hunting blog

TO HUNT OR NOT ?

I am not really qualified to talk about hunting as I have never killed an animal directly, eye to eye as it were, although I have set traps that kill them. Nevertheless I find the subject very interesting and worth thinking about, especially because many of the locals like to hunt.
My opinion is that most wild animals have a much more fulfilling life and better and more varied diet than animals raised in captivity. As long as they are killed quickly, they probably suffer a lot less than their cousins who wait in line at the abattoir sensing the fear and having no opportunity for escape. To most animals, hunting and being hunted is a natural part of life. They seem to accept it and recover their sense of well-being rapidly once immediate threats are over.
First, if you want to hunt wild animals you need to provide them with habitat to be wild. Many rare and wonderful creatures are being squeezed out of existence by land-grabbing humans or introduced threats, while others who are more adaptable become plagues because we have lost the where-with-all to manage their populations. This is a dilemma for modern man. How to live and let live.
 

POSSUMS (Trichosurus vulpecular)
Possums are a case in point. Introduced from Australia they have thrived on the extremely lush New Zealand forests and farms and become a destructive pest, whereas their Australian brothers are far less numerous and are protected from hunting in their natural home. So it makes sense to hunt the New Zealand population and not the Aussie one.
Possums are very cute, furry vegetarians who love to party at night, they remind me of monkeys. I have lost entire crops of oranges, lemons, apples... the list goes on and on, to these varmints not to mention their ability to kill trees completely by repeatedly defoliating them. They also occasionally eat the eggs and chicks of various birds, some rare native birds.

Having no wild predators, they have to be controlled by humans, which has led to controversy as to how. Poisoning is the method used by large scale land owners and national parks by dropping poison bait. The dead carcasses are poisonous to anything that attempts to eat them, like dogs, pigs etc, and the bait kills other unintended victims, creatures who may be attracted by the smell and eat a little, blackbirds, deer etc. This practice is justified in the name of conservation, as the sidekills are generally not protected species.

There have, over the years been various schemes for people to profit from killing possums but most have failed to survive. Why is this?

Farmers say possums cause TB in cattle, although the possums almost certainly caught the disease from cattle in the first place and because it kills the possums quite quickly once they catch it, it would not be very common in a population without a source of infection. I have never found TB in possums although I look for it carefully and it's easy to spot, so it must be a fairly localised problem in areas where cattle carry TB. Cure cattle TB and you'll probably cure possum TB.
Many people shoot them but don't eat them. Being vegetarians, possum's bodies are very healthy and clean and my cat prefers eating it to any other meat, and he's a fussy eater. Dogs relish it too. At the moment possum bodies are left to rot where they drop by nearly everone who kills them, because the meat is an aquired taste with a very gamey aroma and requires cullinary skill to make it palatable to people who have become used to bland food. If prepared properly it can taste a lot like wild rabbit.

Their fur is some of the finest in the world, light and very soft with a nice variety of colours ranging through black, deep reddish brown, golden brown, fawn and grey. The pelts used to be quite valuable to hunters but the anti-fur people don't distinguish between rare and endangered and rampantly abundant, making fur coats unfashionable and socially unacceptable. So the possums keep breeding and keep being killed, but their bodies are discarded. Recently a new method of using the fur by plucking it off the skin and spinning it with fine wool has become popular and lucrative for some hunters and trappers.

This simple fur stole or poncho was made from possums caught in my garden. The fresh skins are soaked for three days in a plastic bucket containing a solution of common salt and alum. They are then partially dried by hanging on a line out of strong sunlight, rubbed and stretched in the hands and hung to dry properly. Though sometimes rather greasy, they will keep for years in this state, or can be made into a garment which is then drycleaned to remove excess grease and any possum odour. The finished product is dust-free, incredibly soft and warm and feels luxurious. My next project will be larger, a double bedspread or fur rug.

PIGS
Pig hunting is a deeply political issue in these here hills! It arouses a red-blooded rage. There are two polarized points of view. On the one hand there's some farmers and growers of food who want to exterminate them altogether, on the other hunters who love to hunt pigs and even release them into the wild to keep their sport alive. A recent case of a farmer being shot dead allegedly by an enraged pig hunter refused access across the farmer's land, illustrates the point.
There's a third and less well-known argument put forward by Maori. Pigs were first introduced as a peace offering to Maori, who had very few edible animals living here, by Captain Cook, the first European to visit New Zealand or Aotearoa as it was called then. All truly wild pigs here are descended from this stock and are still called Captain Cookers. Because much land here was confiscated illegally from Maori they no longer have easy access to much of their traditional hunting grounds, but this disputed land often has a healthy population of "their" pigs.
Anyway, wild pigs can plough up orchards, gardens and pasture, even kill newborn lambs and generally make a nuisance of themselves if their numbers build up, so they have to be controlled. Even one large wild pig can be a serious danger if he becomes unafraid of humans. The pigs that are being raised and released by hunters are sometimes not very afraid at all, unless they hear or smell dogs. Then they're off. Wild pigs are nothing like the fat domestic ones. They can gallop up sheer hillsides, the sound of their hooves like horses. If I'm in the bush alone and hear one close by I make a bit of noise hoping it will go away, which they always have so far, but I still feel primal fear and the adrenalin rushing in. I always pick up a big stick just in case.
When I first arrived here, I got quite excited when I heard there were wild pigs in the area. I went out each night to look for pigs. There were lots. They came down into the valley from the hills about dusk and began rooting up the thick mats of grass on the river flat. I crouched silently behind trees and counted them. One night, a herd of twenty appeared, mostly young but with a number of large adults.
 An awesome sight! I felt like I was on some African safari watching hippos. The pigs seemed huge, and having only dim night vision, I was rather scared being among them. When I got back to the house I read a rather long article in my wildlife encyclopedia which told me clearly that they are one of the most dangerous animals to hunt as they can attack and rip flesh from bones at lightning speed.


  
Pig hunting is a popular weekend sport for many kiwi blokes, but unfortunately they often forget or are in denial that their dogs can wreck havoc on the very rare and precious local kiwi population and other birds living in the forest. Kiwis are defenceless against dogs who are not trained to leave them be. There are free one-day kiwi aversion training programs for dogs in areas where kiwis live but not all hunters avail themselves of these. I sometimes come across hunters and their dogs in the bush and always ask to see the certificate that is issued when the course is completed. I have a pair of kiwis living and nesting on my place and  feel very protective towards them.