ARETE FORKS HUT

Hut Information
This hut is managed by the exNZFS, a volunteer group of ex deer cullers
previously employed by the NZ Forest Service.
The aim of the group is to ensure the historical integrity of these iconic
reminders of the deer culling era is retained. The exNZFS have restored
this hut back to the original design for the 6 bunk S70 type and remains
as an important example of the classic huts deer culling huts that were
built throughout the back country of New Zealand in the 1960’s.
Please do not remove the information in this folder, it is provided for the
benefit of all hut users.
Thankyou
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: exNZFS
 This hut has been restored by the exNZFS group to the original design of the Forest
Service S70 type 6 bunk hut. It is now one of only two S70 type huts in the Tararua’s that
are fully representative of the deer culling huts built by the NZ Forest Service.

The exNZFS is a group of volunteers that were employed by the NZ Forest Service as
deer cullers. The aim of the group is to ensure the historical integrity of these iconic
reminders of the deer culling era is retained.
The exNZFS have agreements with the Department of Conservation for the management of the
following huts and bivouacs in the Forest Parks - Carkeek hut, Arete Forks hut, Mid Waiohine
Hut, Dundas hut, McGregor bivouac, Mid King bivouac, Pararaki hut (Aorangi FP) and
Wairongomai hut (Rimutaka FP)
We are a volunteer group and welcome any contributions to assist us in ensuring the ongoing
upkeep of these remaining huts from the deer culling era.
For a donation, our bank account number is 030687-0011055-00
We can be contacted by email at: [email protected]
Our Facebook page is: exNZFS
The Tararua Deer Culling Huts
Find out more about the deer culling era at the website www.nzdeercullers.org.nz
Prior to the NZFS taking over the role of controlling deer in New Zealand, the Department of Internal Affairs
also built three huts in the forest park. Bannister Basin (removed), Dorset Ridge (replaced), and Andersons
Memorial (replaced). Andersons was the first hut air dropped using parachutes at high altitude, in the
country.

During the 1960 to 1968 the new S70 type hut designed by the forest service were constructed throughout
the range to support the deer culling operations undertaken by NZFS hunters. These huts were a standard
6 bunk design, and initially painted Orange so that they were visible from the ground and also from the air.
These huts were built throughout the New Zealand back country.

The early huts were transported into the Tararua ranges by fixed wing aircraft and dropped at hut sites
using parachutes. From 1961 onwards hut materials were delivered by helicopter.

The S70 design is an iconic hut that was built throughout the backcountry to support the Forest Service
deer culling operations. They had 6 bunks, open fire and cooking bench. These huts were of simple design,
but to the deer cullers that used them, they were home for much of the time they were employed. The
interior walls were lined to make them warmer and more vermin proof. The NZFS design did not provide
for lining of the ceilings but in the Tararua’s, the field office in charge lined the ceilings as well.

Initially all S70 type huts (except Maungahuka) had open fireplaces for heating and cooking. As wood
supplies diminished these were eventually replaced with standalone wood burners (except Mid
Waiohine).While many of these huts throughout New Zealand have been painted a variety of colours, it is
the Orange coloured huts that many hunters and trampers still identify with, as the classic deer cullers huts
of the 60s and 70s.

In the Tararua’s a total 14 huts were built to this design. Today 11 of this type of hut remain.

Mid Waiohine hut is the only S70 type hut that is still in its original state in the forest park and has been
identified by DOC as being representative of the original deer culling huts and worthy of preserving as an
historical building.

In other areas, a 4 bunk version was also provided.

In addition to the 6 bunk S70 hut, a small “dog box” bivouac was also provided. This was designated the
S86 bivouac and a total of 9 of these structures were built.

Modification of this type of huts, and other versions of the NZFS deer culling huts are progressively being
modified throughout the backcountry of New Zealand.

The usual season for hunting went from the month of November to the following May. Food supplies for the
whole season were transported by helicopter usually in January to avoid the constant strong winds that
occur in the previous two months. Hunting parties usually comprise 2-4 hunters spending 6 weeks in the
ranges before having a few days off, then returning to hunting.

Arete Forks hut

Prior to the construction of the 6 bunk S70 type hut by the Forest Service, cullers used a canvas tent camp
for accommodation. Hunting was initially done during the winter months, as well as in the summer, and
being a fairly shady spot, the winters were quite chilly!

Arete Forks hut was built in 1960. Material were transported by helicopter and the construction team
included Noel Frazer and Chris Main. The hut was built to the standard S70 Forest Service 6 bunk hut
design.

In the early 1980s the interior ceiling was modified and later a Pot belly wood burner installed. Wood
burners were installed at a Department of Conservation policy to phase out open fires.

Restoring Arete Forks Hut

The main focus of the exNZFS volunteers is the retention of the huts previously built by the NZ Forest
Service. These were the backbone of the hut network and now are important huts for trampers, hunters
and others to use. They are also important historically, and the hut building programme of the 1960s opened
up much of the remote back country of New Zealand. The remain as important reminders of the deer culling
era.

With only one hut in the Tararuas’s that still met the original S70 design, Arete Forks was a good candidate
to add another hut that is representative of the deer culling huts. Initial work involved repainting the hut in
original NZFS orange (actually Tangerine) in 2014.

Stage 2 was removal of the wood burner, installing the standard S70 hut Open Fire and removing
modification to the interior of the hut.

Funding of this project was obtained from the Outdoor Recreation Consortium fund that is administered
by the Federated Mountain Clubs. This fund supports hut and track projects throughout the New Zealand
backcountry. Funding was also obtained from the Tararua-Aorangi-Rimutaka Huts Committee. This
committee co-ordinated upkeep of the hut system and utilizes income received from the sale of hut
tickets and season passes to ensure the upkeep of huts in the forest parks is maintained. The exNZFS
are extremely appreciative of the support received from these two organizations. Without it, these
projects could not happen.

