ANOTHER three years of devastating wild dog attacks have passed since the Victorian Government raised farmers' hopes by announcing plans for an aerial baiting trial.

As farmers waited for the trial to conclude in the hope it would convince the Government to authorise aerial baiting, wild dogs continued to spill out of the hills of East Gippsland and North East Victoria and exact an ever-increasing toll on defenceless stock.

Now, after two failed attempts at killing dogs with baits dropped from the air, the Government has shelved the trial until similar research in NSW is completed in about two years' time.

The Victorian trial appears to have been doomed from the start because new regulations from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority restrict the number of baits that can be laid to just 10 a kilometre - a quarter of what was previously allowed.

As a result, not only will farmers have to wait two years before the Victorian research resumes, they then face a potentially even longer delay for it to be completed.

And even then there is no guarantee the trial will provide any meaningful results or that, even if it does, the Government will use it to give the green light to an ongoing aerial baiting program.

In the meantime, weary farmers who have borne the brunt of rising wild dog numbers will have to continue doing as best they can to minimise the damage.

For many it will feel like an increasingly uphill battle in the absence of the only really effective tool to combat the problem - dropping baits from the air.

Ask sheep farmers in Victoria's Tallangatta Valley what it's like going around finding body parts on an almost daily basis or watching a lamb with its legs torn off still trying to walk, and you'll understand why they feel betrayed and forgotten.

The Government has said repeatedly aerial baiting is not the silver bullet to curing the state's wild dog curse.

But it has been unable to demonstrate that other control methods are making enough of a difference to combating wild dogs on public land.

While the Government remains comfortable in delaying any decision on aerial baiting, Victorian farmers will continue wondering how many more dead or mutilated stock they will wake up to in the morning.