Wellington> Hunting News May 2007

Season Prospects

Waterfowl hunters can look forward to a very solid season, particularly in the Horowhenua, Manawatu and Wairarapa lowlands where spring rainfall in 2005 ranged from 25-50 percent above normal, and provided an abundance of shallow wetland habitat in which mallards could rear their broods. Over much of the Wellington Fish & Game Region, half-grown brood of mallards were a conspicuous feature of sodden areas of farmland last spring and the excellent breeding season should help mallard numbers to bounce back after a consistent downward trend in autumn counts over the past 3 years.

Fish & Game NZ monitors the abundance of mallards every year by conducting aerial counts along 40 transects that span the Wellington Fish & Game Region. Those counts reveal that mallard numbers are still well above the sort of levels that produced very poor hunting seasons in 2000 and 2001, but they are well below the sort of levels seen in the early 1980’s when numbers were sufficiently strong to justify daily bag limits of 20 birds. More good breeding seasons and some judicious management of hunter harvests by Fish & Game will be required before a return to such liberal bag limits becomes a realistic option, but the 2007 season certainly promises to be the best of the new millennium for hunters in the Wellington Fish & Game Region.

Whilst spring conditions have been wetter than average over much of the region, summer rainfall has been well below average and with the dry spell forecast to stretch well into autumn, areas of open water on which hunters can harvest mallards are likely to be at a premium by May. The good news for those who do have access to areas of permanent water is that those areas are likely to be far more intensively used by mallards than they would be in years when wet autumn conditions provide the birds with a greater choice of areas to roost and forage on.

Prospects for a good season are bolstered by the very healthy numbers of paradise shelduck throughout the Manawatu, Horowhenua and Wairarapa lowlands (Areas A1 & B1). Being a grazer, parries have been an obvious beneficiary of farmer’s efforts to improve pasture quality and production and have sustained substantial increases in harvest over the past ten years as their numbers have built and they have expanded their range southwards from their traditional stronghold in the Rangitikei hill country.

Canada goose numbers in both the Wairarapa and the Manawatu are solid leading into the main game season, despite the fact that the concentration of birds moulting on Lake Wairarapa earlier this year was sufficiently high to require a cull by Fish & Game staff for the second year running. Canada goose culls are always a controversial exercise, and this year poor goose hunting in the vicinity of Lake Wairarapa during February and March has fuelled some goose hunters anxiety over the culling programme. Ironically, in the weeks following last year’s cull hunters on farmland near Lake Wairarapa enjoyed some of their best goose hunting ever. This year summer hunting near the lake has been much slower, but the good bags of geese being taken in the Wairarapa hill country over the past few weeks attest to the fact that there are still plenty of geese around for those hunters who are prepared to put in the effort required to find the flocks.

Numbers of pheasant and quail are fairly strong in the coastal areas of the Manawatu and Horowhenua and hunting upland game in the commercial plantation forests along the west coast offers a very worthwhile way to spend a weekend this season. Access permits for Santoft, Tangimoana and Waitarere Forests are available from all Fish & Game licence agents at a cost of $ 5.00. All up the permit offers the opportunity to hunt pheasant and quail over 12,484 hectares of commercial plantation forest, in addition to areas of reserve land near Tangimoana and along the bed of the Otaki River. A separate permit allows hunters to use areas of Soil Conservation Reserve scattered along the bed of the Rangitikei River between Rata and Tangimoana. The riverbed supports some areas of excellent cover for both pheasants and California quail and pukeko and mallard can be found on some of the small backwaters and oxbows. You will need to organize permission to cross private farmland to reach most of the reserve areas along the riverbed.

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