Issue 68 - Dec 2018/jan 2019

It is with great sadness we have to report the accidental death of our great hunting and climbing mate Caleb Jennings.

For more information see page 86. Caleb will be sorely missed and always on our minds on big wilderness expeditions. Our thoughts are very much with Caleb’s partner, family and friends at this incredibly sad time.

Spring is here, and by the time you read this we should be seeing a little growth in the high country. It’s been a bit of a mixed bag weather wise so far, with some calm periods between the Norwest fronts giving brief weather windows for alpine trips. Last spring produced continual Norwest/Souwest wind patterns with their associated fronts with very little respite until well after Christmas. We have a couple more big TV episodes to film before the new Season goes to air in February, so we’re hoping for some reasonable runs of weather somewhere along the line!

The tahr issue is bubbling away behind the scenes with the GAC and Tahr Foundation working with DoC on a few important issues– one is a way of recreational hunters’ tallies being counted in the cull number we are trying to get under the GAC’s management plan by next spring. The second is trying to get more recreational hunter access via organised hunts into the National Parks and wilderness areas where tahr numbers need controlling. After DoC had to abandon their hastily announced fly-in for January because the helicopter operators couldn’t service the hunters during the busiest time for tourist flights on the coast, we have made a few suggestions to them about another late summer organised hunt when the operators can handle all the extra helicopter time this will require. For more on this see the GAC update on page 100/101.

We’ve just had a meeting at the DoC offices in Napier recently about the Kawekas,and while it was great to see some common sense going forward from Ospri regarding their TB Free proposals for the central North Island, we were dismayed to learn what DoC Napier had been spending money on in the Kaweka Mountain Beech program. Having been involved in the KMB program now for around 20 years, it was very sad to see the current staff without previous history of the program going down the same track as DoC did back around the year 2000. The science they came up with back then was subjective and biased according to their own internal reviewers at the time. A whole lot of time and money was wasted before LandCare was contracted around 2004 to come up with a scientifically and statistically valid model, which got the Kaweka Mountain Beech project back on an even keel. We’ve all been working constructively together following the LandCare model until the KMB program was changed in 2015 under the previous DoC area manager. Imagine our dismay to find DoC Napier has recently contracted the same science provider whose work was so controversial over 15 years ago to conduct another review of the KMB project along a similar vein - and without any discussion with the Kaweka Liaison Group who have worked so faithfully and constructively with DoC on this issue for the last 20 years.I really thought we were finally getting past this sort of totally counterproductive attitude. If under the current government they are now going to have an expanded budget for the KMB project, we have asked the DoC Napier to go back to the agreed science provider LandCare to do a review of the project so far, and make some recommendations going forward. Hopefully common sense will prevail and we won’t have to repeat more of the mistakes of the past. Watch this space…

The spot the logo winners this issue are Angus Loader and Ivan Holloway– the logos were on page 3, Southern Lakes ad and page 73, Deadeye Dicks shooting supplies ad.

From all here at NZ Hunter, we hope you all get out for many adventures in the New Zealand wilderness and make the most of the summer holidays - and don’t forget to tune in to all new Season 5 of NZ Hunter Adventures, returning Wednesday nights from February 13 at 8:30pm on TVNZ DUKE and Sundays 2pm on TVNZ 1!.

Greg

This issue we have...  

• A Fifty Inch wide Wapiti from the Ballot
• Old Man Mountain – Gwyn Thurlow’s West Coast tahr adventure
• Todd Howard and Co. chase early season Reds
• Angus Fraser gets his first Chamois
• New Year Hunt – Joseph Peter shoots a unique East Coast Bull
• Isaac Murphy packrafts the Uruwera for Reds
• A 12pt Red by Bow from Cody Weller
• Northern Territory Banteng adventures
• Stalking – The Forgotten Art? By Johnny Bissell
• Backcountry Sika and How to Gut a Deer
• Fry Pan Cooking by Paul Garland
• Landscape Composition and the Blue Duck with Matt Winter
• Advanced Winch Recovery with 4wd Solutions
• The GAC talks Tahr Control, TB eradication and the Kaweka Mountain Beech project

Test Fires: We Evaluate...

• Bushnell Forge Scope 3-18x50
  
• Sig Sauer BDX Rangefinder & Scope
  
• Caldwell Rifle Rests