Why this exists
Both sides want the same thing and cannot find each other
There are hunters who would look after a place properly and never get the chance to prove it, and farmers who want animals gone and no way to tell one caller from another. That gap is the whole problem, and nearly all of it is friction rather than disagreement.
The gate closes for one reason at a time
Access to private land in New Zealand is not closing because farmers turned against hunting. It closes one gate at a time, and usually for the same handful of reasons: somebody shot near stock, left a gate open, drove a paddock in the wet, took an animal that was not theirs to take, or turned up unannounced once too often. It takes one of those to close a block, and it stays closed for everybody who comes after.
The cost of that lands on the people who did nothing wrong. A hunter who would have shut the gate has no way to demonstrate it before they ask, so they get the same answer as the person who would not — and the farmer, who has no way to tell the difference either, gives the only safe answer available to them. Both are behaving sensibly. The outcome is bad for both.
What we are trying to remove
Anonymity is what makes carelessness cheap. Someone who knocks on a door as a stranger risks nothing by being a nuisance, because there is no version of them that persists after they drive away. So the job is to make hunters identifiable, and to make the asking cost something in effort rather than in nerve:
- A hunter has a page before they ask. Their name, their licence as they state it, references, and whether landowners have had them back. The farmer reads it before deciding, not after.
- They ask on paper, not at the gate. A printed letter with a code the landowner scans. No doorstep, no pressure, and a yes or no takes one tap.
- The landowner stays private throughout. Our map works out the postal address without ever showing the hunter who owns the place, and a hunter never gets a name, phone or email unless the landowner chooses to send it.
- A hunt plan says where they will be and when. Which is worth having for its own sake, and matters again in the section below.
“Am I liable if a hunter hurts himself on my place?”
This is the most common reason we hear for saying no, and the fear is largely misplaced. We are not lawyers and none of this is legal advice — so rather than tell you what we reckon, here is what the regulator and the courts have actually said, with the links, so you can check it or hand it to your own adviser.
They almost certainly cannot sue you
New Zealand does not allow it. Under section 317 of the Accident Compensation Act 2001 , “no person may bring proceedings independently of this Act … in any court in New Zealand, for damages arising directly or indirectly out of” a personal injury covered by ACC. A hunter who falls down a bank on your farm is covered by ACC, and ACC is instead of suing you, not as well as. (Exemplary damages for outrageous conduct remain possible — that is a punishment for something egregious, not compensation for an accident.)
WorkSafe says recreation is not your risk to manage
WorkSafe’s standing policy on recreational access is explicit that a business whose land is being used for recreation “is only responsible for risks arising from the work or workplace, and is not responsible for the risks associated with the recreational activities”. Read the policy The exception is if you are the one providing the recreation as a business — a commercial guiding operation, say. Letting somebody shoot goats is not that.
The High Court has said the same thing
This is the Whakaari case. The landowner had let tour operators onto White Island under licence, was convicted after the 2019 eruption, and appealed. In Whakaari Management Ltd v WorkSafe New Zealand [2025] NZHC 288, Moore J quashed the conviction, holding at [240] that the landowner “did not have a duty under s 37 to ensure that the walking tour workplace was without risks to the health or safety of any person”. On what could fairly have been asked of it, the Court said at [279]:
“As a landowner who was merely permitting others to undertake their own activities on their land for a fee, it is difficult to see what more could reasonably have been expected of WML.”Moore J, [2025] NZHC 288 at [279]
The Court also went to WorkSafe’s own recreational-access guidance — the policy quoted above — and called it “instructive” at [264], which is why these two blocks point the same way rather than merely agreeing. The judgment itself (archived copy of the Courts of New Zealand PDF) · Herenga ā Nuku’s plain-English summary
Being straight about the limits of it: Whakaari concerned commercial operators paying for access, not a bloke shooting goats, and it turned on whether the landowner “manages or controls” the workplace. A farmer letting a hunter on is further from that duty than the landowner who was acquitted here, not closer — but if your situation is unusual, that is a question for your own lawyer rather than for us.
And Parliament is about to put it beyond argument
The Health and Safety at Work Amendment Act passed on 1 July 2026 and commences on 1 April 2027. WorkSafe’s own summary of the change: landowners “will no longer have health and safety duties for people using their land for recreation purposes, unless the activity is connected to the work of that business or organisation, or work is occurring at the same time and place as the recreational users are present”. WorkSafe on the changes
Note the date, because it matters and people will get it wrong: that section is not in force yet. Until 1 April 2027 the position rests on WorkSafe’s policy and the Whakaari decision above, which already point the same way.
What you are responsible for — and it is small
One thing, and it is about your work rather than their recreation. Herenga ā Nuku puts it plainly: you should warn visitors of work hazards they would not expect to run into, naming “tree-felling, blasting, earthmoving machinery or pest control activities”. You are not expected to warn them about “natural features like bluffs, landslides, rivers and wasp nests”, and you are not liable when somebody injures themselves through their own carelessness. Their full guidance for landholders
That one remaining duty is a communication problem, and it is the same problem as knowing who is on your place. A hunter here files a plan saying where they will be and when, so you know when to mention that you are topping the back paddock on Saturday or that there is a control operation on the boundary. We map 1080 operations and their caution periods for the same reason — “pest control activities” is on the regulator’s own list, and neither side should be finding out about one by accident.
What we are not
We take no fee and no commission from landowners, and there is no version of this where the person who owns the land is the customer. The site is free for hunters today as well, and if a charge ever arrives it will be theirs and not yours. We do not lease land, sell hunting rights, act as an outfitter, or take a cut of anything agreed at a gate. We introduce people and then get out of the way — we are not a guarantor and we do not supervise anybody. Whatever you agree is between the two of you.
Own land? The page written for you covers who would turn up, what happens to your details, and how to say no.
For landownersIf anything on this page is out of date or we have read a source wrong, we would rather know than be right: tell us. Where the map data comes from is on the sources page.