Game birds
Thinking about duck shooting?
An orientation, not a rulebook. What it actually involves, what you have to have before you go, the honest truth about access — and where to get the rules, which belong to somebody else.
Duck shooting has the most closed access in New Zealand hunting. That is the honest starting point.
A deer block can be asked for with a letter. A maimai usually cannot. Ponds are built, named and inherited: the same families have had the same stand for three generations, opening weekend is a standing invitation among people who already know each other, and there is often no vacancy to ask about. This is the one part of the site where our own method — find the block, write to the owner — is the weakest tool in the box.
That does not mean there is no way in. It means the way in is mostly social rather than cartographic, and the routes below are the real ones rather than the ones a map can show you.
Before you buy anything
Four rules that apply in every region, are easy to get wrong, and cost you if you do. Not one of them is a season date — those belong to your Fish & Game council, not to us.
A game bird licence, which is not your firearms licence
Two different documents from two different bodies. The firearms licence comes from Police and lets you own and use the shotgun; the game bird licence comes from Fish & Game and lets you hunt game birds with it. You need both, and a landowner who knows what they are looking at will expect to see both.
One licence, twelve rulebooks
A game bird licence is valid in every Fish & Game region in the country — but the season, the bag limits and the shooting hours are set separately by each of the twelve councils, and they differ. Hunting a neighbouring region on the same licence means reading that region’s regulations first. This catches people out constantly.
Fish & Game: “All game bird hunting licences can be used in all Fish & Game New Zealand regions.”
A day licence will not get you out on opening weekend
Fish & Game’s regulations state that day licences are valid only on or after the second Monday of the new season. Opening weekend is the busiest and most social weekend of the year, and it is the one a day licence does not cover — if that is the trip you have been invited on, you need the whole-season licence.
Fish & Game: “Day licences are valid only on or after the second Monday of the new season.”
Non-toxic shot, and it is not a guideline
No lead shot may be possessed or used for hunting waterfowl within 200 metres of open water — steel or another non-toxic load instead. It applies on public land, private land, DOC land and Fish & Game land alike, and it binds a farmer shooting their own pond exactly as it binds a visitor. Turning up with lead is the single most common way a first-timer breaks the law.
Fish & Game non-toxic shot regulations
Fish & Game: licences The non-toxic shot rule Firearms licence
The ways in that actually work
Ordered by how most people really got there, rather than by how tidy they are.
Be asked, and be the person worth asking twice
Most people’s first opening weekend is somebody else’s maimai. Turn up with your own licence, your own non-toxic cartridges, food, and waders that fit; do the decoys and the cleaning up; take the birds you are told to take and no more. A hunter who does that gets asked back, which is the whole of this site’s argument applied to a pond instead of a paddock.
Claim a stand on public water at mark-up
This is the documented route almost nobody explains. Shooting stands on public water are claimed under a mark-up system: a hunter who held a stand last season may re-claim it up to mark-up day, and after that morning any unclaimed stand is open to any licence holder who plants a marked stake with their name and licence number on it. You must be there in person, you may claim only one, and it cannot be within 90 metres of another claimed stand without that person’s consent. If a claimant is not in their stand within an hour of opening time, another licence holder may use it for the rest of that day. The date moves every year and differs by region — your region’s regulations booklet has it.
Fish & Game regulations, “Mark-up Day”
If you live on the land, you may already be allowed
The Wildlife Act lets the occupier of land, their spouse or partner, and one son or daughter hunt game on that land during the open season without a licence — though every other regulation, including non-toxic shot, still applies. It covers three people and that land only, and it does not extend to your mates. If you are a farm family this is worth knowing; if you are the friend being invited, it is worth knowing it does not cover you.
Wildlife Act 1953, as set out in Fish & Game’s regulations
Fish & Game’s own access points and managed wetlands
Fish & Game publish public access points for hunting, and some regions manage wetlands with hunting access. Coverage is patchy and it is nothing like the number of private ponds, but it is genuinely public and it is written down. Herenga ā Nuku map them alongside the public access we already use for paper roads.
Join something
A Fish & Game region, an NZDA branch or a local club is how most people who did not grow up with a maimai ended up in one. It is slower than a letter and it works better here than a letter does.
Where to meet people who already do it
You cannot ask a stranger for a share in their maimai. You can walk into any of these on a Saturday morning knowing nobody, which is the difference that matters — and every person in them shoots, or knows somebody who does.
- New Zealand Clay Target Association About 90 clubs, most of the country
The single most useful thing a person with no connections can do. You learn to actually hit a moving target and handle a shotgun safely, months before opening weekend and without wasting a bird finding out — and the people standing next to you are the ones who have maimais. Turning up is free of any social debt, which is exactly what asking for a stand is not.
If you are very new to clay target shooting, inform the contact person at the Club, they will ensure that someone meets you and shows you ‘the ropes’.
- New Zealand Gundog Trial Association Affiliated clubs nationwide, plus a graded training scheme
If you have a dog, want one, or want to know what a good one looks like before you buy a puppy off a card in a feed store. Their site lists the affiliated clubs with contacts and runs a graded training scheme. A dog that will sit still and pick up a bird is also the fastest way to become worth inviting back.
- Your Fish & Game region Twelve regions, each with its own office
They sell the licence and write the regulations, so you are dealing with them anyway. They are also the ones who know what is happening locally — habitat working bees, youth and novice days, and which stretches of public water actually get shot.
Find your region, then read their rules
There are twelve Fish & Game councils and each sets its own season, bag limits and shooting hours. The council whose boundary you are standing in is the one whose regulations apply — not the one you bought the licence from, and not the one you live in.
- Northland
- Auckland/Waikato
- Eastern
- Hawke’s Bay
- Taranaki
- Wellington
- Nelson/Marlborough
- West Coast
- North Canterbury
- Central South Island
- Otago
- Southland
Turkeys and peafowl are not game birds
Wild turkeys and peafowl are hunted here, but not under a Fish & Game licence. The Wildlife Act lists both in Schedule 5, wildlife not protected, so there is no season or bag limit for them — what applies is the landowner’s permission and the ordinary firearms rules.
Wild turkey and peafowl have field guide pages of their own: where they live, how they are hunted, and what to shoot them with.
Why this page stops here
We do not publish season dates, bag limits or shooting hours for game birds, and we do not intend to. They are set by twelve Fish & Game councils, differ region by region, and are re-made by Gazette notice every year. A stale copy of a season date on a website is how somebody ends up shooting out of season saying they read it here — so the dates stay with the people who set them, one click away.
We also have not built maps for it. The rest of this site works because access to deer country is a question a map can answer: who owns this block, is there a public road through it, who do I write to. Duck shooting access is mostly not that question. Mapping ponds we cannot get you onto would look like a product and function as a disappointment.
If that changes — and the region boundaries, the public access points and the wetlands are all available to us — this is where it will go. We would rather ship a page that is honest about being an orientation than a map that implies more than it delivers.
The legal instrument itself, if you want to read the source rather than a summary of it: Open Season for Game in Fish and Game Regions, New Zealand Gazette . Public access points and Fish & Game boundaries are mapped by Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa , the same source behind the paper roads on our map.
What this site does do
Big game, where a map and a letter genuinely work: what lives where, who owns the land, where the public can already go, and how to ask for the rest.
Open the map The field guide Hunt birds and think we have this wrong? Tell us