Peafowl — Oscar Dove, iNaturalist, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

Pavo cristatus

Best season: No season. Any time of year, wherever the landowner says yes
When they move: Feed on open ground by day; roost high in trees at night, and call loudly around dusk and dawn
Country: Wooded lowlands and coastal farmland: the upper Whanganui River catchment, northern Māhia Peninsula and the pine forests of South Kaipara Head
How hard: Not hard where they live, but they only live in a few places.

How they behave, and what that means

Wary, quick to run for cover and hard to push back out of it. Their calls give the roost away, so most are taken at first or last light near the roost trees, or as they come out onto pasture edges to feed.

Sign to look for

Long tail feathers under roost trees, large three-toed prints, and a loud, carrying scream at dusk

Tips

Listen at dusk. The calls will lead you to the roost trees.
Most of a peacock's length is tail. Aim for the head and neck, not the middle of the bird.
They run rather than fly when disturbed. Cover the way back to scrub before you move in.
Be sure what you are shooting is feral. Plenty of peafowl are somebody's garden birds, and a neighbour's peacock is not a wild one.

Not a game bird

The Wildlife Act 1953 lists Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) in Schedule 5, wildlife not protected. Section 7(3):

“The wildlife for the time being specified in Schedule 5 is hereby declared to be unprotected throughout New Zealand, except where that schedule otherwise provides.”

So there is no Fish & Game licence, season or bag limit for peafowl. What still applies is everything else: the landowner’s permission, a firearms licence, and the rules for wherever you are standing.

On public conservation land, DOC’s small game hunting permit covers rabbits and hares, not birds — ask DOC before hunting peafowl there.

Older pages, including a DOC discussion paper, say peafowl may only be hunted by the occupier of the land or with their written consent, under a 1961 notice. The current Act lists peafowl in Schedule 5 instead. The landowner’s permission is needed either way.

Wildlife Act, Schedule 5 DOC: small game permit NZ Birds Online

Recorded sightings

5,078

Records from 1972 to 2026.

See them on the map

Most of these are logged by the public rather than by hunters, so a cluster is a real sign the animal is about and out where it can be seen — it is not a record of where people hunt. But records follow tracks, roads and campsites, so empty country usually means nobody has walked it with a phone rather than that there is nothing there. Presence, not density.

Occurrence data from GBIF.org.

Recorded in these regions

Records, not animals: each region page has its blocks, huts and permit areas.

Want to hunt this?

Most of the country is privately owned. Build a profile a landowner can trust, then ask the property you want.

Create your hunter profile

Why people shoot them

Control, mostly.

Farmers and regional councils have raised peafowl as a pest of pasture and crops, with Bay of Plenty the worst affected. They are eaten, but most are shot to bring numbers down.

What the landowner wants

Numbers down — and be certain the birds you are asked to shoot are feral. Plenty of peafowl in the same district belong to someone, and shooting a neighbour’s peacock ends more than one invitation.

What to shoot a peafowl with

A shotgun. A 12 gauge with heavy shot and a tight choke is the usual turkey and peafowl gun.

These are big, heavily feathered birds, and the reliable kill is a head and neck shot at close range. Light shot into the body wounds far more often than it kills.

What people use

12 gauge, heavy loads for large birds, tight choke — the standard
20 gauge — workable inside about 30 m with heavy loads
.22 rimfire — used by some farmers on roosting birds, head shots onlyprivate land only

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. DOC’s small game permit does not cover these birds anyway, so ask DOC before hunting them there at all.

Watch out

Pattern the gun on paper before you go: one that throws a patchy pattern at 30 m will wound birds. Near water or wetland, use non-toxic shot anyway — the non-toxic rules are written for game birds, but lead in a wetland does the same damage whichever bird it was fired at.

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

Draw it the same day, and keep it cool.

Standing over it: Get the guts out soon — a whole bird left in a warm vehicle spoils quickly. Skinning is far faster than plucking a turkey, and most people keep only the breast and legs.
Eating it: Wild turkey is darker, leaner and firmer than a supermarket bird: rest the breast, and braise or slow-cook the legs. Peafowl is eaten too, and is much like turkey.

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

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.