Patrolling the Waikato to check on duck shooters
Rangers find most, but not all duck shooters are law-abiding. Matt Bowen reports.
The hardest thing about being a duck shooting ranger is ‘‘sorting the b....... from the facts’’.
While Fish & Game’s David Klee speeds from shooter to shooter on the Waikato River to ensure hunters are not breaching the Wildlife Act, his observation seems apt.
Since the duck shooting season opened nine days ago hunters have been blasting birds out of the sky nationwide, including the popular shooting areas downstream from Tuakau near Port Waikato.
Before pinching at the coast, the river splits and slowly twists through marshes, reeds and islands of bush. It’s prime habitat for waterfowl. Studded along the waterline are whitebait stands, ramshackle lean-tos and maimais. Mr Klee and Conservation Department ranger Chris Annandale spotted Shane Everett with son Luke holed up in a maimai. They got one – enough for a feed at least. Further downstream Waiuku’s Carl Hyland is barely perceptible, camouflaged in the marshes. Both know the rules and stick to them. Mr Klee reckons this is the case 95 per cent of the time, but there’s always that minority.
It’s 11am on the overcast Wednesday when they motor up the ‘‘windies’’ section of the river and spot decoys on the still water ahead.
The fake ducks fan out from a multiman-sized maimai obscured with bamboo – they spot something, a blue boat, and move in, slowly.
Four men have retreated into a well hidden slap-together hut, described generously as a ‘‘bach’’, and are hitting the booze.
The first sign of life is a portly fellow who sidles out the front door, unzips and urinates onto the river bank. Mr Klee heads in. Inside he finds one man with a duckshooting licence, and the rest claim to be there only to ‘‘drink p...’’, despite the four shotguns in the hut. With no proof of wrongdoing, Mr Klee clambers back to the tinny across one of their boats and spots a box of lead shot.
Under the Wildlife Act it’s illegal to shoot waterfowl with lead pellets within 200m of a water body or wetlands. name and an address in Waiuku.
Mr Klee’s b....... detector is fully loaded.
‘‘Just wondering why there’s a box of lead in there, mate?’’ he says. ‘‘Possums and carps,’’ the man says. ‘‘You’ve got a firearm on board – that’s yours is it?’’ ‘‘Yep.’’ ‘‘So this is your gun and you’ve been shooting at possums and carp? And you haven’t been shooting ducks at all?’’ ‘‘Nah, I don’t shoot ducks.’’ ‘‘I saw you had a duck