Eighty Shooters In Swan Drive On Lake Ellesmere

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27368, 5 June 1954, Page 8

Eighty Shooters In Swan Drive On Lake Ellesmere

The swan population of Lake Ellesmere, estimated by some at 1,000,000, was reduced by an insignificant 307 yesterday, when 70 or 80 sportsmen took part in a drive at the eastern end of the lake. Yesterday’s casualty list would have been considerably higher had the swans not demonstrated an eve for an opening in the line of shooters comparable with a good Rugby player’s ability to find a gap, but for all that it was, from the shooter’s point of view, a successful day. Swan drives such as these have been held on the’ same property—part of the farm of Mr Alan Nutt, of Motukarara —for 21 years, and some of those who took part in yesterday’s drive have been shooting from the property for as long as 50 years. This farm is the headquarters for the “Mia-mia Hut Club,” an organisation formed before the war, which enforces a most rigid but not unpleasant discipline on its members from a building near the lakeside.

Each year invitations are issued to shooters to take part in the drive, and yesterday they came from the West Coast and Timaru, as well as many parts of mid-Canterbury and North Canterbury. The shooting party began gathering at the hut before 9 a.m., and was not complete until about 10.30 a.m. In the interim, the shooters stood about in Daniel Boone attitudes, with their arms resting on their gun barrels. Game shooting is a sport without much in the way of written statistics, but the comparisons vary there in the conversation, in the talk of and shoots and shots.

After the shooters had taken careful measures to combat the chill of the morning, the day began with a brief ceremonial, the unfurling of a j*ed, white and blue flag, on which were superimposed a very good likeness of a black swan and a very large bottle. Then the party set off for the eastern shore, thigh boots and waders squelching through the ooze and mud. As it approached the lake there was a positive clatter of wings as some of the more knowledgeable swans took off for more healthy parts, but in a few minutes the men were strung across the entrance to one of the lake’s eastern inlets, and at the rear Mr Nutt flushed the swans from a small boat equipped with an outboard motor. They came over in fairly good numbers, with graceful lines which might

have been taken for modern aircraft designing, and although about 50 of them fell to the barking guns, quite a number skirted this wall of flre H and two of them had the good sense to turn completely about and retreat. In a good many cases the birds were winged, and unable to fly off the water after they had fallen. The shooters, no doubt conscious that their cartridges cost 9d eac£, usually waded out to catch the injured birds and kill them instantly by hand. Once or twice, however, badly injured birds had to have another barrel fired at them. >.

Then the shooters strung out across another bay in a net so tight that as one of them observed, “not even a politician could wriggle through.” In this bay Mr Nutt, piloting his boat to and fro vigorously, rounded up and made airborne a whole cloud of swans, and the guns echoed hollowly round the hills, like a succession of drum beats. At times it seemed that there would be as many shooters injured as swans, for some of the quarry chose to fly almost at water level and rather unfairly attempted to dart through the line of shooters. An interested spectator at the drive was Eddie Clancy, the Irish boxer, for whom it was something completely new. He thought the swans surprisingly dull birds, in their unwillingness to stay inside the line of shooters where they would have been safe. He was astounded to learn that a sportsman would pay anything up to £3OO for a good gun. .“I’d expect an atom bomb for that,” he said.

Although these shooters whiled away the waiting time mainly in goodnatured but distinctly detrimental remarks about each other, the spoils were shared a,t the end of the day in the spirit of comradeship which makes this such a vast but closeknit company. It was as well, for those failing to register a hit could hardly have worn any sort of insignia denoting a duck—not on June 4. For the shooters, it was a very successful occasion. For some of their wives, it meant nothing more than the preparation and cooking of a large and unprepossessing bird for dinner, a task requiring patience, skill and judgment. Shooters themselves? whether they return laden with game or without any, often require the same attributes.