Below are some past and present photos of the hut

Arete Forks hut not long after construction in 1961. The tent camp used for deer culling operations before
Photo Chris Main construction of the new hut. This camp was located on
the river terrace upstream from this hut. Photo Chris
main
NZ Forest Service hunters, summer 1967. From left
Noel Frazer (field officer), Chris Peterson, Derrick
Field, Russ Hulme and dog Rusty. Photo Paul
Gush
Arete Forks 2012.

Stage one of restoring the hut to original design. exNZFS volunteers, Grant Timlin and Steve Elgar
Original paint for exterior. exNZFS volunteers Paul installing the chimney. June 2016.
Gush and Hans Kolinko, February 2014.

Painting after restoring the ceiling to orginal design.

Photo
Concreting the hearth.
 Restoration complete. exNZFS team of Steve Elgar,
Inside completed. Original Shelf, Mantel Piece and
Derrick Field, Grant Timlin and Paul Gush.
interior colour.

The following lists the S70 huts and S86 Bivouacs constructed in the forest park. Only two of the original
S86 type bivouacs remain.

S70 Type Huts S86 Type Bivouacs

Mid Waiohine McGregor
Arete Forks Mid King
Cow Creek Arete (replaced)
Carkeek Haukura (removed)
Dundas Dracophylum (replaced)
Penn Creek (Modified) Aokaporangi (replaced)
Neill Forks (modified) Winchcombe (removed)
Nicholls (Modified) Elder (replaced)
Dorset Ridge (modified) Oriwa (removed)
Cattle Ridge (modified)
Andersons Memorial (modified)
Maungahuka (replaced)
Mid Otaki (removed)
Angle Knob (destroyed)

Extract from
Shelter from the Storm by Shaun Barnett

Between the years 1957 and 1972, the prodigious NZFS machine built 644 huts, 36 shelters, 26
vehicle bridges, 142 footbridges, 22 cableways, 2900 kilometres of roads, 1400 kilometres of 4WD
tracks and about 4000 kilometres of tramping tracks. By the 1970s, New Zealanders could boast
perhaps the densest network of backcountry facilities in the world, and certainly the only one almost
wholly constructed by a government
However, hut modifications are not always appropriate. To the heritage-conscious historian, some huts
must survive in near-original condition. By 2006, a half-century had passed since the first NZFS huts
had been built, and their heritage value needed fresh assessment. To this end, DOC employed
Wellington historian Michael Kelly to research and write about deer-culling huts, the result being his
informative 2007 publication Wild Animal Control Huts: A National Heritage Identification Study.

Crucially, Kelly identified key NZFS heritage huts, including Mid Waiohine (Tararua Forest Park), Top
Maropea (Ruahine Forest Park) and Mt Fell Hut (Mt Richmond Forest Park). His report, together with
the work of DOC historian Jackie Breen, has led to a renewed appreciation of these simple structures,
the cullers who lived in them and their place in our history. As Kelly put it:

‘the iconic status of the government hunter was inspired by the writing of Barry Crump and others. The
role of the hut in all this is not often explicitly acknowledged but it certainly provided the ‘settings’ for the
books. The hut was an ever-present stage or prop in such books. Some hunters remember particular
huts with fondness, either for particular events, or for the scenery surrounding them, or the length of their
association with them ... Huts are therefore our abiding, tangible heritage of decades of wild animal
control
Read the extracts from Shelter from the Storm and also reminiscences by Athol Geddes and Chris
Main.

The following are some comments by Chris Main, one of the deer cullers based in this area in 1959 to 1961.

This hut was built in 1961 by NZ Forest Service hut builders (mountain men) to replace a tent camp
which was situated near this hut on a river terrace (see photo) and used by Deer Cullers from 1959.

Arete Forks camp was a favourite with us hunters as the hunting was very good and hundreds of deer
were shot from here. Plenty of fire wood was handy too. Although the nights were cold and our
sleeping bags were often wet with condensation in the morning. We also cleared a river flat nearby for
a helicopter landing and it was very pleasant when the hut was built. Another improvement was a
bench rest we made to shoot our rifles in where there was some distance across the river to a target.

Besides the camp here, we had another at Cow Creek and used Bannister Basin hut and Dorset Ridge
Hut. Although both these huts provided shelter, fire wood was scarce and had to be carried a fair way
which was a real hassle particularly in winter. Our main route in was over the Blue Range then up a
track from Cow Creek to Arete Forks. This track sidled up through the gorge and was rather a gut
buster as it climbed up and down. However, we often shot deer going through it.

Most of us hunters had a dog which we trained to point deer. They would also lead us back to a hut or
camp in fog or in the dark. This was a great asset as often deer would feed up onto the tops in fog or
wet weather. I remember I shot 21 deer in these conditions one day. I presume they feel safer! One
could also travel over the ridge from Bannister Basin to Arete Forks, almost in a direct line, as there
was good bush hunting on the way.

I hope all visitors enjoy their time at this hut and location as much as I did between1959-63; and spare
a thought for the others that have been this way.

Chris Main (ex NZFS hunter/ranger

TRACKS

The 1985 Forest Service map below shows the tracks cut to support the department’s deer culling
operations. Some of these tracks can still be followed but are not maintained.

Below – extract from the 1936 edition of the Trampers Map of the Tararua Mountain System.
The topographical map below shows the present official track network. The correct route that the Arete
Gorge Sidle track follows is shown in red.

GPS profile of the Arete Gorge Sidle track. From Arete Forks to Cow Creek
Note the Routes shown in red, One follows the old cullers track up to Waingawa and begins on the true
left of Arete Stream, 100 metres upstream from the Waingawa river junction. This route is still marked but
not maintained and able to be followed with care.

