The data
Counts are read from the database as this page loads, so they are what is actually there rather than what was true when somebody last edited a paragraph.
Hansen, University of Maryland, Google, USGS and NASA (Global Forest Change v1.13) ↗CC BY 4.0
The yellow-to-brown patches on the map: where satellites detected tree cover being lost, and in which year, from 2011 onward. We group the 25 m pixels into patches of about 3 ha or more and colour them by age.
Where it is thin: It is tree-cover loss, not a harvest record: in New Zealand it is mostly forestry harvest, but slips, storms and fire are in it too, and the year is when the loss was detected. Edges are approximate. It says nothing about who may enter; most cut-over is private forestry. Updated once a year when the dataset is.
Property boundaries
304,527Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) ↗CC BY 4.0
Drawing the block you click on, and working out which addresses fall inside or beside it.
Where it is thin: A boundary is a legal line, not a fence. What is on the ground can differ, and a title can cover several separate pieces of land.
Unformed legal roads (paper roads)
65,023Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa, the Outdoor Access Commission ↗CC BY 3.0 NZ
The purple corridors. We carry their classification of which legal roads are unformed rather than deriving our own.
Where it is thin: "Unformed" is their call, not a LINZ attribute, and it can be wrong or out of date on the ground. A right to pass along one is not a right to hunt, to carry a firearm, or to drive. Their licence requires us to say when we took the data, so we do.
Conservation land, reserves and marginal strips
17,963LINZ Protected Areas ↗CC BY 4.0
Showing what the land is — conservation park, stewardship area, marginal strip, reserve — and which authority administers it.
Where it is thin: Classification only. It never says whether you may hunt: that depends on a DOC permit, the rules for that area, and sometimes a ballot. Marine areas are excluded because nobody hunts the sea.
Department of Conservation ↗CC BY 4.0
The 1080 map, and the check against your hunt plan’s entry point.
Where it is thin: DOC operations only. It does not include every regional council, OSPRI or private operation, so a clear result is not a guarantee. On private land the owner knows what has been laid and is the best source there is; on public land, read the signs at every entrance. Caution periods outlast the drop by months.
Where animals have been recorded
GBIF, from iNaturalist, DOC and museum records ↗CC BY 4.0
The sightings layer and the counts on each species page.
Where it is thin: These are observations, so they show where people looked as much as where animals are. Roadsides and popular tracks are over-represented and back country is under-represented. Never read a low count as an empty valley.
Open-Meteo, from national forecast models ↗CC BY 4.0
The forecast on a hunt plan, for your dates at your entry point.
Where it is thin: A single point at coarse resolution. Tops and valleys differ from it sharply, and rivers rise faster than a rain total suggests. It is not a substitute for MetService before you leave.
Copernicus DEM, via Open-Meteo ↗Copernicus terms
The climb and the height range on a hunt plan, sampled on a grid over the area.
Where it is thin: About 90 m resolution. Right for "how much climb is in this block", wrong for a spot height or a bluff.
Roads, tracks and the topographic basemap
LINZ Basemaps ↗CC BY 4.0
The white public roads and the tan vehicle tracks on the map.
Where it is thin: A track in this data means a track is visible on the ground. It carries no owner and no right of way — most are farm races or forestry roads on private land.
LINZ NZ Addresses ↗CC BY 4.0
Resolving where to post a letter for a block, without ever showing you the owner’s name.
Where it is thin: On a farm the house is often on an adjoining title, so we accept the nearest dwelling within 250 m and tell you how far out it is. Remote blocks frequently have no address at all, and we say so rather than guessing.
What we deliberately do not publish
These are decisions, not gaps. Each one is something we could show and have chosen not to, and the reason matters more than the rule.
- Landowner names
- The map resolves a mailing address without ever looking up who owns the block. A letter to "The Landowner" is deliverable, and naming somebody to a stranger is not ours to do.
- Hunting season dates
- Game bird seasons, ballots and area closures are set by Fish & Game and DOC, differ by region and change every year. We name who sets them and link out. We state none of them.
- Whether you may hunt a particular block
- We show what the land is and who administers it. Whether hunting is lawful there turns on a permit, the area’s own rules and the landowner — getting that wrong points somebody at a prosecution.
- A difficulty rating for country
- We give the distance, the climb and the relief and let you judge. "Suitable for beginners" is a claim we cannot stand behind, and a wrong one puts a person in country they cannot get out of.
- Whether a block has been flown
- Commercial recovery and aerial control both work public conservation land, and a catchment worked recently can hold animals and still feel empty. DOC publishes the land schedule, the AATH units and its tahr control plan; none of it is a feed of what happened where and when, so we explain the mechanism on the species pages and link the schedules rather than implying we know. Silence from us is not an all-clear.
- Which guide to hire
- We name no guides and take no commission. What we give instead is the test anyone can apply — a guide on public conservation land holds a DOC concession or works under the NZPHGA collective one — because a recommendation from us would be worth less than a permission you can check.
- Firearms licence numbers
- Landowners see that a hunter states they hold a licence, and whether we have checked it. They do not see the number: it cannot be verified with Police by a third party, so publishing it would cost the hunter something and buy nobody anything.