Thread: oh no how do we allow this to continue

It's legal, unfortunately. Morally wrong and ethically wrong in many of our eyes. Many of us tried to have a hand in stopping it - writing submissions, emails and letters, and reducing it to occurring on private land only as a best case scenario. Unfortunately it happens a lot, I've witnessed it on tahr but not chamois, they target trophy animals, and at the end of the day money talks. DoC don't care, they clip their ticket and it all adds up to a reduction in animal populations - win win for them. There was a list of approved AATH operators floating around but I can't find it - but some of the most popular companies who fly us in as hunters do it so we're a bit hamstrung there to start naming and shaming. At the end of the day, for the heli companies it's another source of income - and from guys who want to spend money rather than us Kiwi hunters who want dropped of for the least amount of money as possible. One of the most unfortunate things I think is that AATH has the full backing of the NZPHGA, which survives solely on having these animals as a resource. So can't see much changing in the near future. The one thing going for this though, is it has been seen by a good number of hunters or people interested in hunting and looking at the comments, the vast majority are very much anti this being an acceptable way to hunt!

Originally Posted by Tommy

I didn't think it was legal to herd animals with the chopper? If that's what made it on film imagine what was cut

It's a bit of a grey one really - hazing is 'illegal' where an animal is caused unnecessary distress (how one proves that I don't know), herding is perfectly fine and animals can be 'herded' towards the shooter - unless it impedes on other users/hunters/or interferes with recreational hunters on site. Or the shooter can just shoot from a machine if they want to keep things simple...