Into the Landsborough

@phil21 your not going get your ass shot off, especially out in the open. AFAIK, theres been one accidental shooting of a tramping, few years ago in the Ruahines

Reassuring news that.

wear colours that are obviously not shootable. Bright blue is one of the best. Deer are colour blind so you wont scare them towards the hunters

Not true. Deer like many nocturnal or crepuscular animals have 2 colour receptors tuned to yellow and blue/magenta unlike us who have 3 receptors for red green blue. This means they cant diffetentiate colours at the red-orange-yellow end of the spectrum but have more ability to differentiate at the blue end than us. Dogs have the same 2-colour receptors on the same wavelengths. So blues and even low frequency UV stand out to deer (and dogs) but reds and orange don't. Hence the popularity of blaze orange camo == Back to visibility to humans: from personal experience in the bush hi-viz pink stands out most to me in the full range of environments!

The idea of course is not to get shot at by the hunters. Fortunately for us the deer don't carry guns. It's movement that the deer are likely to react to.

I would't worry about the hunters, they only shoot their mates. Several hunters die from being shot each year, some proportion are drunk duck shooters. Maybe one tramper shot by a hunter in the last 60 years? Even among hunters, more die from falling off bluffs than shooting each other. Majority of tramping accidents are also ending up in the wrong place, falling off something, if you take care of yourself you'll be OK out there.

Launch the bright pink drone. Bound to invite target practice from any hunters lurking out there within a 3km radius. Along the ridge to Horace Walker, the ferals had mown the grass down to ground level. Hunters have a role to play in retaining NZ native biodiversity. If only the ferals preferred b$stard grass!