Both Barrels May 2024 - North Canterbury

Opening Weekend Summary

Blue skies and calm conditions were the common theme for the weekend across the region, making hunting challenging.

Especially for the hunters on big water, as the birds would simply land out in the middle once there was a bit of shooting going on.

Which made it hard for hunters to get the birds to decoy into shooting range.

Also, with dry conditions leading up to opening weekend there were hunters with ponds which were dry due to a lack of rain the region has had.

However, once we get some more rain throughout the season these ponds should hunt well as there will be a natural food source there that the birds simply won’t be able to resist.

 

Compliance Activity

This year the team at North Canterbury with the help of their honorary rangers were out and about in the Northern part of the region this opening weekend doing compliance checks over various ponds in the area.

Unfortunately, we roughly encountered a 15% non-compliance rate in the region and rangers are still seeing hunters using lead shot.

This isn’t a great look for the sport as the Wildlife Act brought in this regulation back in 2005 which is 18 years ago!

There is still plenty of hunting opportunities to be had here in the North Canterbury with Lake Ellesmere being a public land duck hunters paradise.

So we highly recommend getting out there and have a go at hunting big water!

Two pieces of advice I will give to hunters that are new to big water hunting is you need WIND!

This is very important if you want to have a successful hunt.

My second piece is make sure your decoys are rigged up appropriately for wind or else you will spend a lot of time chasing decoys as they will simply blow away and they drift a lot faster than you think.

This season we have added an extra pheasant hunting day for the first weekend of June so now you can now hunt on Kings birthday which is on June 3^rd (Monday).

This allows hunters the whole long weekend to harvest a cock pheasant.

 

Hunting under threat in the Waimakariri

The Waimakariri District Council has proposed a change to the Pegasus Bay Bylaw removing the exemption for licenced game bird hunters to use dogs while game bird hunting in the Ashley Rakahuri Estuary.

The relevant documents and information is available on the Council website: Northern Pegasus Bay Bylaw 2024 | Let’s Talk Waimakariri

Submissions are due June 14