Looking for information on New Zealand

Hello everyone, I have been offered a very attractively priced stag hunt with Kiwi Wilderness Safaris which is ran by Peter Chamberlain. I have never hunted the South Pacific and I would appreciate any information on this outfit. Thanks, Jim

Peter Chamberlain has a good reputation. New Zealand is a very small country with about 4 million population. The hunting & outfitting community is very small. Anyone with a dodgy reputation or lower end operation is quickly identified.

You need to know what you are getting. Ask all the questions.
Is this free range WILD deer or is it "farmed" deer that has gone feral in the last few years? Big antlered stags coming out of NZ are mostly ex-farm stock or stags released to breed with feral / wild deer on a farm (anything from 200 to 70,000 acres). behind the wire "hunting" is common among some outfitters - though the area may be a few hundred acres & you may not see the wires!! You will not get big 12 point or larger stags in true wild deer with outfitters. Such animals are extremely rare - like finding a Jaguar in Texas.

A bit of background summary.... Feral / wild deer are classed as vermin in NZ. Helicopters are given licences to shoot & recover any animal of any age for processing as venison & export to Europe. Poison bait (1080 poison) is spread in forests to control possum & deer. Every 5 years or so about 60% to 70% of the deer in an area are killed in this manner. So we do not have a population of mature wild deer older than 4 year. The rare animal that survives even up to 10 or 12 years is extremely rare & very hard to find. Because of hunting pressure & helicopter culling, animals tend to stay in thick bush & this also limits antler development. Red deer are by habit & preference an open country animal. The same goes for Fallow stag hunting in most cases.

On the other hand you can get fantastic wild Sika stag hunting (very sneaky buggers) and also some rare but good sambar hunting if you can find it. Good guides can help you here. You can also get excellent Chamois & Himalayan Tahr hunting. While these are also culled, they breed fast & a viable huntable population is maintained. I will be hunting Tahr in the Mount cooke area from 22nd May for 3 days. My first such trip after Tahr & I am really excited as I am originally from India have always wanted to hunt these magnificent animals.

Also check out on some Canada Goose hunting - you may be able get a good hunt. Some people can shoot upt to 20 birds a day & 3 or 4 hunters could get 40 or 50 of them. Again they are treated as a pest to farmers & culled in the 1000s when they moult in Feb!

Good luck & happy hunting.

Thank you for the information Vetaikaran. This trip will be mostly for my long suffering wife who would like to go somewhere besides Africa. I have been promising for years to take her to New Zealand and I would like to make sure that she has a good time and gets to shoot a stag. She does not care if it is behind a fence or not as long as the property is large. Again, thanks for the info. Jim

Hi,

I grew up in Texas hunting, trapping and running pigs with dogs and miss it!

I've taught special ed in Alaska for 5 years and want to see the world before I get too much older! So, when I decided to leave Texas, Alaska and Africa were the two top places on my list. Now that I've lived in the bush here in Ak, I'd like to go to Africa but, after researching, I'd like to look at some other options, New Zealand, etc.

So, I need to do some research as to where would be a great place for me to teach, not necessarily special ed, but I am certified in K-8 regular ed and K-12 special ed.

I've done 5 years here in native bush villages and 7 years in the black community back home in Texas, so, living in a small village and being a minority would be great, but, not sure if it is a possibility and what the downfalls are. I'd like to subsistence, live off what I harvest, as much as possible, that has been the nice thing about living here in Ak.

So, any specific info about areas, villages, jobs, school districts, churches, OR where NOT to live, would be great. I have learned to ask about the negatives and where NOT to live after coming to Ak, there is alot more racial problems here than I had ever heard about, so it was a surprise, especially after living down in the south.

Of course I would like to hunt more than hogs, but, I would like very much to get back into the life style of raising dogs to hunt.

Thanks,
Scotty