Field guide

Game animals and pests of New Zealand

Nineteen introduced animals: the game species worth the walk, the pests that get you the yes, and the managed herds you ballot for. What they are, where they have been recorded, what to shoot them with, and what a poison operation means for your dogs.

Deer, pigs and goats

Red deer

Cervus elaphus

1,874 recorded sightings

Wapiti

Cervus canadensis

Too few public records to map

Fallow deer

Dama dama

306 recorded sightings

Sika deer

Cervus nippon

177 recorded sightings

Sambar deer

Rusa unicolor

50 recorded sightings

Rusa deer

Rusa timorensis

1 recorded sighting

White-tailed deer

Odocoileus virginianus

116 recorded sightings

Feral pig

Sus scrofa

416 recorded sightings

Feral goat

Capra hircus

914 recorded sightings

Himalayan tahr

Hemitragus jemlahicus

50 recorded sightings

Chamois

Rupicapra rupicapra

134 recorded sightings

The hunting year Where each animal lives, when the deer and tahr rut, and every ballot date, on one chart.

Possums and wallabies

Bennett's wallaby

Notamacropus rufogriseus

81 recorded sightings

Dama wallaby

Notamacropus eugenii

210 recorded sightings

Parma wallaby

Notamacropus parma

91 recorded sightings

Brushtail possum

Trichosurus vulpecula

Widespread — everywhere in the right country

The hunting year Where each animal lives, when the deer and tahr rut, and every ballot date, on one chart.

Rabbits and hares

Rabbit

Oryctolagus cuniculus

Widespread — everywhere in the right country

Brown hare

Lepus europaeus

Widespread — everywhere in the right country

The hunting year Where each animal lives, when the deer and tahr rut, and every ballot date, on one chart.

Turkeys and peafowl

Wild turkey

Meleagris gallopavo

7,186 recorded sightings

Peafowl

Pavo cristatus

5,078 recorded sightings

The hunting year Where each animal lives, when the deer and tahr rut, and every ballot date, on one chart.

About the photographs. Where we have a New Zealand animal we use it and the caption says where. Several of these are the same species photographed overseas: openly licensed New Zealand photographs of a live red deer or a fallow buck are surprisingly hard to come by, because most people who see one are not carrying a camera. If you have better, send it to us — with your name on it.

Occurrence data from GBIF.org.

Game birds

Duck, swan, pūkeko and the rest are hunted under a Fish & Game licence, in seasons set every year and different in each region — and getting onto a maimai works nothing like getting onto a deer block.

  • The licence you need, and the non-toxic shot rule
  • Why maimai access is the hardest in New Zealand hunting, and the ways in that work
  • Clubs to join, and where to find your region’s rules
Game bird hunting: how to start

Before you go

Seasons, permits, firearms rules and area closures differ by region and by land status, and they change. We don’t publish those — a stale copy of a rule is worse than none. We do map the land itself: boundaries, public conservation land and unformed legal roads. So find the country here, and check the rules with whoever sets them:

And on private land, the landowner sets the conditions — times, areas, and which animals they want taken. Ask, and stick to what they say.

And whatever the rules say

Nobody regulates this part, so nobody else will tell you. It is what experienced hunters do without thinking about it.

  • Identify your target beyond all doubtNot the shape, not the colour, not the sound, not the movement — the animal. Most people killed hunting in New Zealand are shot by another hunter who was sure. If you are talking yourself into it, that is the answer.
  • Assume you are spending the night outOn every trip, including the two-hour one. Carry a survival bag, a warm layer that works wet, food you do not intend to eat and a head torch with spare batteries. People are late constantly and it only matters when they are not carrying this.
  • Assume you are getting wetRain, river, or sweat — one of the three, every time. Wool or synthetic next to the skin and never cotton, which stops insulating the moment it is damp and then takes your heat. Keep one dry layer sealed in a bag and do not touch it until you need it.
  • Carry a knife, and a way to make fireThe knife is for the animal, and for cutting yourself free of something, and for making a shelter. Fire is what turns a bad night into an uncomfortable one. Both live on you, not in the pack you might put down.
  • Carry a PLBThere is no cell coverage where you are going. A personal locator beacon is the difference between a search and a rescue, they can be hired cheaply, and it is the single most useful thing in the pack. Take it out of the pack lid and put it on you.
  • If you are unsure about the river, do not cross itDrowning is the other thing that kills hunters here. A river that is up will still be up in the morning, and it comes down faster than you think. Waiting is almost always available; crossing is not always survivable.
  • Tell someone, and be honest about the timeNot the time you hope to be out — the time after which something has gone wrong. Then mark yourself back, because a search that starts for somebody sitting in the pub is a search that will not be taken seriously next time.

The firearms rules themselves are in the Firearms Safety Code , and Mountain Safety Council teach the bush side properly. Both are worth an evening before your first trip somewhere new.

Thermals, on public conservation land

Three separate rules that get argued about as though they were one. These are conditions of a DOC hunting permit, so they apply to public conservation land — every line in quotation marks below is DOC’s wording, not ours.

  • Permitted: Hand-held, in daylight, to find animalsHand-held monocular and binocular thermal imaging equipment is permitted for the use of searching and locating wild animals during daylight hours.
  • Prohibited: Anything mounted on the rifleHunting or discharging a firearm that has thermal imaging, night vision, or spotlight equipment attached.
  • Prohibited: After dark, at allHaving a loaded firearm or discharging a firearm during the hours of darkness (half an hour after sunset to half an hour before sunrise).
  • Prohibited: Spotlights and any other artificial lightHunting using spotlights, torches, night vision equipment, vehicle headlights, or any other artificial light source.
It locates. It does not identify.

Read the permitted wording again: searching and locating. A thermal tells you something warm is there, not what it is. DOC’s own line when they announced the change was that hunters “will then still need to identify their target beyond all doubt before taking their shot”, and that has not moved.

Check the date on whatever you were told. Hand-held thermal only became permitted on 1 June 2024. A lot of confident advice still in circulation predates that — and a lot of people heard “thermals are legal now” and took it to mean the one on the rifle.

On private land there is no DOC permit, so these conditions are not what governs. The landowner sets the terms and every firearms and target-identification rule applies exactly as it does anywhere else. We are not going to tell you more than that, because it would be us guessing about your block.

DOC’s hunting permit conditions · the announcement, 31 May 2024 · if DOC has changed this and we have not, tell us.

And after the shot

Getting the heat out, carrying it out whole or boned, who is allowed to eat it, finding a processor who will take a wild animal, and the law on selling it — which is shorter than most people think and stricter than most people hope.

What to do with it