The other route leads up to the Table Ridge bushline and leads off the Sidle track to Cow Creek where
the track begins to sidle, approximately 15 minutes above this hut. This route is also still marked but is
not maintained but can be followed with care.

The track shown leading to Table Ridge from Cow Creek hut has been cut and marked by DOC and is
easy to follow

Below is a GPS profile of the Sidle track to Cow Creek.

During to 60’s a large number of tracks were developed to provide access for deer culling operations. There
were a number of hunting tracks giving access to and from this hut. Many of those tracks have ceased to
be maintained after the ground hunting of deer was replaced by commercial helicopter deer recovery

As can be seen from the Tararua Forest Park map extract shown above, there was a comprehensive
network of tracks cut to support the deer culling operations. Even prior to this maps production, the 1936
edition of the Trampers Map of the Tararua Mountain System a Route is shown as existing up the True
Right side of the Waingawa valley from Cow Creek to Arete Forks and a continuing upriver to Tarn Ridge
Ted Smith recollections, interviewed by Derrick Field
(From the NZ Deer Cullers Inc website www.nzdeerculers.org.nz)

Ted Smith
Ted started his life in the Forest Service in 1959 when he went to the hunter training camp at Blue
Glenn, near the Dip Flat camp. Des Torrent was the instructor there, and they spent month training

and then shipped off to the Eastern Ruahine block.Vic Brosman was the field officer, and Ted hunted
the Makarora, Gold creek and other catchments on the eastern side of the range. Ted recalls shooting
33 out of 36 stags seen one day on the Gold creek tops. Photo below; Ted Smith (right) with NZFS
hunter Chris Peterson at the Eastern Hutt
hut. 1967
After 15 months it was off to the Kaweka
range working for Maurie Robson. Maurie
used pack horses for transporting food,
and this needed to hunters to cut eight
foot wide tracks sometimes. The tops
were clear of Contorta pine trees then.
There were plenty of Sika about, and Ted
used a .22 rifle sometimes. Normally Ted
used a fully wooded No.4 lee Enfield .303.
Hunters at the time included John Fisher,
Jim Stegman and Clary Halsey.
Ted spent 18 months in the Kawekas, and
then along with 3 other hunters was
transferred to the west Coast. Vic
Brosman went do also and was the field
officer. They shot in the Arahura, Styx,
Kokataji, Hokitika and Whitcombe valley.
The winter was spent doing carrot drops in
the Kokatahi and other valleys. Ted
reckons his 303 without a scope was fine,
and managed to get the top tally for one
period.
After a couple of seasons, he moved north to the Tararuas. Hunters there at the time included Russ
Hulme, Ken Seccombe, Jerry Kissling, Dick Heatherington, Bill Diver, Pete Hawkins, Aubrey Hohua
and Noel Frazer was the field officer. Athol Geddes was the District PF ranger in Masterton.
Ted had to come to the rescue with his .303 on a couple of occasions, to retrieve airdrops hung up in
trees. In the Washpool, when building the new hut he had to use about 80 rounds to shoot through a
branch to get a chute down. When the Mid Waiohine hut was air dropped, he had to use 110 rounds to
get down a chute hung up in a Rimu tree.
Mid Waiohine was always one of the most popular huts for the NZFS hunters. The river is clear and full
of giant trout, and hunting is usually good.
It wasn’t always so good for Ted and his mate, John Fisher. One day Ted and his hunting mate John
Fisher decided to go to Totara Flats via the river and hector Gorge. Some trampers had taken 17 hours
to do the trip, and they thought they could do lots better. Near Hector Forks the river rose, and Ted
managed to loose his .303 in the river. They couldn’t recover it, so it was out to town for another.
John went back to Mid Waiohine and after convincing the police that he had really lost his rifle, Ted got
a permit for another and headed back into Mid Waiohine over Mt Holdsworth. On the way down the
Isobell track, Ted shot a couple of goats. While taking some dog meat, he sliced his hand with his
knife. Dripping blood everywhere, he got down to Mid Waiohine to find John Fisher still at the hut.
Next morning it was back out over Mt Holdsworth to get his hand fixed up. John was to go onto
Maungahuka hut to meet up with some of the other hunters.
Ted got to town after walking out, and 3 miles down the Holdsworth road to ring up for transport. He
ended up in hospital, where they decided he wouldn’t loose his finger. Next day, John Fisher turns up
at the hospital, covered in “blood and guts”. Turns out he was shooting at some goats at Mid Waiohine,
and a rock rolled under his feet, and he managed to shoot himself though the leg. Then it was the long
walk out over Mt Holdsworth to get to town.
Ted took some time off and eventually had to have a finger removed, as it stuck out and was getting in
the way.
Back to the Tararuas, Ted spend another couple of seasons shooting. Other hunters there included
Paul Gush, Chris Peterson, Russ Hulme, Walt Geisser, Brian Oliver, Brian Barningham Simpson and
myself.
 Ted was also pretty good with a hunting box. Athol Geddes told him he was wasting his time, but he
got to deer with the 55 lb bow in the Haurangi range.
Then Ted decided after five years he had had enough. He lived on the West Coast and moved to
Masterton, with his wife Toni. They have now moved for the quite life in the country near Mt Bruce.

John Rhodes talks to Athol Geddes, Forest Service Senior Ranger in charge of the deer
control operations in the Tararuas in the 1950s – 1970s

After leaving school in Lower Hutt in the early 1940s Athol worked in shops and factories, but quickly
decided he wanted the open air. The answer was deer-culling for the Department of Internal Affairs which
had charge of for wild animal control on Crown land.

"The wages were lousy, £6 or £7 a week" recalls Athol, "but sometimes we got bonuses of 7/6d or ten
bob a tail. If they told you to go to the Ureweras you found your own way there, there was no
recompense". The cullers bought their own .303 rifles for about £5. "The Department sold us canvas
'kidney rotter' packs and sleeping bags which we nearly froze to death in."

