tines.
- Look
- The smallest. Yellow to red-brown, sometimes faint spots in summer, the tail white underneath and at the tip.
- Here
- Listed in NSW's deer codes but not widespread in the state.
Lore
Eighteen kinds of deer have been let go in Australia. Six took, and all six are still here. Most came in the 1860s and 1870s, when acclimatisation societies were shipping in anything they thought the colonies were missing.
Ducks and quail
Short version: not on this trip. Recreational duck shooting has been banned in NSW since 1995, when Bob Carr shut it down in his first months as premier.
What's left is the Native Game Bird Management Program, which is crop protection, not sport. A farmer whose crops are being hit holds an owner or occupier licence for one year, with a quota for each species. A hunter can shoot on that farm under that quota, but only with a NSW game hunting licence endorsed for native game birds, which means first passing the Waterfowl Identification Test. No shooting from vehicles, boats or aircraft. In 2023–24 the scheme took 29,195 ducks, with 3,104 endorsed hunters, mostly on rice farms.
Quail are stranger still. Brown and stubble quail are on the NSW list of native game birds, but there's no quota for them, so they can't be hunted at all. Introduced birds are a different list again: pheasant, California and bobwhite quail, chukar partridge, peafowl, guinea fowl, turkey and spotted dove all need a game licence, even on private land.
| State | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | No season | Banned for recreation since 1995. Ducks only under the crop-protection scheme above. |
| Queensland | No season | Recreational duck hunting banned. |
| Western Australia | No season | Recreational duck hunting banned. |
| Victoria | Open | 2026 season ran from 8 am on 18 March to 30 minutes after sunset on 8 June, with a daily bag of nine. |
| South Australia | Open | 2026 season ran from sunrise on 21 March to sunset on 28 June, by permit. |
| Northern Territory | Open | Magpie geese and waterfowl, 5 September 2026 to 3 January 2027, by permit. |
Lore
Field & Game Australia, the duck hunters' association, was founded in Victoria in 1958 after warnings that the Pacific black duck could disappear. Hunters organised, in other words, because they were worried about running out of ducks.
Across the ditch
New Zealand had no land mammals except bats before people arrived, so everything you'll hunt there was brought in. What changes across the ditch is the law's view of it. In New Zealand law deer, tahr, chamois and wild pigs are game animals, valued for hunting and managed with hunters at the table through the Game Animal Council. Wallabies and possums, which are protected natives at home, are pests there.
The tahr and chamois you're going for have books of their own. Here's the rest of the list. Tap a name to see where it lives.
Red deer
The most widespread deer in New Zealand, in forest and tussock from the Kaimai Range to Stewart Island. The gaps are Northland, much of Taranaki, the Coromandel and Banks Peninsula. Stags weigh 95–215 kg, nearly twice an Australian fallow buck, and roar from late March through April.
Sika
The Kaimanawa and Kaweka forest parks in the central North Island. It's the only wild sika herd in the Southern Hemisphere, and since July 2026 a herd of special interest, managed by the Game Animal Council with the Sika Foundation. Both sexes give a shrill whistle when alarmed, and in the rut the stags call like a donkey's hee-haw.
Wapiti
Fiordland. In March 1905, 18 wapiti were landed at the head of George Sound, some of them a gift from US President Theodore Roosevelt, and the herd is still there. Since July 2026 it's a herd of special interest, with the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation doing the work: managing the herd, keeping up huts and tracks, and running predator control in the national park.
Fallow
Among the first deer to take in New Zealand, now in scattered herds: the Blue Mountains in Otago, where blocks are balloted monthly, the Greenstone and Caples near Lake Wakatipu, Woodhill Forest north of Auckland, the Whanganui, forests near Tauranga, and around Mount Arthur near Nelson. Their rut runs later than the reds'.
Whitetail
The only whitetail herds in the Southern Hemisphere, both from a 1905 release. One lives around Glenorchy at the head of Lake Wakatipu, in the lower Rees and Dart valleys. The other keeps to the coastal forest of Stewart Island. Their rut runs from mid-April into early June, well after the reds'.
Wallabies
Five species came over from Australia in the late 1800s. Three are now pests: Bennett's, our red-necked wallaby, in South Canterbury around the Hunters Hills near Waimate and spreading, and dama and parma wallabies around the Rotorua lakes. They eat the seedlings the bush needs to regenerate. They're an unwanted organism under the Biosecurity Act 1993, so it's illegal to keep or move a live one, and the Tipu Mātoro national programme is working to get rid of them. There's no season: they can be hunted all year.
Wild pigs
Still called Captain Cookers, after the pigs James Cook let go in the 1770s. They were well established by the 1840s and are still plentiful in the remoter bush of both islands. In law they're game animals, the same as deer, tahr and chamois, and DOC's open hunting permits cover them on public conservation land.
Wild goats
James Cook let goats go in the Marlborough Sounds in 1773, and settlers brought plenty more. There are several hundred thousand now, on about 14% of the country, from sea level to the tops. Too patchy to shade on a map this size. They strip everything in reach, seedlings, saplings and bark, and stop forest regenerating. Not game animals in law: DOC hunts them as pests from the air and on the ground, and you can shoot them under the same open permit as deer and pigs.
Possums
Brushtail possums, brought from Australia in 1837 for a fur trade, with another release in Southland in 1858. Now widespread across most of the country, mostly in forest. They eat leaves, buds, flowers, fruit and nectar, take native birds and their eggs, and spread bovine tuberculosis to dairy and deer herds. Possums are one of the targets of Predator Free 2050. At home the same animal is a protected native.
Canada geese
Game birds until 9 June 2011, when they were moved to the unprotected schedule of the Wildlife Act 1953. Since then any authorised hunter can shoot them at any time of year without a game licence. On conservation land you still need DOC's small game permit.
Game animal is a legal term
New Zealand's Game Animal Council Act 2013 defines a game animal as any deer, chamois or tahr, and any pig living wild. Goats, wallabies and possums are left out on purpose. A herd of special interest is the next step up: a herd managed for hunting in a set area. The first two were designated in July 2026, the Fiordland wapiti and the central North Island sika.
Lore
The brushtail possum is a protected native in Australia and public enemy number one in New Zealand. Same animal, same species, opposite sides of the law, about three hours' flying apart.