Hunters are coming to New Zealand from around the world to hunt Tahr,but some Outfitters are pushing clients into this type of hunt.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcDMX4tQTy4

The Yanks seem to have a reasonable solution in Alaska.

There you can fly into a remote area to hunt, but can't start hunting for 24 hours after the fly-in..

Additionaly, in some States there are other rules which forbid the uses of radios to aid the taking of game, which again limits the usefulness of aircraft for say scouting.

Of course NZ would need to set up the infrastructure to enforce there rules so but could come up with something similar..

Even passing the law helps, regardless of enforcement. Many will not violate the law, even when it's easy to do so.

The Libertarian in me suggests that it's a bad thing to legislate this type of behavior. If a person wants to shoot game from a helicopter and has a valid license, he should probably be able to do so, though that's not hunting from my perspective. Shooting a cow in a pasture is about as sporting; while perfectly legal, it's not hunting.

I'm ambivalent on the subject. I agree that the 24 hour rule and the ban on electronic communications help keep the hunt in hunting. At the same time, I recognize that others have differing values. Should we legislate a code of conduct that is essentially aesthetic?

What a shame ....


Seloushunter

I'm from Alaska. I have a couple corrections.
Deer and Caribou in certain areas may be shot the same day airborne. This is considered a meat hunt not a trophy hunt.
Some "Pests", (wolves) are in fact shot from helicopters. This is done when the wolves become overpopulated and decimate the game animals in an area.
Aren't the animals shot from a helicopter in Nz considered to be pests?
Is there a normal Season/limit on these animals?
Is there a law requiring salvage of edible meat?
I'm not in favor of shooting game animals from a helicopter. I am in favor of pest control using a helicopter.
I think you would get more support from sport hunters world wide if you would move Thar, Chamois and Red Deer into a "Game animal" category and remove them from the "pest" category.
It doesn't help trying to get support from this site, when one of the members here was turned in to the USA FBI a couple years ago for violating the Lacey Act. He supposedly shot animals from a helicopter. I don't know how that turned out.

Hi TJ, One of the big moves afoot in NZ at the moment is the construction of a Game Animal council, A statutory body tasked with managing Game animals, part of this is the reclassification of Deer, Tahr, Chamois and Pigs as game animals. This helihunt issue has come about because we successfully got the loophole closed which allowed a blind eye to be turned to it this year, yet the game animal council is not set up yet, so the greenies and outfitters are trying to get precedence and a foothold before it is.
there is also a difference between helicopter shooting/animal destruction, and helihunting. Animal control or Wild animal recovery operations aim to kill as quick as possable,for helihunting its a case of the animal being brought to heel first, so the inexperianced hunter can get a shot in a position the animal can be recovered from.
This is seen by greenies as a way to make our animal herds pay for their own destruction, as 500 dollars will be charged for every animal shot, which will them be used in extermination programs.

This is essentially a democratic question, isn't it? (As Analog P points out) But more importantly, the democratic discussion needs to be an informed one. NZ hunters, general public and the regional and national legislators need to understand what is going on, how it is perceived by the outside world and then make a decision about what kind of destination they want to be for outdoor sports tourism. One form of tourism can put off clients to another activity. Do the skiers, mountaineers and snow-boarders want to be seeing a tahr dangling from a helicopter? Whether to legislate or not seems to be a mute question now if I read the posts aright, but if you want to tell people that you are a sustainable tourist destination and that you have high standards of ethical delivery as well as high standards of tourist experience, then you have to put your regulation where your mouth is, so to speak. High value clients that fly half way round the world to go to NZ from Europe, USA or elsewhere can choose to go to other places, so your offer has to be of the highest possible standards if you are to compete for their business.

Absolutly correct, and in the hunting industry we are allready seeing this happen. European hunters are chooseing to stay away, and make up only a tiny percentage, because the situation is so murky, it seems with their traditions around hunting, they want honesty and quality in their experiance.

In several places in the world where deer and similar game animals are introduced and not native, they are regarded by their government there as pests, New Zealand, Australia and Mauritius, for example. The thar is treated as such in NZ along with red, fallow, sika, rusa, sambar deer and chamois. It doesn't matter that this is the only huntable population of thar left in the world or that it acts as a lifeboat, should this endangered animal in it's native home be exterminated - and it is on the way out there.

Deer, chamois and thar in New Zealand can be shot year round, no limits, very few restrictions, and these are rarely made with deer in mind. For instance, no rimfires, not because of the deer's welfare, but because you might be using it to shoot native pigeons. Deer in NZ are often poisoned deliberately en mass, though this is usually in the guise of poisoning other pests, but you can be quite sure that the deer were not an accidental by-catch. They are also shot commercially from helicopters for meat for Europe.

Sure, NZ is a trophy mecca, but a lot of this hunting is done on private property and not always such wild deer either. I came across a covered in truck towing also a horse float trailer. Crowded and crashing about inside were a number of "trophy" red deer being delivered to a "fair chaise" farm. They'd been brought from deer farms around NZ, their ear tags removed and off they go. In fact, one of the great trophies shot here was a stud stag from a deer farm that had been imported as part of a group of stags from overseas. But he had damaged testicles and was useless for breeding. He had a huge rack however so he was offered to, and started a bidding war between the various so-called safari outfits. The proud hunter who shot him knows nothing of this, which is perhaps best.

So good luck trying to get the NZ government to stop hunters doing this. I think you'd have much more luck if SCI and other reputable organizations were to require all hunters entering trophies into competitions to swear they hadn't shot it from an aircraft. As for the new Game Animal Council being established in NZ, don't be too surprised if it's committee includes the very people selling these hunts. In fact, such commercial interests have been given places on this committee as of right. That was certainly not what hunters here voted for, so I'm not sure when / how we were sold down the river.

Its a surprise to me that there is a market for this kind of thing. There is no sport, so why bother. You really would have to have more money than sense to do pay to shoot an animal so close and be left with no sense of achievement.