Athol hunted in the Aorangi’s, Ureweras, Ruahines and finally Westland . "When I was about 20 we
were up the Trent, a branch of the Ahaura. It was during the Korean War, about 1953. Some blokes
came up on horses, shooting for skins and getting fourteen bob a pound. One of them worked for the
Forest Service and told me about it. So one day when were out I went to Hokitika. You could get a job
anywhere in those days, they were two a penny. The Forestry people said 'Yes, but you'll have to go to
Wellington for an interview.' So I went over to Lyttelton on my motor-bike and across to Wellington .
They welcomed me with open arms.”

The Forest Service wanted Athol to be a draughting cadet but the lure of the outdoors was too strong.
He went to Rotorua and worked two years as a "timber cruiser" surveying blocks of native State Forest
for central North Island mills. The job was to estimate standing timber volumes so the Crown’s royalties
could be calculated. "We’d take several weeks to lay off and survey an area of 30 or 40 acres and that
would give a mill work for twelve months or so. We stayed in the cook-houses at the mills. Fletchers
had one in the bush at the foot of the Kaimanawas near Taupo. It's all pine trees now, but it was
beautiful totara then. We found Maori pigeon traps in the trees, carved out like troughs, and a half-
finished canoe."

The United Nations had started a world-wide project to measure reserves of indigenous timber. As its
part of this, mounted a ten year National Forest Survey, based at the Forest Research Institute in
Rotorua. Athol transferred to it.

Topographic mapping of the back country was still incomplete (see Mapping through the years in this
Bulletin), so the Forest Survey teams used aerial photographs flown for the purpose. "We navigated
east-west across the grain of the country with an aerial photo and compass, surveying a half acre plot
every half mile" remembers Athol. "We measured all the timber down to the smallest shrubs and
recorded animal damage too. They sent us on courses and we learned a lot about mapping and so on.
The people they had were a damn sight more practical than what they are today!"

Over a four year period the National Forest Survey took Athol to the Urewera, East Cape, Taranaki,
Westland, north west Nelson, the King country, the Napier-Taupo region and the ranges near
Wellington. The survey teams spent summers in the field and winters in Rotorua doing their
computations.
 Athol Geddes in the Haurangi
(Aorangi) Forest Park.

"About October we'd set up a

base camp at a road end, then
we'd go into the bush for one or
two weeks at a time carrying
everything on our backs. My first
trip was down the Whakatane
River. Half way down at
Hanamahihi Clearing we cut
inland, heading due west. I've
never seen so many deer in my
life! Soon afterwards a thousand
deer were shot out of there by
the Internal Affairs cullers.”

From September to February

one year they surveyed the Spenser Mountains from a base in Murchison. "We had hardly a drop of
rain, it was marvellous! We were fly camping with good sleeping bags. We had groups of four. The
party leaders were degree men, technical blokes, and they planned the work. Each party also had a
general hand like me and a couple of trainees, varsity blokes who came for their summer vacation - my
job was to keep them in order. The leader had a waterproof bag with plot sheets and pens and pencils.
We used stereoscopes to see the air photos in three dimensions, but after a while we got the knack of
seeing in 3D without stereoscopes. They issued us with ex-Army prismatic compasses and it taught us
how to navigate through bush. We had "ENZO" dried meat in tins, but I took a rifle too and sometimes
a dog." At the end of the Spenser Mountains survey "We ended up on Molesworth Station - we weren't
supposed to be there - there's no timber, just tussock - we just got inquisitive!"

Athol’s toughest assignment was the Wanganui River, around 1954. “It was lousy papa country with
rifts and chasms, and full of pigs. We got lost, because half the air photos had been taken in cloud, and
we came on some old farms and abandoned shacks. We camped and decided we were getting out of
there so we left early. We hadn't been going long when we saw something through the scrub - we
could just discern a bridge covered in vines. It was the Bridge to Nowhere. Down the valley we met two
cockies on a tractor. 'Where have you come from?' 'Over there.' 'You couldn't, it's too rough!' We
crossed over into the Ruatiti valley and phoned Rotorua from a farm house - we were overdue by three
or four days".
The National Forest Survey was completed in the mid ‘50s. Housing was booming and the Tasman mill
at Kawerau had been commissioned. Athol, now married, worked there for two years but "kept looking
over the fence out into the open." In 1957 he returned to the Forest Service in protection forestry,
based in Masterton, with responsibility for three forest parks: Tararua, Rimutaka and Haurangi.

The previous year wild animal control had passed from Internal Affairs to the Forest Service, and
Athol’s first job was to get it back on its feet in the Tararuas. The range had a sprinkling of tramping
club huts (Fields, Kime, Alpha, Cone, Allaway-Dickson, Totara Flats, Mountain House, Powell,
Waiopehu, Te Matawai, Waitewaewae and a few others) and a handful - Bannister Basin, Dorset
Ridge, Anderson's - built by Internal Affairs.

"I set up a tent camp at Cow Creek with three or four hunters and worked out a strategy. Our Forest
Service people in Wellington had designed a standard hut. We put our first one of these at Cow Creek
in 1960. The other guys and I decided all the locations. The only blue we made was Angle Knob Hut
which got blown away in 1980. We had our own carpenters; Noel Fraser was the main one. Max Cole
did contract work, Dorset Ridge and Totara Flats, and he helped with Tutuwai and Atiwhakatu. Max
was a good practical bloke.”

Internal Affairs had contracted Southern Lakes Scenic Services, based in Queenstown, to drop hut
materials and food with fixed wing planes in the hills all over. When the Forest Service took over wild
animal control in 1956 helicopters were still almost unheard of.

