On the dark side of the New Zealand paradise

Writing for a British audience, Sydney-based KATHY MARKS shatters the illusion of a tranquil New Zealand peopled by dwellers in peaceful harmony with nature.

With his blue eyes and curly blond hair, Teira Gill is a picture of cherubic innocence as he bounces on the settee. Suddenly he points a toy gun at the visitor. "Bang! Bang!" he declares.

Just 2 years old, Teira already knows what he wants to be when he grows up: a pig hunter. He has experienced the thrill of the chase with his father, Jimmy, on forays around Te Kuiti.

"He had his first kill before the age of one," says his grandfather, Alan Gill, indulgently. Jimmy Gill says: "He runs around the house with his toy knife, stabbing the dog in the ear. He's a natural-born killer."

If there is a gene for the hunting instinct, Teira must be fizzing with it. Alan Gill has been catching wild boars for nearly 50 years. Jimmy Gill spends every spare moment in the bush. His mother, Renee, was a keen hunter until the children came along. "It's a real family-oriented thing," Jimmy Gill says.

New Zealand is a nation that, despite its clean, green image, is hooked on bloodsports; one million people - a quarter of the population - hunt, fish and shoot.

In rural communities, pursuing pigs is a way of life. Social life revolves around pig-hunting competitions in which, typically, carcasses are arrayed in neat rows and children chase greased piglets around pens.

New Zealand is a hunter's paradise, thanks to the profusion of legal prey and the virtually unrestricted access to habitats. Attitudes towards animals are robustly unsentimental and there is only a tiny anti-bloodsports lobby.

"We don't know how lucky we are," says Aran Proud, a hunting companion of Jimmy's.

With native birds and vegetation ravaged by introduced animals, all mammals are now regarded as pests. The Department of Conservation (DoC) spends a quarter of its budget on controlling these intruders, and New Zealanders see it as their patriotic duty to assist.



Pigs, originally released as a food source, are widespread. Tough, coarse-haired creatures with razor-sharp tusks, they plough up pastures, steal lambs, destroy fences and root up crops. Without the nation's 25,000 pig hunters, farming would be in crisis, says Bob Jeffares, editor of New Zealand Pig Hunter, a weekly magazine. "Hunting with dogs is the only effective way to control the population," he says. "There's no alternative."

F OUR eager faces peer out of wooden crates as Jimmy Gill and Proud draw up in a dusty pick-up truck on a balmy Saturday morning in April. Hope, Rosie, Smoke and Sting are to accompany us on a pig-hunting expedition in the Rangitoto hills, outside Te Kuiti.

Hunters worship their dogs, and many a marriage breaks up - so the story goes - when men are told to choose between family and animals. "I really miss my dogs when I'm away," says Proud. "They're good-natured, really soft. They're great around children."

We set off along an overgrown track, armed with four hunting knives, a Harrington Richardson .44 rifle and a handful of clothes-pegs - to hold wounds closed if the dogs are injured.

Before long we encounter signs of pigs. A patch of excavated earth, flattened ferns near a river-bank and half-chewed tawa berries - a porcine delicacy - lie scattered on the ground. Telltale hoof marks can be seen in the mud. "That's a good pig, weighs about 120lb," says Proud. "It's not far off."

An air of anticipation infects the party. The dogs dash in and out of bushes; we stand stock still, straining our ears for the bark that will signal that they have located their quarry.

As we wade across the Waipa River and climb into thick forest, the men ponder the appeal of their sport. "Would you rather be at home with the wife nagging or out in the bush listening to the birds chirping?" asks Gill.

Gill is edgy and talkative and walks with a swagger. He bones cows in an abattoir for a living and has been hunting since he was 4. "The old man worked for DoC killing possums and goats, and we often got dragged out of school to help him," he says.



Working the dogs is the principal attraction of pig hunting, they say - together with the adrenalin rush of confronting a ferocious beast. "Every now and then you get a boar that wants to have a go," says Gill. "You're sneaking up and you can't see it until you're close up. All its hairs are on end and you can hear its tusks chomping."

Proud says: "I once jumped in, grabbed a pig around the waist and couldn't stand up. We were spinning round and round, wrestling. It could have gone either way."



While few hunters get hurt by pigs, there is a high casualty rate among dogs. Gill lost five in five weeks last year: "It was wretched," he says, "like losing a family member, I reckon."

For the pig, hunting is a no-win game. After being chased, it is cornered by a pack of dogs that bite and bark at it to keep it at bay and grab its ears, tail, legs and testicles. It may be badly mauled by the time the hunter arrives.

The pig is sometimes shot, but more commonly, its throat is slit - not always expertly. That honour is often given to a child being inducted into the sport. The Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) says a pig may be stabbed up to 40 times before it dies.

On this occasion, we return empty-handed. On the way back to Te Kuiti, Gill recalls a succession of girlfriends who hated his hunting because he was never at home.

