Bennett's wallaby — benjamint444, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Notamacropus rufogriseus

Best season: Year-round
When they move: Dusk, night and early morning
Country: South Canterbury scrub, gullies and pasture margins
How hard: Easy to find, easy to miss - small and quick once moving.

How they behave, and what that means

They shelter in scrub through the day and feed on open pasture after dark, so they are usually hunted at last light or with a lamp where that is permitted. Hearing is good; they freeze before they bolt.

Sign to look for

Well-worn runs through scrub into pasture, droppings on feeding ground and grazed patches at gully edges

Tips

Sit the scrub-to-pasture edge at last light rather than walking it.
They are a declared pest in Canterbury; landowners usually want them gone.
Small target - a rimfire is enough at honest range on private land, but nothing under .222 Remington may be used on public conservation land, so carry the centrefire if the trip covers both.
Check the regional council rules for the district before you plan a trip.

Where you’ll find them

Rough country, scrub and gully systems, most active around dawn and dusk. Because they are under an active containment programme, landowners are often keen to see numbers reduced.

Dogs and 1080

Wallaby control areas overlap with poison operations. Check the 1080 map before taking a dog.

Check 1080 operations

Why people shoot them

Control. Almost all are left where they fall.

Wallabies are a contained pest and the aim is to keep them inside their containment areas. The meat is edible and rarely taken. Regional councils run programmes and are often glad of help.

What the landowner wants

Numbers, plainly. Ask the regional council as well as the landowner — containment areas have their own rules.

What to shoot a bennett's wallaby with

A .22 magnum or a small centrefire. Wallabies are tougher and bigger than they look.

Bigger than a possum and often shot further out, in open country. A .22 LR that is fine on possums will wound a wallaby at any distance.

What people use

.22 WMR or .17 HMR — close rangeprivate land only
.222 or .223 — the common choice, and the smallest that is legal on DOC land
.243 — where wallabies share the country with goats or deer

Anything marked private land only is below DOC’s minimum and may not be used for hunting on public conservation land — lawful on a farm with the owner’s permission, not lawful on DOC land. If a trip covers both, take the centrefire.

Watch out

Do not treat them as large possums — a .22 LR that is fine on a possum will wound a wallaby. And where you are decides what you may carry: a rimfire is lawful on a farm with permission and forbidden for hunting on public conservation land, so if a trip covers both, take the centrefire.

On public conservation land, there is a legal minimum

Only centre fire rifles of calibre .222 Remington or larger may be used for hunting, or crossbows and bows that meet the minimum standard specified by DOC.

Hunting with any shotgun, rimfire rifle, .17 or .22 hornet calibre, air rifle or tracer and incendiary type ammunition is forbidden.

That is DOC’s hunting permit condition, and it applies wherever the permit does. On private land the landowner sets the terms — but the reason for the rule does not change with the fence line. Read the permit conditions

Read further

Effective game killing — Terminal Ballistics Research Nathan Foster, in Taranaki, has spent decades documenting what bullets actually do to these animals — red deer, tahr, chamois, sika, pigs, goats. If you read one thing about this, read him rather than an overseas chart built around whitetail and elk. He sells books alongside the free knowledge base, which is worth knowing; the research is still the best there is.
Cartridge-by-cartridge research Already own a rifle? Start here and read about what you have, rather than about what to buy.
Matching cartridge to game — Hunter-ed The platform US state agencies use for hunter education. Good on the principle.

These are starting points, not prescriptions. Shot placement and bullet construction beat calibre nearly every time, and a rifle you shoot well beats a more powerful one you flinch with — which is an argument for practising more, not for taking less gun.

After the shot

Better eating than its reputation, and it cools quickly.

Standing over it: Gut it and hang it. The carcass is small enough that it loses heat on its own once it is open and off the ground.
Eating it: Lean, dark and closer to venison than to anything else. Worth taking rather than leaving, and the tail is the part people come back for.

Getting it out, butchered, and what the law says about selling it

Hunting bennett's wallaby on public conservation land

Permits, ballots, restricted areas and which herds are managed how are DOC’s to set, and they change. This is their page for this animal.

DOC: hunting bennett's wallaby

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:

Permits for public land Department of ConservationA permit is required to hunt public conservation land, and conditions vary by block.
Firearms licence and rules Te Tari Pūreke — Firearms Safety AuthorityLicensing, storage, and what you may carry and where.
What a paper road lets you do Herenga ā Nuku AotearoaThe Outdoor Access Commission. They define what an unformed legal road, a marginal strip or an easement actually entitles you to — passage is not permission to hunt, and the land either side stays private.Find one on our map
Regional pest and hunting rules Your regional or district councilPest management plans, wallaby containment areas, and vehicle access on unformed roads.

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.