12 guns—heads wanted

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32702, 3 September 1971, Page 16

12 guns—heads wanted

Shooting a good head in New Zealand is one of the ambitions of the new commander of the United States Navy Antarctic Support Force (RearAdmiral L. B. McCuddin). An enthusiastic sportsman, Admiral McCuddin has a collection of 60 guns of which he has brought about 12 to Christchurch. To prepare for his. leisure activities he had about a dozen books on hunting and fishing in New Zealand in his office yesterday. A gun he is particularly fond of is a specially built replica of a .30-30 Winchester rifle, first made in 1886, which was presented to him

by the crew of his last ship, the aircraft-carrier Ranger in which he served off the coast of Vietnam.

Before his posting to the Antarctic command, the admiral said that he had received excellent reports on the availability of good game in New Zealand from naval friends who had served here. An old friend of Admiral McCuddin's is Mr S. R. Rush, the American who last year opened an exclusive sportsmen’s lodge in a valley near Te Anau, which the admiral intends to visit. The two men are members of the same hunting club in California. Since his father first handed him a rifle when he was aged 12, Admiral McCuddin has, over the years, shot moose, caribou, deer, bear, and mountain lion in the

United States and in Canada. In Vietnam he shot tigers. Of them all he said that mountain lions were the most difficult to shoot and often involved a lot of stalking. Hunting by helicopter in his home state of Nevada had been forbidden because of the excessive killing of wildlife, he said. Helicopters were only used nowadays to get hunters to a particular area from where they proceeded on foot. Birds also have fallen to the admiral’s rifle—ducks, pheasants,, quail, geese and doves to name a few. “I like to eat the game I shoot, and I happen to have with me Chief F. Yton, who is the best game chef of all.” Chief Petty Officer Yton, a Filipino, has been with the admiral for the last five years.