Hunting family set sights on TV show's success

Greg Duley and son Willie, of Taradale, producers of NZ Hunter Adventures, a 10-part series starting on Choice TV.

A Hawke's Bay family's love for the outdoors and hunting has spawned a new TV series which starts a 10-week season tonight.

Greg and Fiona Duley, publishers of bi-monthly magazine NZ Hunter, are joined by 23-year-old son Willie who gave up a rural banking career to help launch their move into the broadcast ratings game with NZ Hunter Adventures, on privately-owned free-to-air channel Choice TV (Channel 12 Freeview, Channel 26 SKY), at 9.30pm.

It will be repeated twice more over the following days, with new episodes each Wednesday night until mid-May.

Greg Duley prides the fact that the series is filmed entirely on public land, taking viewers to the most rugged and remote parts of New Zealand, showing the breathtaking scenery of the tramp and the hunt.

The opening episode takes-in Aoraki/Mt Cook, climbing up and over the main divide with ropes, crampons and iceaxes, braving avalanches and ice cliffs, as the family follows the migration routes of the Himalayan tahr and the chamois.

During the expedition, Mrs Duley takes the "alpine double" " a trophy bull tahr and chamois buck.

While the series has sponsors, Mr Duley believes it will attract major backers looking towards a second series, for which filming starts almost immediately, in a much-awaited return to the hills with production having limited the hunts to as little as one in the past three months.

"That's unusual for us," he said. The series is an extension of the magazine business run from their home near Taradale since its establishment in 2007. Mr Duley and sons Willie and Jamie are born-and-bred locals who grew-up on the property, while wife-and-mum Fiona is from West Sussex in the South of England.