Hare Shooting Curb

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31097, 28 June 1966, Page 15

Hare Shooting Curb

The days of a weekend- shooter earning beer money by killing three or four hares and sending them to a buyer for export have finished.

The shooter seeking cash for a district school project or club rooms today has to join a hare hunt conducted under stringent conditions for

the hares to be exportable. The Canterbury-Otago hare export industry, which makes up most of the £BO,OOO a year return for New Zealand, was recently closed for about a month because the Department of Agriculture temporarily prohibited the export of hares. Within the next week or so, under new regulations, hare hunts would be likely to spring up throughout the countryside, particularly in foothiK districts such as Hanmer Springs, Hororata, Glentunnel, and Geraldine, said a hare exporter. Some hunts with 30 to 40 participating, would produce from 300 to 400 hares of about 71b average, some up to 91b.

The price paid by exporters in Canterbury was about 5s for a hare with head on and gut in. Under the new regulations the Department of Agriculture would allow hare drives to be held but only under specific conditions. The department had decided that packing com-

panics could accept hares from organised hare drives at which a department Inspector was in attendance. Hare drives were allowed to take place five miles from the perimeter of a place that had been poisoned, he said. Drives could also be held on past poisoned land, 28 days after the poison had been laid.

In most years New Zealand exported about 60,000 hares. The reason that hares for export had to have their skin on was that in London and parts of Europe in the past, domestic cats had been passed off as hares or rabbits. France was the biggest buyer of hares.

Exporters in New Zealand, said the exporter, did not take hares in the breeding season. The only season for export was the winter. Because of the closing this winter before the new regulations, the season would be a late one. The advent of hare breeding would determine the end of this season.

“You can’t stop them breeding,” he said.