Thread: This pisses me off!

Funny. I started to watch this video the other day but got a bit peeved before I got to the bits that are being referred to in this thread. And the points raised by @whanahuia make me feel even worse, I agree that this situation is not a good one for the herd.

I love Tahr hunting, not for the trophies but for the mountains. I shoot the odd one, usually for meat and have a very nice skin to remind me where I like to be. Having said that its a heck of a good thing for guys to want too have a big head for the wall. I also love sharing the mountains with visitors and seeing them take home some sort of "reminder" be it a trophy, memory or just sore feet.

And it's really the "sore feet" that pisses me off most about guys guiding on Tahr. I have flown in a couple of times with visitors "as friends", and each time they have had the legs walked off them, neither took a real trophy but both still call me to talk about "their hunt". Too me that's the way it should be with professional guides as well. I don't think that there was any hazing in the video under discussion but it also wasn't "fair chase" in the Kiwi way of "sore feet".

I hear there is still a bit of hazing going on and this highlights the problem of the "professional guides" in NZ, with no statutory framework for how we as a community value our game animals and hunting heritage, and a lot of money at stake, ethics and past practices are easily bent, as evidenced by some previous discussions on this forum from PH's.

The GAC certainly has a role (a statutory one in fact) in representing the interests of PHs but it should also be making it very clear to visitors "how we hunt" in NZ so guys like Dan Cabela don't hunt with "unintended consequences" - like trashing the trophy potential of the herd.

When the mature bulls get thin on the ground on public land, private land bulls will become more valuable and the guides will make even more money from them so the incentive to heli hunt them to that point like they are currently doing is high. Just ask any taxidermist in the South Island how business is. Heli hunting of tahr and Chamois is more active than it ever has been, the pilots and behind the wire types guides only care about one thing and it ain't the welfare of the animals.