Both Barrels June 2021

July is the month where keen waterfowlers can look to widen their horizons and seek out hunting opportunities other than your traditional hunting spots. 

What is duck tourism you may ask? It’s that time to travel to regions with longer seasons. Shorter seasons keep duck numbers sustainable for future generations of hunters in some regions. Where there are greater populations of birds, now is great time to travel to those parts of the country and make the most of the hunting opportunities through to July and beyond.

It’s quite common to see waterfowlers from the North Island around the traps in the South Island from now on. Don’t forget to click through the regional links above and get some great info on game bird hunting. 

It’s also the time to hunt some of our other tasty species like parries, pukeko, swans and target upland game species. 

For those of you just starting on your game bird hunting journey, or as a refresher for more experienced hunters, We’ve copied Gary Girvan’s advice, a noted New Zealand hunting author below: 

Six steps to successful waterfowling:

1. Go where the birds are
2. Master the art of concealment
3. Get the birds in close with decoys and calling
4. Improve your wing shooting skills with coaching and practice
5. Select the most effective chokes and loads
6. Use a well-trained retriever 

These six points are a great reminder and can help improve your chance of hunting success especially if you are hunting a new area to where you’ve traditionally hunted. 

We have a couple of competitions underway right now for game bird hunters, the first is a competition to write an article for next year’s Fish & Game Magazine hunting edition. 

For those of you with a great hunting yarn to tell, chance your arm and be in to win some great prizes.

The other competition underway now is the annual Game Bird Licence photo competition.

Take your camera out hunting with you or hunt out a great pic of any of our game bird species to be in with a chance to win $1000. The winning image will be on the 2023 game bird licence, click here to enter the competition. 

Don’t forget to submit any duck band details on birds you’ve harvested, we only need the details off the band, not the band itself, you can send them by clicking here.

Warm Barrels

The team at Fish & Game