Hunters Say Government Prejudice Against Deer a Factor in Firearm Accidents

A hunters’ advocacy group says a government-generated prejudice against wild animals is a significant factor in firearm accidents particularly hunters mistaking another hunter for a deer.

Sporting Hunters Outdoor Trust spokesman Laurie Collins of the West Coast said departmental prejudice against browsing animalsand calling them “pests”, particularly deer, instilled in many hunters, a mind set on the need to shoot and kill as many animals as possible.

“Selective hunting of taking only enough for immediate needs and deliberately and carefully selecting an animal, is a rarity amongst most hunters, mainly due to the philosophy and attitude promoted by the old Forest Service and now the Department of Conservation,” he said. “Instead hunters generally have been imbued with killing any and often every deer plus indulging in careless reactionary snap shooting.”

Laurie Collins who began his working career in the Forest Service and has a lifetime of association with mountains and hunting, said the attitude of the “only good deer is a dead one” was archaic. It had been born with ‘The Deer Menace Conference’ of 1930 which changed the status of deer from previously game animal resource to one of vermin.

“That 1930 change in status had nothing to do with science.”

Today an estimated quarter of million deer browse grass and to a lesser extent foliage just as several million moa did for millions of years. In addition a 2001 Landcare Research study showed 81 percent of public considered deer were a resource and not a pest. However the department still overtly or covertly pursued anti-wild animal policies implementing them with 1080 poison programmes and commercialor “search and destroy” operations to waste helicopters slaughtering deer, tahr and chamois.

Laurie Collins said the Department of Conservation should instruct and educate hunters into game management based on ethical hunting such as not shooting female deer when newly-born fawns were with their mothers.

“In identifying and selecting a deer as to whether it was an adult female or a prime young spiker for meat for example, a hunter would take time to positively identify the animal. This would have a major spin-off in terms of heightening hunter safety,” he said.

In addition, judging by recent accident circumstances, hunters being so intent on shooting any deer or other animal, were too often carrying a loaded firearm when in a vehicle or crossing a fence. Frequently hunting accidents involved spot lighting, an unethical practice in any sportsman’s code. Laurie Collins said he suspected that spot-lighters on country roads at night often were likely to have been drinking alcohol beforehand thereby breaking a cardinal rule in hunting safety.

“DOC needs to crack down on spot-lighting on public lands, police on private land and public roads and apprehend offenders with heavy fines for guilty parties, but the prejudiced Department of Conservation turns a blind eye as it wants as many deer shot as possible,” he said.

Laurie Collins said a good starting point would be firearms safety instruction in all schools as part of the national curriculum.

" After all we teach children road safety and water safety. New Zealand is a country where firearms are widely used for sport and recreation - and long may it remain so.”

However Laurie Collins said the suggestion of firearms safety training would probably cause a few academics to react that such training glorified “a gun culture".

He said recent reaction by academics was “wooly-headed thinking.”

Road deaths relative to car ownership were many times more than hunting fatalities relative to firearm ownership added Laurie Collins. And in over 450,000 sporting injury claims in one year there was likely to be only a few firearm related injuries.

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