Hokitika goat Gavin trained to join owner’s West Coast hunting trips

Hokitika hunter Alesha Tomasi has been training Gavin for two years to join her on hunts. Photo / RNZ, Tess Brunton

By Tess Brunton of RNZ

A Hokitika hunter has set her sights on a goat as a hunting companion.

Gavin the goat has been training since he was a kid to join the hunt.

His owner, Alesha Tomasi, said the two-year-old loved to swap his paddock for adventures in the hills.

She and her partner, Matt, are keen hunters and started looking into goats after seeing packs, sometimes of 30 or more goats, helping on hunts in the United States.

They brought Gavin, a British alpine cross Toggenburg, over from Christchurch.

Then the training started.

They took Gavin on walks and fired guns while bottle-feeding him.

“The full two years we’ve been training him, just taking him on little wee walks with us when we’re hunting, and the walks have gotten bigger and bigger,” Tomasi said.

He had also started joining her morning runs to prepare himself for carrying a pack.

“He’s like, ‘What the hell, why are we running? Do we have to run?’ But if you’re running, he’ll follow,” Tomasi said.

“It’s funny. I have the dog on the lead and not him because he’s more well-behaved than the dog at staying beside me.”

Eventually, she said Gavin would be able to carry between 20-to-30kg of gear.

“We’re hoping to do multi-day trips with him into tops or up river beds, hunting,” Tomasi said.

“With him being able to carry weight in for us, it’s really game-changing, so we can take more food and more supplies or more meat out.”

But it’s not just his ability to carry that has been handy on the hunt.

“We’ve come across goats in the wild with him, and he’ll go up to them and say hello.

“But he’s been such a good Judas goat because they’ll start following us.

“He’s actually really good bait. The deer get really confused.

“They just stand there and look at him, and they’re like ‘what is this?’ and we seem to get quite a few extra seconds away.”

He snacked away while she got him ready for a walk, putting on his prototype pack that they made for him.

But they planned to make him a new one better suited to handle the gnarly West Coast bush and hills.

Setting off, Gavin followed closely on her heels.

“Gavin’s always up for an adventure,” she said.

“I think he just loves exploring, really, he just loves going for a walk.”

They have already taken him on an overnight trip up the tops - he sleeps outside as he is not tent-trained - and long walks up hills and along river beds.

It could be a bit scary when he went right to the edge of bluffs, but Tomasi said he loved to look at the view.

Hunters and trampers they met were often shocked to find a pet goat joining the hunt, but people loved him and wanted photos of him, she said.

They are allowed on private land, but also sought special permission from the Department of Conservation.

They had to show they could mitigate his risks - he could not reproduce, and he carried his own food to limit his browsing, she said.

“Gavin’s actually the first ever goat in New Zealand to have a DoC [pack goat] permit.”

Armed with his permit, he could now join hunts on stewardship land between Hokitika and South Westland.

And soon she hoped to have a new addition to their hunting party.

They recently bought Gavin’s three-month-old nephew, Kevin, who is being trained up to join his uncle on their hunting adventures.

As for life outside the hunt, the “double-trouble” liked to get up to mischief, headbutting their houses, dancing around and moving buckets around the paddock, she said.

Gavin was an escape artist who used to treat her veggie garden as his salad bar before they put a deer fence around his paddock, Tomasi said.

- RNZ