NZDA H&W 198 WEB
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the things that don’t go as well as<br />
you hoped and the causes of negative<br />
outcomes. Hunters representing<br />
safety organisations, commercial<br />
enterprises and non-profit<br />
organisations collaborated with me in<br />
a workshop to develop a framework<br />
showing how complex the activity<br />
of hunting really is. It emerged that<br />
hunting falls into three stages, which<br />
I call sensing (getting those initial cues<br />
that a deer is nearby), comprehending<br />
(using skills and experience to decide<br />
what to do), and committing (the lastmoment<br />
checks before firing). This<br />
may be a bit of an oversimplification<br />
but it helps explain how initial<br />
misapprehensions can cascade into<br />
disastrous outcomes. For ex<strong>amp</strong>le, the<br />
simple act of splitting up the hunting<br />
party can lead to you getting yourself<br />
or your mate in the crosshairs of a<br />
telescopic sight. There are many ways<br />
to get from one stage to another and<br />
there are many opportunities for<br />
things to go wrong.<br />
The next piece of research involved<br />
getting hunters to personally report<br />
the times that they had come<br />
close to pulling the trigger, only to<br />
realise they almost had an FTI. We<br />
had nearly 80 cases reported, but<br />
unfortunately more than half had<br />
to be excluded because hunters did<br />
not follow the instructions correctly.<br />
Some did not provide any description<br />
of their near-miss; some told a story<br />
of how they were on<br />
the receiving end of an<br />
FTI, and some simply<br />
expressed an opinion.<br />
This was disappointing<br />
because it meant we<br />
had much less useful<br />
data from which to<br />
infer conclusions.<br />
However, I was still<br />
able to use the data<br />
to help improve the<br />
framework from the<br />
previous research, to<br />
produce some basic<br />
statistics and to help<br />
plan further work.<br />
Probably the most<br />
notable bits of data<br />
I collected support<br />
the Mountain Safety<br />
Council’s recent report<br />
“The Hunter’s Tail”.<br />
Available from the MSC website,<br />
this report draws together data from<br />
a variety of sources to describe the<br />
prevalence and types of incidents<br />
that have occurred in New Zealand<br />
hunting as far back as 1979. It has<br />
generated considerable discussion,<br />
and while much of the information<br />
was already widely known, the way<br />
the results were presented and MSC’s<br />
use of social media (Facebook,<br />
Twitter, LinkedIn) have made the<br />
findings much more accessible.<br />
One section of the report<br />
The author on a guided hunt – seconds away from shooting<br />
his first deer under the guidance of Mike Spray, at Makapua<br />
Station. Mike had a video camera with him and there was also<br />
one mounted on the scope of the rifle, pointing backwards.<br />
identified the time of day that most<br />
FTIs occur, and the near-miss reports<br />
I received appear to support the same<br />
conclusion. That is: most occur in<br />
the mornings. This may not be all<br />
that that surprising, because most<br />
hunting probably does take place in<br />
the morning.<br />
However, an assertion at the end<br />
of the report implies that FTIs are<br />
a generational issue – that the older<br />
hunters are the problem. This is<br />
a risky claim because it could lull<br />
younger hunters into a false sense of<br />
confidence – that they are immune<br />
How many animals do you see in the picture below? If you see just one deer, you are wrong. The answer is available at www.theroar.org.nz.<br />
NZ Hunting & Wildlife <strong>198</strong> - Spring 2017<br />
35
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