In 1959 pilot Naylor Smith flew Vosseler Hut, the replacement for Kime I, into the Tararuas. Athol
remembers: “Three of us were up there, in radio contact with Naylor. He dropped the first lot, a load of
timber from each bomb rack, then went back to Masterton. We watched him coming with the second
load. He was over the Main Range coming in from the north, on the Otaki side. Then we saw one of the
loads drop off and the parachute opening. Naylor came along on an angle and dropped the other load
OK, then he came on the radio and said he'd had a malfunction. We carried on and stacked the timber,
and late in the day we went back to old Kime Hut where we were staying. We thought we’d have to go
and retrieve the parachute the next day because they were ex World War II and hard to get. We knew
the timber would be a write-off.”
Forest Service personnel at a
brand new Carkeek Hut, about
1963. L to R: Athol Geddes,
Colin McIntyre, Ross Locker
(trainee) Russell Hulme, Dick
Hetherington, Aubrey Hohua,
Tony Newton (trainee), Jim
Taylor. Russell Hulme recalls:
“It was an unusual situation in
that two or three parties met at
Carkeek. Athol was on some
kind of inspection. His party had
come up the Main Range to
Nichols Hut and across to
Carkeek. It was shortly after
Nichols had been built and he
wasn't impressed by the tilt on
the floor, no one was.”

They found two packs in the hut. Some hunters came in, a father and son. “They said ‘We've got
something for you! We were down the ridge and when that load came down we weren't far away. We
thought something must be wrong so we brought the parachute!' Months later we came across the
timber, flooring and match-lining, down in the scrub above the Otaki River.”

Air-dropping was one of this 1960s public servant’s more adventurous tasks. “Another kind of
parachute that Internal Affairs used, and so did we, was smaller, about four feet square. These chutes
were wrapped in tubes of brown paper attached to the Cessna or Auster by rip-cords which tore the
paper off when you threw them out of the plane. We dropped 30 to 40 pound loads of food for the
cullers, packed in sugar bags with straw. The plane would be going in a tight circle, the G forces were
tremendous, and you'd throw as many as you could - two or three at a time. The parachutes were
supposed to be inside the plane till we dropped them, but we came up with a mad idea which Civil
Aviation wouldn't have approved of. We put the bags on the outside of the aircraft, four sugar bags tied
to a piece of four by two with a bomb ring in the middle, and the parachutes tied on. When the pilot
released the whole bundle the rip cords opened the parachutes. One time when Naylor was flying like
this the paper ripped on one of the chutes and it started to open, but he got away with it!”

Then the helicopter era arrived. “We used Jack Palmer’s Bell from Air Work in Christchurch. It was
transported around on a trailer and did the whole country. Jack flew Dundas, Arete Forks and Tarn
Ridge Huts for us, several loads per hut - all attached to the machine, not suspended from it. But first
he sat in Masterton for six weeks waiting for a break in the weather!”

In 1962 Athol’s team built Maungahuka Hut, pictured in Classic back country huts in this Bulletin. “Four
of us walked up from the Hector River to pick a site and camped there. Everyone said I was nuts, they
said it wouldn’t last five minutes, but it's still there. That morning we sat on the top with our rifles and
there were deer everywhere.”

For Maungahuka the operation reverted to fixed wing. “Naylor Smith flew it in with a Cessna using two
bomb racks with 1000 lb loads under each wing and 24 foot circumference parachutes. You could
stand at the aerodrome in Masterton with field glasses and watch the parachutes going down, up there
in the Tararuas. Afterwards we went back to helicopters, Bell and Hiller machines from Wanganui and
Taupo. There was lots of competition so the work went out to tender.”

Trampers in the eastern Tararuas know the best preserved of many crashed aircraft in the range, the
RNZAF Devon on Shingle Slip Knob. The crash happened in 1955, just before Athol’s time. Going in
with some others to pick a site for Mid Waiohine Hut, Athol took spanners, removed the Devon’s
wheels and hid them in the tussock at the bush edge. He was going to divert a helicopter to bring them
out so he could make a trailer, but it never eventuated. “Those wheels might be there still!” grins Athol.
 Mid Waiohine was to become one of the best loved huts in the Tararuas. “We got down to mid
Waiohine and picked the hut site among the big rimu. We built a shelter out of pongas and used a big
square of canvas for the roof. Well she started that night raining. It rained and rained the next couple of
days, the river was up, roaring, and we only had the barest of food. The tops were clagged in. There
was me and Chris Main and Ted Smith. Chris said 'We can go up to Andersons Hut on the Main
Range, there's food there.' We managed to cross the river somehow, and off up the spur. On the tops
we came upon a big stag. The others said 'That's no good!' but I said, 'No, you've got to have some
meat,' and I shot it and we carted it along to the hut - just as well because there was only some old rice
and dried food there and we cooked up our fresh meat. But it kept raining, the clag was right down and
we couldn't get out.”

The weather started to lift. “Chris said 'Let's go over to Dorset Hut, it's had an air-drop, there's tucker
there!' So we set sail going north, but when we got along near Mt Crawford it came down again so we
dived over the edge. Chris reckoned he knew the way but he found the wrong spur and we ended up
down the bottom of Dorset Creek. The river was up and roaring. We crossed and 'Now where do we go
up to this Dorset Hut?' We climbed and ended up on McGregor Ridge. In the bush edge we found an
old Internal Affairs camp with rusty tins and opened them with our knives - one was Chesdale cheese
so we ate that. Then we carried on to Angle Knob Hut and the weather improved. The hut was full of
tucker so we were OK.”

In the 1960s the Forest Service was building not only huts in the Tararuas but bridges too, using a
standard design developed by its Head Office engineers. Athol Geddes: “They did the job
professionally and inspected the bridges regularly. The engineer would come in and survey the site,
sort out the positions for the anchors and how he'd get them in and what length of cables were needed.
This was months ahead so materials could be got ready for the next summer.

