WAR UPON SHAGS

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1935, Page 8

WAR UPON SHAGS

SPORTSMEN PROPOSE DRIVE. TROUT RIVER DEPREDATIONS. Members of the Stratford Acclimatisation Society are planning a drive against shags, considered to be among thp greatest enemies of trout. Tire way of . the .sportsmen who raise and pay out money so that there may be trout in the rivers and game birds in the air to repay their outlay, Is strewn with poachers, eels, hawks and shags. All are difficult to. check, but the shag, as a voracious eater of trout in all sizes up to eveir 14 inches or 15 inches, has become perhaps the most disliked of all. Moreover, it is not the easiest to check; killing an odd bird from time to time makes no appreciable difference to the toll that shags exact. This season, a member of the society told a News reporter yesterday, a drive will be made on the nesting places, one in the rougher, par. of the Huinga district and another at the top end of Waingongoro Road, Cardiff. It was considered, he said, that th ; only way to eliminate a worth-while number of the birds was to catch them at the rookeries where a band of well equipped marksmen s could “bag” a good number in a short time.

He said that last season, together with a companion, he raided the Huinga rookery and killed eight of the 30 birds that were there at the time. On that occasion they approached the rookery from the wrong angle, which did not improve their 'hances but gave the shags a better sporting chance than they were entitled to. The birds chose for nesting the face of a bluff with a sunny aspect and built among the bush and scrub on the face.

“The way we approached them last time gave them odds against us,” he said, “but this time we will make our approach from a different quarter and catch them on the hop.’ ”

One shag “bagged” by the winner of the society’s competition for the largest number of vermin caught in a prescribed time, was found to contain two trout, one 11 inches long ana the other 14 inches.