"Renee came out one day to see what all the fuss was about," he says. "She stuck a couple of pigs and loved it. It makes life a lot easier. You get home from a hard day's hunting and she's got the tea cooked. It's bloody good."

Proud is single. " It can be hard for partners to accept how passionate you get about hunting," he says. "It's an addiction, like gambling."

T HE NEXT day we stop in town to pick up Alan. Jimmy Gill says of his father: "You either love him or hate him. Most people hate him." Alan Gill is a big, balding, chain-smoking bruiser of a man. His language is even coarser than his son's, and the forest air turns blue as we head off once again, this time into an area that he swears is seething with pigs.

Alan Gill and Proud go off to explore higher ground, and Jimmy Gill and Proud converse over newly acquired walkie-talkies. "The dogs have gone off," booms Proud's voice from afar. "The dogs have gone off," Jimmy Gill informs us.

Then comes exciting news. "We can see two pigs in a clearing," Proud says.

We wait. Jimmy Gill passes the time by recounting past triumphs. "I caught 106 pigs by myself last year," he says. "I shot a big white sow out here, she was a wild one."

Alan Gill and Proud return, and a tactful silence is drawn over the two pigs, which turn out to have been goats.

Still no pigs. The men look increasingly glum, stomping along at a furious pace and muttering under their breath. Suddenly a strangled bleat is heard from below; the dogs have caught a goat. Jimmy Gill curses viciously and takes off after them. When Hope returns smeared with blood, licking her lips, he wallops her so hard that she screams. Alan Gill unsheaths his knife and plunges it violently into a tree trunk.

On the way home, we visit John Lockley, one of New Zealand's best-known pig-hunters, who lives in a roomy ranch-style house. Hanging from the rafters of his garage are 234 pig jawbones.

Lockley breeds pig dogs, beautiful-looking beasts. He points out a male called Chip who has fathered 500 pups. "He's 13 now, but we've got his semen on ice. We can carry on breeding from him after he dies." We settle on the verandah with cans of beer. "Pig hunting is a disease," Lockley says. Once it's in your blood, it's there forever. You test yourself every time you go out."

Is it cruel? "Beating up an old lady is cruel. This is animals against animals. The day we stop having a hunting instinct, we might as well curl up and die."



Lockley's wife, Sian, has caught hundreds of pigs with him. She is one of a growing number of New Zealand women who are emulating Carol Maru, a pioneer hunter famous for chasing pigs barefoot with a baby on her back. That was 30 years ago; Maru, now 55, is still hunting, and so is her daughter. Maru says: "It's still a very male sport. The men don't like the intrusion into their territory."





Hunting - first practised as a means of survival, when European settlers were turning bush into pasture - is part of the national psyche. The common man jealously guards his right to hunt, and newsagents carry a vast array of magazines with titles such as Guns & Game and Rod & Rifle.

"It's a vicious place," says a friend who has moved to New Zealand. "They'll catch and kill anything."

"Once a pig hunter, always a pig hunter," says Jeffares, smoking contemplatively as he leans on a table in the Te Kuiti Pig Hunting Club. The walls of the draughty hall are lined with trophy heads and jawbones.

Jeffares, who founded the club, was headmaster of the local school for 30 years. He taught art, made pottery and worked with disabled children. He writes poetry, some of which appears in his magazine. One recent poem ends thus: "He grabs a leg/He tips the boar/The knife goes in/It breathes no more."

The Department of Conservation regards hunters as allies in its war to save the country's natural heritage.

DoC says that the fight to conserve kiwi and other native birds justifies extreme means. New Zealand uses 90 per cent of the world's 1080, a poison widely banned in the United States, dumping it from the air on possum-infested areas. Deer are killed from helicopters, goats are shot from speedboats on rivers.

In New Zealand, conservation means annihilating some animals to protect others. Nowadays, even species endangered in their home countries - such as the Australian wallaby and the Chamois-like Himalayan Thar - are treated as pests.

"People in the northern hemisphere go all dewy-eyed and say, 'How can you kill all those wonderful creatures?"' says Herb Christophers, a DoC issues manager. "Well, they may be wonderful, but they're out of context and we're having to live with the repercussions."

In this climate, anti-bloodsports groups struggle to make their voices heard. Protesters who pursued duck shooters down the Waikato River a few years ago fled after the sportsmen turned their guns on them.

Hans Kriek, animal welfare manager of the SPCA in Wellington, condemns culling methods and says that hunting pigs with dogs is especially cruel.

The SPCA claims that young people are turning away from pig-hunting, but the example of the Gill family suggests otherwise.

In their living room, Teira sits transfixed by two pig-hunting videos made by John Lockley. For those unaccustomed to such a diet, the videos turn the stomach, with close-ups of dogs tearing at their bleeding prey and a soundtrack of squeals of terror. On the other side of the room, Teira's 6-week-old brother, Weston, is sleeping, blissfully oblivious to the pleasures that await him.

- INDEPENDENT