Thread: Discussion on NZ Hunting moving forward - NZGuns

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

Good article, I like the way you think.

To my mind there is a major contradiction between hunters and ecologists. The hunter has a vested interest in maintaining the animal populations, and is focused on sustainable meat collection. The ecologist/greenie is focused on sustainable biodiversity/forest health, and has a vested interest in removing feral 'pest' species. Finding common ground can be very challenging, but is essential to avoid the green rain future.

So the obvious solution would appear to be to maintain pest populations at a level suited to allow healthy forest biodiversity. Our member Whanahuia has an extremely good model for how this might look on private land, and his model might be adaptable more widely. To my mind the immediate issue will be to establish a system whereby hunting pressure is maintained to an adequate level in remote areas, where weekend hunters quite rightly may not want to travel to, and carry out meat for a long distance. I like your idea of guided hunting tourism focused into the most remote parts of NZ specifically to address this issue, and give an extremely good 'wilderness' experience to the tourist at the same time. Getting international tourists to pay us to do our pest control work for us, and pay our guides, transport, accomodation, maybe even butcher and chef as well while keeping our forests safe from excess damage is a win for the tourist, the hunting industry and associated sectors, and also for tourism. An advantage of this would be leaving the more accessible hunting for our NZ weekend hunters to collect meat from.

Agree with what you’re saying but many affluent overseas hunters may not have the skill sets, fitness, or motivation to hunt in our remotest regions. Some of them just want a canned hunting package: knock over some 20 point monster behind the wire and then crack open a bourbon while the PH deals with the head skinning and butchery; this type of hunter won’t be interested in culling skinny hinds in the most gnarly inaccessible corners of our forest parks.