A new podcast explores an era before workplace health and safety, when the battle against the exploding population of invasive red deer became a 'wild west' industry where lives were lost and fortunes made. 

Deer Wars is the first podcast by local documentary filmmaker Paul Roy, who has also made two television documentaries about the topic.

Its first episode will be released tomorrow (Friday October 20) with new episodes every Wednesday and Friday. 

Red deer are still culled in New Zealand but the industry is now “totally regulated,” Paul said.

It’s a world away from what Paul said was “like New Zealand’s old wild west” when it was dangerous, lucrative and often fatal.

The people involved faced challenges from isolation, food shortages, and a lack of huts, bridges or communications during the ground culling era, and the danger only intensified when efforts to shoot them from the air began.

“Tonnes of people were killed,” he said. “Hundreds, if not thousands, were injured.”

Red deer quickly grew to become a national issue but they had their start nearby.

“The problem started because the first deer were released in Otago, near the Lindis Pass,” Paul said. “The whole deer problem spread from here in the mid 1800s.”

The Deer Wars story includes many locals who were involved in the industry, including Sir Tim Wallis, who died on Tuesday (October 17).

Paul said Tim did his first ever shoot using a helicopter in the McGills Creek of the Matukituki Valley “and he was a major player in the industry for decades,” Paul said. 

Over the past 15 years Paul has interviewed 140 people who witnessed the rise and fall of the deer culling industry between the 1930s and 1980s.

Paul told the Wānaka App he wanted to make the podcast to create a permanent record of the stories of those involved.

“Once these people are gone in the future, people will look back at this stuff and ask ‘did it really happen?’”

Listen to the nine-part Deer Wars at the Radio New Zealand website here or on your preferred podcasting platform from tomorrow (Friday October 20).

It will also be aired at 7am on Sundays on RNZ Radio. 

PHOTO: Supplied