Then the job would start. “The two hand-rail cables went in first, then the four bottom ones that you
walk on.” The builders tied on to these wires while they continued their precarious work. Says Athol:
“Then they'd start the decking, working towards the middle from both ends. They were top-notch men!
Les Stanley was one of the last bridge builders, he works for DOC in Taranaki now. Ray Osman was
another.”

When it seemed Athol had just about exhausted his supply of Tararua yarns he remembered one
more. “There's a story about Atiwhakatu Hut. In the winter of 1969 we had a big search for Lester
Tweedale. I went up the Atiwhakatu River in atrocious conditions with the Spooners and Skeets,
searching the tributaries on the true right and ploughing around in snow up to our waists. Bryan
Spooner caught a goat. Then we pulled back to the main Atiwhakatu. Bill Bridge was running the show
from Powell Hut, and he radioed to us 'We're sending some tents for you.' We said 'No need for tents,
we're going to Atiwhakatu Hut.' 'There's no Atiwhakatu Hut!' 'Sorry, there is!' When was that built?'
'About a fortnight ago!'

By the time Athol left Masterton in the mid 1970s he and his team had built about a dozen Tararua huts
and bivouacs and some in the Aorangis, and they’d started replacing older tramping club huts like
Totara Flats and Te Matawai too.

“But” says Athol reflecting on all those huts and bridges, “sometimes we copped a bit of flak from the
tramping clubs. They said we were making the Tararuas too safe!”

Chris Main Interviewed by John Rhodes, May 2009

Life as a Tararua deer culler, 1959-63

Starting as a culler
I came to New Zealand from the UK in1955 at age 21 as a ‘ten pound Pom’. I had a background in
agriculture and was assigned to a job in herd testing (July 1955-April 1958), to which as a new
immigrant I was committed for two or three years. During this time I took up recreational hunting.

In 1958 NZFS advertised for hunters, and I signed up in May. A dozen of us did a month’s training
at Blue Glen near Golden Downs in the spring of that year. We learned how to build tent camps,
cook, make camp oven bread and build two-wire and three-wire bridges from No 8 wire. We were
also taught how to hunt the different species of wild animals, firearm safety, how to zero in and
look after a rifle, safety in the mountains (river crossing etc), and what clothing and footwear we
needed. We learned how to nail up our boots with horseshoe nails.
 I shared a two-man hut with Ray
Forsyth. The tutor was photographer and
film-maker Jim Ollerenshaw. Jim was
taken ill before the course finished, so
we were left to our own devices and
went hunting.

All subsequent cullers’ training courses

were at Dip Flat (now an RNZAF training
camp).

After training, Ray and I carried food to

tent camps and huts up the Branch and
Leatham Valleys under Snow Corbey
and Jock Fisher. I loved that country, but
after only about three weeks I was told to
come out and go to the North Island.

From winter 1958 until the end of

summer 1959 I was at Gwavas NZFS
base, pre-cutting huts. I helped to build
some huts in the Kawekas that summer,
with a Dutchman, John Leggemat (not sure of spelling). I was then transferred to the southern
Ruahines to shoot goats; I spent the rest of winter 1959 on the east side and the following summer
on the west side.

Introduction to the Tararuas

While I was in the Ruahines, I was asked to go and pick up air-drops in the Tararuas, because
Athol Geddes (the DPF or Division of Protection Forestry Ranger in Masterton) had no suitable
staff for the job at the time. The District Ranger was Dave Blithe.

I met Ben (Johnson?), who was to accompany me, in Masterton. After buying some food, Athol
dropped us at Kiriwhakapapa road-end in the afternoon.

Our job was to visit Bannister Basin, Dorset, Te Matawai and Anderson’s Huts in the northern
Tararuas. We had to collect food that had been air-dropped with small parachutes and store it
inside ready for F.R.E.S. survey teams.ii

The weather was OK, but we didn’t know the country and I had no compass. Athol had given us a
good map, though. We spent a night at Blue Range Hut on the way in. Finding Cow Saddle was a
problem, because there was no track and the cloud was down. Athol had warned us that there
were only a few blazes. We had to see across to the other face where it joined, or we could easily
go down the wrong spur and end up in the creek either side. We were lucky to find the saddle that
first time, but on subsequent trips we got to know it. We eventually got to Bannister—we found the
route down through the leatherwood—and collected the ‘chutes, some near the hut and others
scattered in the scrub.

We then split up. Ben headed for Dorset and I went across to Te Matawai. I got there OK, found
most of the ‘chutes and got the food in. Next day I set off for Anderson’s, but the cloud was down.
On the bushed section of the main range I got confused and started going back the way I’d come. I
spent the night out on the tops somewhere, huddled under a rock, and my sleeping bag got
soaked. I kept walking next day, suspecting that I might be going away from Anderson’s. After a
second night on the tops the cloud cleared and I saw Lake Horowhenua on my left, so I knew I was
somewhere along Dundas Ridge.

I high-tailed it to Te Matawai, got a huge fire going and stayed up till midnight drying my gear. Next
day it was fine again, so I got to Anderson’s. While I was bringing in the airdrop, Naylor Smith
came over in his Cessna, waggled his wings and dropped me a note: ‘If you are the Forest Service
bloke who’s supposed to be picking up the food, wave. Stay where you are, a party is on its way
up.’ I waved, and in due course Athol Geddes and three others (probably including Selwyn
Pawson) arrived from Waitewaewae. They’d thought I was a goner; I was two or three days
overdue and lost.
Weather had been bad. Ben had got out from Dorset OK. Athol gave me a hard time, but I think he
was very relieved that I was OK.

After that, I always carried a compass. Hunting was not the purpose of that trip, and I took no dog.

I then returned to my hunting job in the Ruahines. After the FRES survey of 1958-59, Athol asked
me if I would like to be a headman (H/M) hunter in the Tararuas. I jumped at the idea!

