A Life On The Wild Side

The Age

Tuesday March 29, 2005

Melissa Marino

Victoria's hills and national parks are alive with feral animals. Pigs, goats, foxes, rabbits, cats - you name them, they're out there. Trying to combat them are people such as Jack Mustard, a legend among the dog trappers of East Gippsland. Melissa Marino tracks him down.

IT TOOK Jack Mustard three months and a roll of toilet paper to finally trap the wiliest wild dog he ever encountered. "It killed 305 sheep and he'd come in three times a fortnight," says Mustard, as if reciting an old bush ballad. "He would never kill one outright, he'd just grab big hunks out of 'em."

Again and again the dog avoided 37 traps Mustard had set along the 34-kilometre track from its den to the farm, in the state's north-east. And then, one day, while Mustard was having a cup of tea, looking at the dog's tracks, going backwards and forwards, it came to him. "I got a length of toilet paper and I hung it up on a bush and he went past there, looking up at that paper," he says. "Took his mind off the ground and he walked straight into it (a trap) and I got him."

Now 78, Jack Mustard - "Mustard Gas" to select friends - smacks his hands together in satisfaction at the memory, eyes alight behind thick old glasses. The dog must have been special, for Mustard is a legend of his time, known throughout Victoria's north-east as the "doyen" of dog trappers.

No one caught more dogs than Mustard, at least not in his day. They say his haul of 700 dogs in 10 years "and three days" as a government trapper two decades ago has never been beaten.

Mustard has a lot of trade secrets but the key, he says, is to put yourself in the dog's shoes."

You've got to think stupid, like they are," he says.

Stupid or not, wild dogs - largely dingo-domestic hybrids, or "mongrel things" as Mustard calls them - are a real and serious threat in Gippsland and the north-east, menacing and killing native animals and livestock. And Mustard says they don't just kill for food."

When they kill for the fun of it, well it's not very bloody funny at all," he says.

Mustard hosted a rare reunion of dog trappers last week at his Bonang property, seven hours from Melbourne, down winding unmade roads amid oldgrowth forest at the edge of the high country. Frontier country, where the wild dogs are.

Most of the doggers gathered around the table have officially retired, but they are all concerned that the know-how and bush skills required to be a good dogger are in danger of dying out.

Wild dogs, they say, are increasing in number - part of the growing problem of feral animals in the Australian bush, from rabbits and cats to foxes, pigs and goats. Even camels.

It is a problem that is spawning unprecedented action.

It has prompted the State Government to allow sporting shooters into national parks to help control numbers. A Federal Government inquiry into the feral plague is also under way.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment describes the problem as a major threat to agriculture and the integrity of Australian native plants and animals as well as World Heritage areas.

Rabbits are still considered the most serious vertebrate pest in Victoria, causing major environmental damage, threatening native flora and eating the food of native animals. But some of the country's most endangered species, including eastern barred bandicoots and long-footed potoroos, are also threatened by cats and foxes.

Goats are starving native animals of their food sources, deer are polluting water and pigs are ripping up soil with their snouts. Feral animals also pass diseases on to native animals and, in the case of pigs, humans are susceptible.

Feral animals are a problem estimated to cost the country more than $667 million each year. But it's a cost that can't just be counted in dollar terms.

Farmer Rob Belcher, who lives near Mustard at Bonang, knows the feeling too well of watching on as livestock slowly get picked off by wild dogs. "There's actually nothing worse than having a dog in your sheep," he says. "I've had the experience of having sheep night after night being killed ... it's mental agony because as a farmer you can't stop them."

It's well-trained doggers, dedicated to trapping, who can stop them, says Belcher."

They learn how to trap," he says. "They also learn how to trap the animal they want, not the one they shouldn't get ... you take the people that have those skills and give them a vocation ? you need dog trappers, well-resourced and able to practise their trade without all the bureaucratic hindrances." IT WAS bureaucracy that ended Mustard's offi- cial career as a trapper. In 1982 he told the then department of Crown lands and survey to "stick it" after a weekly travel limit was placed on his vehicle. Today, under the direction of the Department of Sustainability and Environment, no such restrictions apply.

Spokesman Rob Clancy says the department's 24 doggers can go wherever they are needed on public land, in national parks and state forests, to set their traps.

And it seems they are doing the job. In 2004 department trappers caught and killed 1489 wild dogs, up by more than 300 on the year before and almost a third more than in 2001, when there were six fewer doggers. The traps are checked regularly and dogs caught in them are shot by the doggers.

At an average haul of 62 dogs per trapper last year, they are nudging Mustard's record.

But Clancy says the department does not measure their success just by the number of carcasses. Control programs are also important and priorities might be fencing or protecting livestock, he says.

And this is where the old doggers disagree. They say that although the Government has increased dogger numbers, there are still not enough of them and they are stretched too thin.

They say there should be a separate workforce to concentrate on fencing and other controls and that doggers should focus on trapping dogs.

Doggers such as Mustard, who "lived out of the bush" and caught his first dog when he was 11, have nothing but praise for today's working doggers (who are in the job for an average of 16.3 years). They say they are willing to help train another generation in the old bush skills and pass on their knowledge before it is lost.

These doggers, once fiercely competitive, are now willing to give up their secrets.

