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Victorian Hunters Were Estimated to Have Taken 118,400 Sambar in 2025

Male sambar deer in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand
Conservation · Management

Recreational hunters in Victoria, Australia, were estimated to have harvested 118,400 sambar (Rusa unicolor) during 2025, according to the state’s annual deer-harvest survey released in May 2026. Sambar are introduced in Australia and accounted for about three quarters of Victoria’s estimated recreational deer harvest of 158,500 animals.

The figure is a survey estimate rather than a count of registered carcasses. Each month, a random sample of licensed deer hunters was contacted by telephone and asked about hunting during the previous month. Researchers used the proportion who had hunted and the average number of deer reported by active hunters to scale the responses to the full population of licensed deer hunters. Across the survey programme, about 4,700 hunters contributed interviews.

Victoria had 51,374 licence holders endorsed to hunt deer at the end of 2025, and about 55% were estimated to have hunted during the year. Active hunters reported an average of 5.6 deer harvested over about 11 hunting days. Among sambar reported in the survey, 54% were female and 46% male, but the difference was not statistically clear; the data therefore did not support a distinct sex bias in the recreational sambar harvest.

The technical report cautions that harvest estimates can be affected by memory and by over- or under-reporting, although monthly interviews were used to reduce recall problems and the survey had a very high response rate. The estimate also covers recreational harvest by licensed hunters only: deer removed through commercial culling or damage-mitigation programmes were not included. The 118,400 figure should therefore be read as an approximate estimate of recreational hunting take, not the total number of sambar removed in Victoria and not an estimate of the state’s sambar population.

Sources and image credit

  1. Moloney, P. D., & Flesch, J. S. (2026). Estimates of the 2025 deer harvest in Victoria: Results from surveys of Victorian Game Licence holders in 2025. Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. Unpublished report for the Game Management Authority.Primary 2026 technical report released publicly by the Game Management Authority on 26 May 2026. It estimated a total 2025 recreational deer harvest of 158,500 in Victoria, including 118,400 Sambar Deer. Reported sex data were 54% female for Sambar Deer. The report gives 51,374 Game Licence holders endorsed to hunt deer at the end of 2025.
  2. Game Management Authority. (2026, May 26). Almost 160,000 deer harvested by recreational hunters in 2025.Official release confirming the public release date and summarising the survey results, including the 118,400 Sambar Deer estimate and approximately 4,700 participating hunters.

Image: Jan Ebr / iNaturalist / Wikimedia Commons — male sambar (Rusa unicolor) in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand, photographed 28 October 2014; representative species image, not an animal from Victoria’s introduced population · CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ · Source

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