Back to the Tararuas

I was in the Tararuas from 1959 to 1963, first as a hunter, then a forest ranger. I had continuous
employment, hunting all year round and also helping to cut tracks and build huts. After some
months in Masterton District I went onto staff as a forest foreman. In my last winter in the
Masterton District, I did a stint as a Ranger on production forestry work.

All the work was on wages, no bonus. The pecking order of promotion was second grade hunter,
then first grade hunter, then headman. Those that had dogs, if they were good enough, received a
dog allowance.

The H/M kept the day books (diaries). We trialled a system of time sheets, which HO wanted, that
was eventually adopted nationally. Athol and I had a session at HO in Wellington for this. We were
working for wages, not by tally as a lot of it was development work (track cutting and choosing hut
sites and helicopter landing pads).

For the first two years I was culling and doing development work year-round. I was based for six to
eight weeks at a stretch mainly in tent camps at Arete Forks and Cow Creek, and in Bannister
Basin Hut, which NZFS inherited from Internal Affairs. Athol Geddes was my boss. I got around
most of the Tararuas on recce trips and so on.

For the first year or so, we operated full time in the Tararuas; but after the first two winters we
spent our winters hunting in the Aorangis. The better climate there was a great treat and a real
morale booster. We had plenty of takers!

In the Tararuas our hunting priority was the headwaters of the Waiohine, Waingawa and
Ruamahanga Rivers. We had a route from Arete Forks to Bannister Basin. I once shot seven stags
in the roar in a single trip over that route, in the bush on the Waingawa side.

I can't remember our tallies, but they were in the hundreds. We concentrated the hunting in the
upper reaches of the Waingawa, Waiohine and Ruamahanga where the most deer damage was,
but we were not hunting all the time.

We shot goats in the Waiohine catchment. Our dogs were good there, as the goats were mainly
bush dwellers—a hundred or so, not high numbers.

Tent camps and huts before NZFS hut-building

We had two good tent camps which we used a lot, one at Cow Creek and the other at Arete Forks.
Both were later replaced with huts, but we spent at least one winter in them.

The tent camps were of standard NZFS construction, and cullers were trained to build them. The
fly, supported on poles, was about 20 feet long. At the open end of the tent was a fireplace, built up
on stones, with a chimney of wood or iron if available. ‘Galley sides’ were laced from the tent onto
the fly at the fireplace end. Cullers could cook in shelter under the end of the fly. Doors were made
from the chaff sacks that we used for air-dropping food from fixed-wing planes at the start of the
season. We slept on a bed of brush and fern covered with sacking. Each camp could
accommodate two or three men, occasionally four.

Leo Hawkins tried to cut down a big dead tree near the Arete Forks camp to clear ground for a
helicopter pad, but he gave up because it became too dangerous when the tree refused to fall. It
later did so during the night, with a loud crash!

This was the earliest use of helicopters by NZFS. I think that Jack Palmer (based in Wanganui)
flew in the hut materials and the food to Cow Creek, Arete Forks and the other huts we used. He
had a small Bell which he towed around the country (both islands) on a trailer. It was flimsy, and
the Tararua weather made flying difficult.
The two huts we used most were Bannister Basin and Dorset Ridge. They had their set-backs;
they were small and cold and lacked handy firewood, which was always a hassle there. In the tent
camps we could at least have good fires, but our sleeping bags were wet when we woke in the
mornings during cold weather.

We had a hut and kennels at the road end at Kiriwhakapapa. That was our main route in and out
over the Blue Range. We didn't stay there long; just for a dip and wash in the creek and into town
for some r & r. It was pretty primitive. When I got onto staff, I had a hut at the single man's camp at
Ngaumu Forest.

Hut building & track cutting

We did a lot of track cutting, and we built bridges and huts: Cow Creek (1960), Dundas & Cattle
Ridge (both March 1961), Arete Forks, Angle Knob, Mid Waiohine, Maungahuka and Neill Forks.
We helicoptered the hut materials to Carkeek Ridge, but I had gone before it was built. The new
huts made our hunting life a lot better.

Naylor Smith dropped the pre-cut materials for Mid Waiohine Hut from his Cessna, using large
RNZAF parachutes, in 1962. The last hut to be parachuted was Maungahuka, the same year. After
that, materials for hut-building went in by helicopter.

After we built Cow Creek Hut, I helped cut and mark the new track from Blue Range to Cow Creek.
We made a cullers’ walk-wire crossing (of number 8 wire) across the Waingawa River at Cow
Creek to get to our tent camp if the river was high. It came in handy on several occasions.

Soon after we finished Cattle Ridge Hut we were staying there in rain and a howling wind that was
sending spurts of water in through a knot-hole in the door; there was no question of going outside!
We couldn’t light the fire because the top section of the chimney got blown over.

Our route to Dundas was via Cow Creek and Bannister Basin, shooting from those huts on the way
in. We’d wait for good weather to go around the tops from Bannister Basin to Dundas.

On the tops, NZFS policy was to put huts where trampers could see them; shelter was less of a
priority. Hut building was a summer job, but it meant fighting the weather and there was always a
rush to get the roof on. You were working in the cold and wet, and as soon as you’d built and
painted a hut you moved on to the next one, so you didn’t get to stay in them much.

I learned my building on the job, helping the carpenters—John Leggemat (spelling uncertain)
building several new huts in the Kawekas, and Noel Fraser in the Tararuas. Both had other helpers
at various times, besides me. I helped Noel in the Tararuas only occasionally because I had the
other hunters and jobs to supervise (being H/M). However, we ensured that he always had helpers,
mainly to keep his morale up as it was such a rotten job in that climate and we wanted the huts
built ASAP. I had a bit of building know-how by then. On Dundas Hut, the other helper was John
Fischer. Most of the hunters helped out at that time because we were largely in the development
stage.