To "make every trap a winner", says Mustard, attention to detail is important from the start and preparation can take months. Traps must be camou- flaged and covered with leaves, level with the ground to look as natural as possible. Before doing anything doggers need to rub their hands and boots with eucalyptus so "you smell like the bush".

A stick should be placed in front of the trap, so that the dog steps over it and into the trap.

But, Mustard says, a dog will know if the stick wasn't there the last time it went past. To trap a dog, you have to be prepared. The dog's tracks have to be checked and sticks set in place at least six months before the traps are put in.

Bait, he says, can be anything at all, but it has to vary, because once a dog sees a trap that's been set off, it won't go near that smell again.

Mustard has used everything from baby powder, to old car tyres, to dog's urine and animal meat in traps.

After a fire, he would use roasted wallaby, because that's what the dog would be expecting to find.

Like a tracker, Mustard says looking for scratch marks and footprints is also important.

You should never set up a trap where a dog has been scratching because that is already his territory, he says. Traps are best set about 10 metres from where the dog has been scratching, and this is the time to use urine as bait."

After he scratches and cocks his leg he's all happy and trotting off and he gets over and smells another dog and he's got to stickybeak and you catch him," he says. "And that's how you catch most of `em."

Rob Grant, a farmer near Bairnsdale, has been using Mustard's methods for decades and in the past two years he has caught 55 dogs on his property. With statistics like that he's challenging Mustard's record, but it's not one he wants to break. Grant would rather there be no dogs to trap. He's seen dozens of sheep, a birthing cow, emus and two of his own dogs killed by wild dogs.

But Mustard fears the worst is still to come. He's worried about what new breeds of wild dog might be capable of, particularly those mated with bigger breeds of hunting dogs. "All these deerhounds and that sort of thing - they're the ones that are going to be the problem in the future," he says.

And as the wild dogs move closer to urban areas, Mustard says, it's only a matter of time before a person falls victim. "What's going to happen in the future (is that) some of these bush walkers and campers are going to be attacked by these things," he says. "You can see that coming. What's going to happen then?"

GOING FERAL - Victoria's pest problems

Rabbits

WHERE: Statewide, but most susceptible areas are in the north.

DAMAGE BILL *: $113.1 million

WHAT THEY DO: Cause major economic and environmental damage. Compete with native animals for food, can prevent regeneration of native plants after fire, disturb soil, promote weeds and cause severe erosion and stream sedimentation by digging burrows.

Cats

WHERE: Estimate of 300,000 feral cats statewide

DAMAGE BILL: $146 million

WHAT THEY DO: Kill native animals, including endangered and vulnerable animals such as the eastern barred bandicoot, freckled duck and bent-wing bat. Transmit diseases to native animals and compete with native predators for food.

Camels

WHERE: Wyperfeld National Park in the Mallee. (Domestic animals that trespass from private land.) DAMAGE BILL: $200,000

WHAT THEY DO: Eat native vegetation, prevent regeneration of woody species, cause loss of perennial species from shrub and ground layers.

Foxes

WHERE: Statewide

DAMAGE BILL: $227.5 million

WHAT THEY DO: Major threat to the survival of native animals, particularly small to medium-sized mammals and threatened species, including the long-footed potoroo, brush-tailed rock wallaby, mallee fowl and broad-shelled tortoise.

Compete with the quoll for food. Kill livestock.

Wild dogs

WHERE: Alpine areas of Gippsland, north-eastern Victoria and the western Mallee.

DAMAGE BILL: $66.3 million

WHAT THEY DO: Kill native animals including wallabies and wombats as well as livestock, and spread disease. Cause major losses to farmers and graziers.

Goats

WHERE: Statewide, but particularly along the Murray River between Robinvale and Mildura, the eastern ranges and Grampians, the Mallee and Murray Sunset and Hattah- Kulkyne national parks DAMAGE BILL: $7.7 million

WHAT THEY DO: Significant competitors for food and habitat with native animals, particularly rock wallabies.

Threaten agriculture through land degradation. Transmit disease.

Pigs

WHERE: Along the Murray River, Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, alpine regions linked to Kosciuszko National Park, along the NSW border on the eastern slopes of the Great Dividing Range, northern third of the Alpine National Park, Coopracambra National Park and adjacent state forest.

DAMAGE BILL: $106.5 million

WHAT THEY DO: Significant risk of transmitting diseases that can affect humans as well as animals. Damage soil structure in their search for food, which may dramatically affect a range of important biophysical processes such as water retention and nutrient cycling.

Deer

WHERE: Eastern highlands, west of the Snowy River, Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, Mount Cole and Mount Langi Ghiran, French Island, the Otways, Central Highlands, the Grampians, Upper Yarra,Wilsons Promontory and coastal areas between the Tarwin River and Lakes Entrance.

DAMAGE BILL: Unknown

WHAT THEY DO: Compete for food with native animals, can potentially alter the structure and composition of native vegetation through grazing, damage or kill trees with antlers, reduce water quality by wallowing, disperse weeds, alter nutrient dynamics with excretion, transfer disease.

Damage bill for all animals is Australia-wide figure from the Pest Animal Control Co-operative Research Centre (CRC). Other information from the Department of Sustainability and Environment and the CRC.

© 2005 The Age

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