The closest most duck shooters get to upsetting the neighbours is when they start blasting away while some are still trying to sleep, but someone went much further than that this week.
A number of Waipapakauri Ramp residents were disgusted to find the carcasses of more than a dozen mallards on the high tide mark on 90 Mile Beach, just south of the ramp, on Tuesday. Some had been partially plucked, some had had the breasts removed and some were still covered in feathers.
"Who in their right mind would do something like this?" one resident asked.
"If they're not going to do anything with them, they shouldn't shoot them. And if they do shoot them then decide they don't want them, or have to find some way of getting rid of the remains, they shouldn't dump them at the beach like this. Anyone who does this deserves to have his neck wrung."
A Kaitaia man, who did not wish to be named, said no genuine hunter would dump birds, at the beach or anywhere else.
"This is disgraceful," he said.
"These birds are mallards; they would have been good eating. If whoever shot them didn't want them he might at least have given them to someone who would have appreciated them.
"If he had to dispose of them, he should have buried them. Dumping them like this is not acceptable. Whoever did this isn't a genuine duck shooter, he's an idiot."
The birds were washing backwards and forwards in the shallows as the tide rose on Tuesday afternoon, spreading entrails over some 30 metres of the shoreline.
