Based at Whitfield for two and a half years, a village that is pretty central for his dog catching operations, Scott is employed by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.
He told Stock and Land he uses two dogs of his own to detect where wild dogs have marked their territory. Then he largely uses those detections to determine where he places his rubber jawed foothold traps.
He even caught one of his own dogs but was able to find and release it after a couple of hours. With a week’s recuperation, the dog was able to resume detection duties.
Scott said a major hazard of the job was the number of traps, cameras and dogs that are stolen by bushwalkers and others. Sometimes the thieves are captured by a $300 camera and when that happens with clear pictures, Scott refers the pictures to police.
Asked why dogs were stolen from traps, Scott reminded us that each wild dog scalp attracts a $120 payment from the Victorian government. When he catches a dog, he takes a sample for DNA testing, weighs it, and if it’s a bitch, estimates roughly how many pups it has had.
Scott said he and fellow wild dog experts could only work 3km into Crown land from private property. That meant there was a vast area of forest where many wild dogs were virtually untouched.
He said he and his colleagues were barely keeping a lid on wild dog numbers and the only ones they tackled, were dogs attacking farm animals.
Our Stock and Land speaker on Tuesday 5th July at 10 am will be Warwick Bone. He will talk about permaculture and holistic farming in some depth.
David Palmer