Duck shooters get ready, your season is beginning soon

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 43, 8 April 1986, Page 11

Duck shooters get ready, your season is beginning soon

This year's duckshooting season begins on Saturday 3 May and finishes on Sunday 29 June. The season for cock pheasant and brown quail finishes on Sunday 3 August and for Californian quail on 24 August. Shooting times remain the same, from 6.15am to 6.15pm. Pegging day is Sunday 6 April to allow for prefereni tial pegging on the Saturday. An innovation this year is the availability of a oneweek licence costing $10 which applies after the second weekend of the game season. Adult licence fees remain the same as last year at $25 but there is a small increase to $14 for juniors. All adult licences can be used throughout New Zealand. The paradise shelduck trend count for the central North Island wildlife conservancy district was carried out on 24 January this year. This showed that in area C1 , south of Taumarunui, the population was 2000 greater than optimum levels, while for area C2, covering the Waimarino County, numbers were up 3500 on the optimum level. As a result bags have increased by two per day in both areas for this i season.

C 1 is now ten paradise per day and C2 is now twelve paradise per day. The larger numbers of paradise present this season can largely be attributed to a better than average breeding season. Other bag limits remain unchanged: fifteen grey, mallard and shoveler ducks in total per day. Please remember to check local bag limits if travelling to other districts as they will be different. The only amended regulations this year which shooters need to know are changes in the protected status of several species of wildlife. Harrier hawks and black shags are now partly protected wildlife. This means that these birds can not be hunted or killed by any person. The feral domestic goose is no longer protected and may now be hunted without further authority apart from the landowners' permission. For further information please eontact John Heaphy, District Wildlife Officer, at Raetihi 54-540.