Camps bring in a new generation

• Published date: 29 September 2022

“I’d never been in the bush until I was 30. The guys just treated me as someone that wanted to hunt.”

She remembers seeing her first game animal in the wild.

“I was hunting in the Kaimanawas with an experienced hunter. He walked up to the crest of the hill and shook his head, so I looked. There was a deer standing there looking at us face on. He was walking towards us, about 30 metres away, and I kept my rifle down. I never regretted not shooting that animal. It was the best thing ever.”

Maureen has shot plenty since, for food.

“I love it, I’d hunt every day of the week if I could do.”

As a child growing up on a farm, she shot possums that she’d skin and sell for pocket money. But the beauty of the back-country bush was something she learnt later in life after joining the TVDA.

“It’s providing for your family, it’s that primal instinct. It’s also the challenge. I can happily let an animal go if I can’t get the meat out — I’ll be selective, too. I’ve had to shoot a farm animal when it’s injured, but a wild animal is quite a different scenario.”

She says not all women members at the TVDA hunt, but she’s seen an increase in female hunters over the past 30 years.

The association hosts hunt courses, and she says these attract women of all abilities and levels of knowledge of the bush. The club has its own clubrooms and 22 acres in the foothills of Paeroa. It has a growing membership that includes many women hunters and...