Issue 92 - December 2022/January 2023 |
On Sale Monday 12th December 2022

What a spring this has been with endless wet weather on the East Coast of the North Island especially, and long fine spells on the West Coast.

We sure are getting some pretty mixed up weather at the moment! Antler growth and animal condition appears slow this spring everywhere we’ve been despite the warmer conditions – go figure!

This editorial is one of bouquets and brickbats. First up, the Sika Show this year was a huge success and that must be a massive relief for Mike and John the new organisers after two cancelled years due to Covid. The venue was excellent, despite my reservations about having to drive two hours further north past Taupo… having most of the exhibitors inside undercover made it far more pleasant than the tents of the old Taupo Sika Shows, where it turned into a quagmire if it rained, and a sauna when the sun came out! Yes, a lot of the exhibitors are still fighting to get any product to sell, and there wasn’t the usual masses of Sika Show bargains to be had - but that is just the way it is everywhere at the moment.

Next year’s show will be huge, as the significant number of exhibitors without stock didn’t have a stand this year, but they have all pre booked for next year.

There were record numbers of people through the door, despite the heavy rain on the Sunday, and there were a large number of quality trophy heads on display. It was great to catch up with hunters from all over the country and I apologise to anyone who I never got time to talk to, there is always so much to do and not enough hours in the day!

There was a pretty good turnout of political parties, and we got the chance to talk a lot of sense with the politicians, including Christopher Luxton. Everyone was saying all the right things, so we’ll see who’s in government after the election and who delivers on our common sense solutions!

More good news. All the work the GAC put in talking to OSPRI and all the submissions everyone sent in have made a difference, and Ospri have put off the 1080 drop in the Whitcombe catchments on the West Coast while they undertaking more monitoring to assess the risk of TB from possums in the area. They are still likely to go ahead with the Newton Range section close to where they have had some more recent TB reactors, but we are advocating to include deer repellent in that operation.

A big issue that is proving to be a real headache is how to stop the kea deaths from these 1080 drops. I talked about some promising options in my last editorial, but since then DOC have confirmed they killed a significant number of radio tracked kea in the recent Arthur's Pass 1080 operation. As I said last issue, DOC are concerned they don’t have any science to prove deer repellent doesn’t make the baits more attractive to kea, hence they refused to use it in the recent operation, so the finger cannot be pointed at repellent.

I really feel for Laura Young and the hard workers from the Kea Conservation Trust. They desperately need a way to control predators particularly stoats over large areas of wilderness country – but without killing the very bird they are trying to save. I don’t think we’re going to make any significant headway at a nationwide scale on stoats until we are allowed to use gene drive technology, and the sooner we come to accept this as a country the better.

And now for the bad. I’m pretty disheartened to watch the links to social media we get sent of some people’s spring tahr hunts, especially in the Rangitata and other catchments in Management Unit One (MU1), where the GAC is trying to set up a hunter led management system. We have asked everyone to think carefully about what tahr they shoot everywhere but especially in MU1 where we are trying to set a good example of how hunters can manage the resource sensibly and unselfishly. Official control in MU1 this year focused on mature nannies, the reproductive engine of the herd. They are leaving all the males. It’s absurd then that some recreational hunters undermine this approach as we seeing far too often on social media. If we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot it will be hard to convince DOC they should target only mature nannies, and they must wonder why they bother engaging with us.

By all means take a truly mature bull if you find one but save your bomb ups for the nannies. The endless videos of hunters bombing up mobs of bulls is sickening, using the excuse they’re doing their bit for tahr management. What they are doing is the complete opposite! With a seriously reduced tahr herd across the tahr range we need those young and middle aged bulls to carry on through to become mature trophies, or soon we are going to see a real shortage of 8 year plus bulls. In MU1 please do target any mobs of nannies if you find them, reducing them back to groups of no more than 5 if you can, but leave the mobs of young and middle aged bulls alone. The males are mobbed up and low down at this time of year, and you can easily find that all the bulls from a large area are all in one group. Bomb them up and you are doing huge damage to the trophy potential for miles. Please follow the guides on the Tahr Foundation’s Facebook page about how to identify promising young bulls and what to shoot and not to shoot. Please leave the young and middle aged bulls with good tips. And if you accidently get it wrong - please do not put up a video on social media!

The same goes for venison meat hunts over summer. Please leave the velveties and spikers, and where possible shoot the dry hinds and yearlings, as they’re the best eating anyway.

The winners for last issue are Christine Gregory and Jacki Cook. Logos appeared on the Bushnell advert on page 25 and the Ridgeline advert on page 59.

Greg