A young man spent hours in near freezing conditions after leaving a hunting group in bush near Oamaru, early this morning, drunk and with no shoes.

A deer hunter has been hospitalised after his quad bike rolled and crushed him in remote forest overnight.

All Black lock Sam Whitelock has defended himself and Crusaders teammates after images of them posing with dead big-game animals were posted online.

Angry friends and relatives of a young Southland hunter walked out of court when it became apparent the man who mistook him for a deer wouldn't be sent to prison.

A man who shot his friend in the elbow on the first day of duck shooting season can now be named.

A string of hunting accidents is proof New Zealand's firearms laws need to be reviewed, a leading gun control advocate says.

'Some muppet has failed to determine his background,' says the Dunedin man who believes a hunter put a stray bullet in his deck.

The duck shooting season has claimed its first hunting injury.

'I've always been a shooter,' the 44-year-old said as she prepared to return to the family's shooting spot on a dammed pond at Maraekakaho today.

About 40,000 hunters will be heading to huts, ponds and rivers from tomorrow as duck shooting season begins.

A man who died after the ute he was driving in rural North Canterbury rolled and crushed him yesterday morning has been named.

A 56-year-old Tuatapere man has been charged in connection with a fatal hunting shooting in Southland earlier this month.

A25-year-old dairy farmer shot dead at the weekend was the latest victim of a spate of hunting accidents around the country.

Two Hawke's Bay men are facing charges of unlawful hunting and are likely to be among the first to face tough new penalties which were introduced last November.

Search teams have this morning located a hunter who had been reported missing in Te Urewera National Park.

The year's busiest hunting season has been marred by a "disappointing'' run of four serious incidents in the first week.

A 22-year-old Hamilton man with a gunshot wound in his chest lay on the ground of a Bay of Plenty forest for four hours while his father gave him first aid and his brother ran for help.

A Japanese whaling ship is reported to have tailed an anti-whaling ship into waters off Otago against the wishes of the NZ Govt, which labelled the move 'disrespectful'.

The Government should strongly censure Japan after one of its whaling vessels entered New Zealand's waters, the Green Party says.

Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd says it has boxed in the Japanese whaling fleet's factory ship, effectively suspending whaling in the Southern Ocean.

Washington and Tokyo have been drawn into an unexpected diplomatic spat over the annual slaughter of dolphins in Taiji.

A kiwi which was savaged by a dog near Coromandel has been euthanised at Auckland Zoo.