Both Barrels June 2024

There’s a long weekend for hunting coming up!

 

With next weekend being Matariki it’s a prime opportunity to come together for a mid-season hunt and harvest some game birds collectively for the plate.

Your game bird licence lasts longer than opening weekend and there are more than mallards to hunt, we have some really great game bird options throughout all our regions, and there is quite a long season length for some species all around the country.

Be sure to check out the regulations guidebook here so you can make the most of your hunting licence.

The Matariki holiday weekend, Friday June 28^th to Sunday 30^th also provides a great opportunity to be social and take a newbie out hunting and show them why we love duck hunting and to share in the harvest of free-range game bird meat.

It’s easy to see that the social part of duck hunting is a huge part of enjoying hunting. For example, the banter when an easy shot is missed, the coffee break chats about favourite guns and gear, and the shared laughs when a caller ‘squeals’ instead of quacks when the over-excited user blows the caller far too hard.

‘Day’ licences provide a great opportunity for newbies to give duck hunting a go; $26 for adults and $10 for juniors aged 12-17. Children aged 11 and under can purchase a whole season licence for just $5.

The team at Southland Fish & Game are raving about the condition of mallards this season, we are getting similar reports from around the country.

If you still want to get after some mallard, then we recommend checking out the regional links above so you too can plan a mallard hunt trip to those parts of the country that still have a mallard seaon, but don’t forget that you can hunt more than mallards so check out the species available  close to home as well!

 

 

Game bird hunter harvest surveys

Throughout the season every two weeks, around the country staff will call up to  200 hunters  per region and ask them whether they have been hunting in the last two weeks.

We pull a random sample of hunters from our licence database so there are times when some hunters get called up multiple times throughout the season.

The reason we do these surveys is because we need to gather data from our hunters about their hunting efforts, and what they have harvested.

From here we can use this data to help set our regulations, so game bird hunting is sustainable and we can maintain hunting for future generations.

 

 

New hunting opportunities?

Throughout the country, Fish & Game maintains a bunch of wetlands and hunting opportunities in our regions. Reach out to your local Fish & Game office for more info on how to hunt these prime hunting spots.