Ethan Hoggard: Pluck and courage

It is early on a chilly morning and Ethan Hoggard has gone bush. He's setting his possum traps, the ones that restrain the animal's limb rather than maims it, and he's smearing tree trunks with a mixture of aniseed and eucalyptus combined with flour to make a paste lure. He's tasted it too and said it's quite pleasant.

"Aniseed has a nice smell but you have to use the right amount or they won't touch it. And you have to place the lure at the right height so the possum will walk across the trap to get to the lure."

Early the following morning he goes back to check the traps and at this time of the year the haul is a good one. The possums are carrying winter fur and they're getting hungry. He kills them with a noose he's made himself because it's more humane and then plucks the fur while the body is still warm.

"The fur comes out by hand, it's like pulling grass but easier, and if they're cold you need a plucking machine which I don't have. But there's more money for the plucked fur because the end product is better."

He sells the fur by the kilo and it's shipped to China by the tonne, mixed with merino wool and other blends. It's then sent back to New Zealand as yarn for the knitters. As Ethan says, given possums aren't nature's most handsome of creatures, the fur is remarkably soft, finer than silk. But he questions the need to send the fur to China in the first place.

"It's pointless and I don't agree with it. We could invest in a machine to turn the fur into yarn and make more money for our own country."

He remarks ruefully that Chinese labour might be cheaper but he strongly believes more could be done at home to capitalise on the possum trade.

"It hasn't been thought through sufficiently because DOC trappers just throw the animals away and I think there's an opportunity for those out of work to be employed following the trap lines with portable machine pluckers. There's enough money to be made maybe within a week to pay for a single machine."

He tried to talk to DOC about this but says they weren't receptive. He thinks if trappers were paid per possum rather than an hourly rate there would be more incentive to save the fur. For the moment the carcass just gets thrown away.

In addition to trapping Ethan is now on-selling the equipment he's tried and tested - the lure mixtures, the traps and the nooses - and he'll make up 'kid packs' for youngsters learning how to do things.

In fact it was only a couple of years ago that Ethan Hoggard himself had never trapped a possum in his life. He wants to stay in Northland to make it work if he can and has plans for business development even if at this stage he's a bit coy about revealing anything. Still, like most entrepreneurs, he's constantly thinking ahead.

Unlike established and successful businessmen, however, Ethan is barely out of school. He is just 16 years old and one can't escape the notion that with the enterprise he's shown so far, whatever he sets his mind on achieving in the future he will do so.