DEER HEAD FOR BISLEY

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 217, 11 June 1935, Page 7

DEER HEAD FOR BISLEY

Attitude of New Zealand

Rifle Association

REPLY TO MINISTER By Telegraph.—Press Association. Invercargill, June 9. “It is a matter for regret that the Minister of Internal Affairs, Hon. Sir Alexander Young, was not in Wellington where he could have had access to th© flies when he replied to criticism of his department concerning its refusal to bear the shipping charges on a red deer head for Bisley,” was the comment of the president of New Zealand Rifle Association, Dr. A. F. Ritchie Crawford, on a Press Association message sent from Christchurch oh Friday night. “Apparently the Minister made his reply over the telephone, and this may account for inaccuracies which appear. I wish to emphasise that in the first place the request for a suitable red deer head for the pavilion at B.isley was made to the New Zealand National Rifle Association by the Department of Internal Affairs, which had received a communication from the High Commissioner for New Zealand stating that Sir Lionel Fletcher wished to have a good trophy from New Zealand for the pavilion. “Recognising that Bisley is the Mecca for riflemen within the Empire, the New Zealand Rifle Association decided to comply with the request of the department, and through the generosity of a Wanaka sportsman, a really good 13-pointer Otago head was secured. In view of the representations made by the Department of Internal Affairs in the matter, I do not think that the request made by the Rifle Association for assistance in shipping the head to England was at all unreasonable.

“The question of deer menace,” concluded Dr. Crawford, “is not one with which the National Rifle Association of New Zealand is concerned. Speaking candidly, however, I consider the statement in the Under-Secretary’s letter that the department could not be a party to encouraging the visit of anyone> to New Zealand for stalking seems extraordinary when the Tourist Department by advertising propaganda in England is striving to bring sportsmen to the Dominion.”