Thread: Game Animal Council (GAC) to be scrapped by Conservation Minister?

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

The trouble with that is all our game animals were provided and acclimatized with the goal/Intention that hunting should not be only the domain of the wealthy anybody should be able to hunt, and also as a protection for some species that were in a threatened population in their home ranges.

Returning the land to pre European settlement as @Pengy suggested is flawed as the first settlers the Moriori and second settlers the Moari had already hugely modified the land with fires and hunted/destroyed habitat of many species into extinction and pushed many others to the very brink....this was all well before the arrival of the evil white man and introduction of deer/pigs/thar/cham/goats/sheep/stoats/ferrit/possum/rabbit/hare and all those other things that provided a means to stop eating each other to survive.

Were our game animals introduced with the intention … that anyone should be able to hunt. No they weren't. That might be a nice 'feel good' thought however critically examining the evidence of history will show a different story. In fact licences were expensive and only the Gentry hunted in the prized areas. If the intention had been to allow the common man to hunt with the same opportunity then the licences would have been balloted and at a low cost. Tourist hunting by the English Gentry was very popular here and many of the top trophies shot were taken by Lords and Majors. In large part because of the Wars 1 & 2 Game animal populations got out of control and protection was lifted and licencing taken away from acclimatization societies. But now that the animals are under control there is no reason that they should not be protected and hunting licenced.
We have free hunting for the common person now on public land but that hunting is under the perpetual threat of poisoning, WARO and the likes, so it is perhaps not as much 'our right' as we might think it is. The truth is we are tolerated and treated as a fringe group
On the one hand I hate the idea of paying for a licence but on the other I know that there is only one way to unite and give a voice to big game hunters.