Watched a TV program about hunting in New Zealand.I was interested that they had opossum there but they had bushy tails ! I thought it was a new world animal only.A tropical animal which over the years has extended it's range north. Ours has no fur on the tail or ears and in the northern USA often has bits missing from the ears because of frost bite.

They are Australian possum's introduced into NZ to give the Kiwi's something to complain about

Possums

Mete,

Below is a photo from my Outdoor Writer's NZ Hunt Photos - Day 1 thread of the results of an evening 'possum hunt in NZ last June. -TONY

Spotlighting for possums has to be one of the best plinking night out ever. Took 40 odd out of a cousins patch of native bush the other night, with my Savage 24 .22/20G combo. Even ate one! The wife had always wanted to try one out, in a chinese soup. Wouldn't repeat the experience, or the comments! And we eat some odd stuff.

Highly reccomend the garments made from the fur/merino blend yarn, warm, and suprisingly durable.

Who would buy nipple warmers for their beloved? Cold nipples are one of lifes great treasures.........
Tom

American possums "play possum" ,when in danger they play dead but it isn't just an act there are significant physiological changes in the animal so he appears to be dead. Do the Aussie or NZ possums also do that ??

Playing dead is a learned environmental response in NZ possums . Most only take one lesson to perfect the technique , although some need more than one bullet to learn the lesson.



Ours undergo significan physiological changes too - bloodloss and rigor mortis being most noticeable , coupled with the loss of both pulse and respiration ...



Not much better than hunting possums on a crisp frosty night .



Oh yeah , Johnboy - our possums are definately bigger and heavier than the aussie versions , probably due to a much better diet. Of course the Antipodean possum is a marsupial , which makes it even more different to that scraggy thing the yanks call a possum.



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Muzza, my question about 'playing possum' is a serious one. There was one guy I know who shot a possum .It was "dead" so he threw it over his shoulder and continued on. He ended up with severe laserations to the head when the possum woke up....New world possums are definitely marsupial !!!!!!

Mete , one of the endearing features of NZ possums is that if they are on the ground the natural thing to do when scared is climb . If you happen to be the tallest thing around then you end up with a possum on your head , and as you can see in the photos in my last post , they have impressive claws. If you are the lucky one to get the instant fur hat you need to fall to the ground and lie very still so the possum will jump off , or if you are really lucky your mate will shoot the possum but miss you... . There are not many mates that I trust enough to suggest that tho..

Our possums sit on the road in the winter to warm themselves , hence the phrase "possum in the headlights" .

Years ago before widespread possum control it was a national game to see how many possums you could run over in the course of a night time car trip .Best I ever manged was 14 in a 20 km trip , although two of them were making more possums in the middle of the road and were a bit handicapped when it came to running away... . These days you can go for fifty kms at night and not see a possum , the ongoing control measures have reduced the population so much .

There wont ever be the day that possums are eradicated from NZ , too much tough country and not enough dollars , plus so many of the critturs live in town gardens . Being nocturnal animals means Joe Public doesnt see them in their true numbers , therefore the reality of the population size is unknown to most folk , therefore the "problem" doesnt exist .

Muzza,

The ones in the photo with me are only a few of the ones we killed in a couple hour drive up the valley where we hunted tahr. We tossed each one up on the roof rack as we went along, but unfortunately quite a few slipped through the bars before we got back to the hut. I think we got about a dozen in all. Then the next evening in a different place we wiped out a wallaby or six. -TONY

Tony those South Island possums have much better skins than our local ones - colder climate makes for more fur I guess.

I bet you had as much fun shooting those little trophies as you did on the big stuff

The possum shoot was okay, but I liked the wallaby shoot better.



We went to a big farm somewhere and hunted a couple fields that were surrounded with thick brush. As it started to get dark, the little hoppers came out of hiding to feed along the edges of the fields. So we had a nice combination of stalking within range on foot and getting some longer range shooting in, too, with our "big" guns.



Earlier in the day, we hunted turkey on the same farm but in a different area. We each killed two toms. We hunted the wallaby near those hills in the distance behind us. -TONY



My hunting partner:

BTW, the American possum is a marsupial, the only native marsupial to the Americas. It is the smae species from South America to North America.

It is also a great survivor - basically unchanged for millons of years, and native from subartic environments to tropical ones.

Ugly and mean though, they don't always paly possum though. As to somone trowing one over his shoulder, he has a stronger tolerance of smell than I do, every time I have had a possum play possum, it craps and pees all over itself, I guess the idea is that it stinks so bad that nothing will wnat to eat it. Even the buzzards won't touch possums if there is better roadkill around.

As to the NZ possums, are they omnivores or do they only eat plants? Our American possums eat anything!

In lots of the eastern US, possums are the most common roadkill, in the south only superceeded by natures speedbump - the armadillo.

The NZ possums liik as if they would cause some damamge to cars/trucks sometimes, they are kinda big.

BTW, lucky you don't have skunks - they're real big on the roadkill hits - but you pay if you hit 'em - the whole car/truck may really smell, unless you get a brain shot.

Chuck