The drone pilot, with Christchurch Animal Save, said he was legally flying the device.
The $2500 drone was lost in the lake.
Police say they will be following up on a shooting in Canterbury yesterday in which a duck shooter allegedly gunned down a drone flown by an animal rights activist.
The pilot told the Herald: “All of a sudden I heard some screaming and there was a duck upside down, flapping, with a dog on its way out to go and get it.
“I thought this would be a good time to put the drone up to capture this. Then, bang! I was looking at the screen and I lost signal. I look up and there’s the drone slowly spiralling down into the lake.
“Then, bang, another shot. It just dropped like a brick out of the sky.”
Activists with Christchurch Animal Save went to Lake Ellesmere on Saturday and say one of their drones was shot shown by duck hunters.
The pilot, who did not want his name published, was at Lake Ellesmere with advocacy group Christchurch Animal Save for the first day of the bird shooting season yesterday morning.
A police spokesman said they got a report of a drone being shot at the eastern edge of the lake, about 20km from Christchurch, about 10.30am on Saturday.
“Police have attended and spoke with people at the location. Police will be following up,” the spokesman said.
The pilot said he also told the police he would be flying more drones above the lake and asked them to tell the hunters he would.
Police then returned and told him the hunters had decided to pack up and leave, he said.
“After they left [the hunters], we were seeing flocks of geese and swans flying past us and we were celebrating, because they got to live another day,” the pilot said.
“I’m legal. I’ve been a drone pilot for years. I’ve got a certificate. There was no no-fly zone. I legally flew out there, over the lake, to capture the duck shooting.
“We just wanted to highlight the other side of it [hunting]. We saw that it was being celebrated, that duck shooting was coming, and we wanted to tell the other side.”
He said the $2500 drone was at the bottom of the lake. He said he intended to retrieve it somehow and hoped the SD card storage was intact and had saved the video.
Raphael Franks is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news. He joined the Herald as a Te Rito cadet in 2022.
