Issue 75 - Feb/Mar 2020 |
On Sale Mon 3rd February 2020

Well here we are approaching that time of year again.

It’s the countdown to the roar and our favourite time of year. The maps are out, heads being scratched and plans schemed to work out where we’re headed this year to try and find that true wilderness stag to top all stags! The good thing is there’s been little WARO this season, so there should be more animals out and about in some of those west coast alpine areas that were absolutely trashed last year. Numbers will still be very low, but the survivors shouldn’t have been driven into the bush, and should have had ample feed to grow a good set of antlers. If you are in an area with a lot of animals like the Ureweras and Lake Sumner and Ruahine RHAs, make sure you do your bit and take some hinds while you’re looking for the big stag. If we don’t start doing a better job of reducing hind numbers in these areas, we risk losing control of them altogether. Be aware, the Minister of Conservation has deer firmly in her sights – not just tahr!

DOC at the behest of the MoC is currently looking at formulating a longer term control plan for tahr, working to get the numbers down to the 10,000 total on both public and private land as proposed in the seriously out of date 1993 Himalayan Tahr Control Plan. If we end up with 10,000 as a total population, that will be a disaster for tahr hunting in NZ. The Tahr Foundation is looking at getting legal clarification on some parts of that 1993 Plan if it’s going to get used as a stick to beat us. This will require engaging one of the country’s leading law firms, and the use of funds in the legal fighting fund we all donated to last year. And when DOC try and pick all hunting groups off individually as they did with their consultation last year on the 2019 control plan, we must all unite under the Tahr Foundation and use the expertise of our own statutory organisation, the GAC.

The NZTF is the umbrella group that has reps from all hunting groups, and who works towards coming up with a consensus position from us all that it is very hard for DOC and the MoC to then go against. The GAC has expertise and statutory status that is also vital for us. The minute individual groups start talking to DOC separately, that just allows DOC to play the old divide and conquer game and cherry pick bits of information to suit the outcome they want. That is exactly what happened last year when recreational hunter groups ended up talking to DOC separately, not collectively under the NZTF which they are part of/have representatives on anyway. Look how successful we were the year before when we all united under the NZTF when the Minister’s Tahrmageddon intentions first became public. Going forward with this next round of consultation, we must be totally united again as we were in 2018 or divided we will fall – and our big game animals will suffer the consequences.

Logo winners for last issue are Bryan Vickery and Diana Roulston. The logos were on page 10 in the Gunworks advert and on page 62 in the Alpine Precision advert.

Get that roar trip planning underway if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to watch the all new episodes of the Show when they begin on February the 19th!

Greg