PETER Hughes has shot and trapped 56 wild dogs on his enormous swathe of grazing country north of Wanaaring on the Queensland/NSW border since the start of summer.
He is pictured with some of the skins, which make an impressive sight hung along one side of an old tennis court on his home property, “Thurlow Downs”, before he takes them into the Darling Livestock Health and Pest Authority.
But there is no knowing how much higher the true figure of dogs killed on his properties is, considering he also puts out a large number of 1080 baits on the 438,030 hectares of stations he owns in in the far western reaches of the State.
One station, the 270,330ha “Delalah Downs”, is the largest privately-owned landholding in NSW and runs along the wild dog fence between the Queensland/NSW border.
While 56 scalps in one summer might seem like an extraordinary number to some readers of The Land, Mr Hughes said it was not the most he had taken.
He bought “Delalah Downs” in 1990 and in the year following trapped and killed more than 200 wild dogs.
Mr Hughes runs about 2500 head of Santa Gertrudis and Brahman cattle and will later this month begin shearing about 25,000 Merino ewes across his five properties.
While he said it was difficult to know if the wild dogs were worsening or improving, it was “a problem, something we’ve got to be on to all the time”.
“We try to keep control of them before they get into our sheep country,” Mr Hughes said.
“If we never had the border fence there, the Queensland border, I don’t say we wouldn’t be able to run sheep but... our dog losses would be that much bigger.
“(The wild dog fence) makes a difference to us. With the border fence and the baiting you can keep it under control.”
- More on wild dog issues in next week’s The Land.
- Like The Land on Facebook