There are some safe Easter trips that trampers can do!We've just done did a 4 day circuit in open river valleys and tops. The only bush we travelled in was in the dark, dropping down to Avoca Hut. In the morning we came across some hunters in the Avoca still mucking around near their tents so we figured they weren't really hunters, just lads with rifles. I told them we saw a big animal on the tops. There were plenty of intensive deer footprints a bit further up the Avoca on the valley flats. They hadn't shot anything at that stage.
If the accident was in the Taunui Hut area there are a couple of access points . One is through Pirinoa Station , but i dont think they let vehicles up the river; the other point is through Wellington RC land where they have clear felled pine forest;there is a road formed for log trucks to the felled area and many smaller service roads in the felled area that allow 4 WD vehicles to trespass to the Taunui River .Last time at the hut there were clear 4 WD tracks right up the river tr side to the hut.
The unmilled bush in the Aorangi is most podocarp and big; much of the area in the Turanganui R was cleared for farming in the early part of 1900,s , but has reverted to scrub tauwhinu, manuka ,natve since the area was designated a Forest park(part is also designated a Recreational Hunting Area ).
The area can become very dry in summer,and can also be an alternative destination for tramping if the Tararuas is living up to its reputation for bad weather.The trip from Te Kopi (old Rangers residence) to Washpool- Pararaki-Kawakawa-Mangatoetoe Huts is a nice trip although a proliferation of wasps makes for a bit of challenge in warm weather.Also be aware that the whole area is a residence for stinging nettle(urtica ferox)onga onga which can be a nasty experience if you have prolonged contact.Windfalls can also be aproblem .
The longer this investigation goes on the more likely the thread title may have to be changed.......
Ballistic and scientific evidence may prove to be the key to the answers the parents are looking for.
Do you think the media might be on the wrong track? Here's the latest detail for those who've missed it.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/6741671/Someone-has-to-pay-for-this-hunters-family
Saw that. Quite a good explanation of the event. Yeah, might require a ballistic test ?.
Remorse. Accidental. Needless loss. Innocent victim. What can you say ?.
How much evidence for this sort of thing can be gained by looking at residue on a gun? eg. Would you be able to tell how many times it'd been fired and how recently?
Not that people wouldn't necessarily try to fabricate a story if they were afraid of being found out.
Good policing procedures ,plus as much help from the public on other parties in the near vicinity obviously are important. Fragments of bullet can be matched with the firearm that fired it , so collecting firearms and extensive testing is a must.
The Police will find the person who fired the fatal shot for sure.
In my last job i was quite often buying food to spend acouple of weeks away in the bush fixing bridges, huts ,tracks and at the shop i used for fresh veg i got to know one chap who served me regularly.This once i went in and he said something about his grandfather who was a keen hunter not having returned from a hunting trip in the Tararuas many years ago. With a bit of persuasion he told me that despite extensive searches and police enquiries his grandfather was never found(probably the coroner returned a verdict of "death by misadventure").The sequal to this story is somewhat bizarre as many years later the family of the hunter recieved in the mail grandfathers wristwatch and a letter from an anonymous person who admitted to accidently killing him . I mentioned this case to a local police officer and he told me that there were a couple of suspects at the time but nothing could be proved; the shooters concience obviously got the better of him .
Lets hope there is a quick prosecution in the current case.
We're going Te Urewera this weekend, which I know is chocca with hunters, so I can't help wondering about the risks of sharing space with them again. After Rosemary Ives was killed in 2010, I have a hard timing convincing my wife that we're not taking our lives into our hands when we go tramping in the roar. But the thought just occurred to me that maybe I'm wrong, and we really are heading into cowboy country... Apart from Rosemary, have there been other trampers killed?
I'm loathe to call these things an accident because to me an accident is something that happens outside of anyone's control, and I can't help thinking that the act of firing a hollow point .308 at a sound, movement, undefined shape is not outside of anyone's control. And I can't get my mind around how frequently this happens.
I did read a NZ statistic which showed that over a period of time 9 out of 10 hunters who had uninentionally killed someone by firing without clearly identifying their target had not done any sort of hunter training. Perhaps there's something to that.
Not every firearm license will be given to a hunter, but it's probably safe to assume that every hunting license will be given to a hunter. Perhaps getting a license to hunt should require doing the HUNTS course. This doesn't seem unreasonable - considering what you have to go through to get a drivers license.
Here's a November 2009 case of a probable tramper being shot by a hunter in Lake Taupo Forest.
http://www.bayofplentytimes.co.nz/news/bay-tramper-shot-in-chest-still-critically-ill/1012371/
That's the only recent one I can find besides Rosemary Ives, and I think it's still a case of most hunters shoot their mates. Other people might remember more, and there have been recurring close calls with idiots shooting around huts and campsites. Personally I'm not concerned because statistically I think that most people still don't get shot, but that's really up to individuals to judge about where they're going.
Rosemary Ives may as well have been shot by immature idiots in a suburban street as far as I'm concerned. The shooting took place from a public road, obviously breaking several laws designed to make it less likely this would happen, and that was BEFORE anyone even made a mistake. I think that's the deciding factor for me in why I struggle to think of them as hunters, or that as a hunting death, at all. They were losers playing stupidly with guns and actively deciding the law didn't apply to them. Not to lessen the severity of other hunting accidents. People have a lethal weapon and should be held accountable for what they do with it.
There dont seem to be any documented cases of hunters shooting trampers.
The most common seems to be one person from a hunting party shooting another from the same party .
Trampers need to be aware that in areas like the Tauherinikau Valley ,and Totara Flats TFP there can be hunters camped and hunting on the flats .Some hunters are "spotlighting" but this is illegal and dangerous (Ives)
A hunter was caught spotlighting in Totara Flats a year or so ago , but there has been no prosecution so far.
Life is full of risks,and laws are only for the honest citizen, many people break laws of many different kinds both intentionally and unintentionally.
" you cant stop the waves-but you can learn to surf" as the saying goes.