Noel had been building huts in other parts of the Conservancy (which included the Ruahines,
Kawekas etc) but then came to the Tararuas for hut building. He joined us permanently and took
over from me when I left the Tararuas. Ray Wise started on the western side about then.

Mid Waiohine Hut was air-dropped in packages attached to parachutes, several of which hung up
in the tops of large rimu trees. The only way we could get them down was by shooting at the
branches. Later the helicopter came to pick up the parachutes, which were packed up in a pile in a
small clearing on the other side of the river. I helped to load them and then we took off, but we
nearly crashed into the gorge because the ‘chutes were wet and too heavy. It was a hairy ride!
Fortunately we were able to land again in a small clearing down river and offload a few ‘chutes
from the racks.

Athol always enjoyed a trip in to see us, he was good company with a sense of humour and we did
a few recce trips with him; choosing sites for Cattle Ridge, Cow Creek and Arete Forks Huts and
planning ahead. He was keen to have a track down the length of the Waiohine, but we didn't get
around to it. It didn't seem to fit with my priorities! Was it ever accomplished?
I remember the trip out from mid Waiohine via Anderson’s and Angle Knob, described in the FMC
Bulletin (May 2004). But Athol used to come in from the office, so that trip was hard on him;
whereas Ted and I were super fit in those days and it was just another trip for us.

The life of a Tararua deer culler

Until helicopters became available, Naylor Smith (Manawatu Air) dropped our food to the tent
camps and huts from his Cessna, using small NZFS parachutes.

We normally lived in pairs but hunted separately. We’d get up early, taking turns to get breakfast
(e.g. left-over stew, baked beans, spaghetti, tinned tomato; seldom porridge because it didn’t stick
to your ribs).

Over breakfast, we’d decide where each of us would hunt. If it was clearing after rain, the deer
would be sunning themselves in clearings in the leatherwood. We’d get above them and shoot
from the ridges and spurs, ensuring we had a good rest for our rifles. We tried to get within 100
yards, but the range was sometimes 150 or 200 yards.

It was rare for deer to be on the tops except in calm, foggy weather, when they’d be up in the
tussock. In winter the upper forest and scrub was warmer for them than the lower forest. There
they ate coprosmas, broadleaf and five-finger, and they damaged the leatherwood by making
tracks through it. They’d chew the ends of Chionochloa flavescens leaves and nibble C. pallens
right down, sometimes pulling the shoots out. They also ate lots of herbs. Deer damage was very
evident, and the main ridges were all heavily tracked.

During the day we carried a little food – usually dried fruit or a jam sandwich made from camp oven
bread that we’d made during an evening or a wet day (we’d had a good breakfast!) We wore
Swannis, oilskin parkas, shorts and leather boots and carried gear for the day in a pikau. We had
to provide our rifles and other gear, and quite a bit of our wages went on that. The Forest Service
supplied ‘skin bags’ or ‘kidney rotter’ packs at a low price. These were simple canvas bags with
leather straps, one pocket and no frame. I didn’t get one, but they were good for bush bashing as
they sat low on the back. The NZFS had a stock of basic sleeping bags and ex-army .303 Lee
Enfields that we could buy, too.

NZFS supplied only our ammunition and food. At first the ammo was .303, for the Lee-Enfields.
They gave us three rounds for each animal we killed. Later we bought high-powered rifles of other
calibres with ‘scopes, which were far superior. At first we had to buy the ammunition for these or
else hand-load it ourselves. NZFS still gave us three rounds of .303 per kill; so we traded this for
ammo of the calibres we needed, or else for hand-loading materials. We used to do the reloading
at base huts like Cow Creek. Finally, NZFS supplied us with ammunition of other calibres (.222,
.243, .270, and .308), but we had to keep account of it. The allowance per animal was still three
rounds, so you couldn’t just blast away. You couldn’t get away with much! NZFS also made bulk
purchases of high-powered rifles and sold them to us at a very good price.

Mountain Mule packs were a new thing, and they sat well. Most hunters bought them, as they were
ideal for the job in carrying heavy loads. We also bought our own sleeping bags—several of us got
Fairydown ‘Everests’, being in the Tararuas for two winters. We used our pack frames for carrying
firewood up to huts like Dorset and Bannister. Some of the cullers used Trapper Nelson packs, but
they were tall and caught in branches and scrub.

At the end of the day’s hunting we’d bring back a couple of legs and back-steaks for ourselves and
the dogs, carrying them in our pikaus. There were so many deer, the animals weren’t big.

At some of the more remote huts (where trampers were less likely to be) like Arete Forks, we’d set
up a bench rest for sighting in our rifles. This was a wooden table or bench with sandbags or
clothing to rest the rifle, and a seat attached. We could shoot a good group that way. But ideally we
needed 100 yard range, which was hard to find near a hut. For a target we’d use cardboard from a
food carton (after food was brought by helicopters) with a cross marked with a biro. Whenever our
shooting was becoming inaccurate we’d sight our rifles in again. I was fussy about this, because
you had to have confidence in your rifle.

The only bivvy we had in those days was beside Cow Creek Hut. We used it for stores, track
cutting gear and personal stuff and kept it locked because some of our stuff was nicked from the
 hut, where the locked cupboard was broken into. This was a problem at accessible huts like Cow
Creek and Angle Knob. We did leave some food out for emergency use.

But the tramping clubs were good, and they looked after their own huts well.

Recollections of a former Tararua deer culler Bruce Davidson in the 1930s.

“In 1938 I answered an advertisement for deer cullers in the Tararuas. Several others and were invited to
Masterton to meet Captain Yerex who was in charge of the field operations for the Internal Affairs. About
a week later Bert Barra called in to see me on his way back from Taihape.” Bruce began his culling in the
Maingatainoka and Ruamahanga area of the Tararuas.

One of his memories is when they walked to the Park valley in the head of the Waiohine river. “In
february 1939, we were joined by Ray Lawrenace. We were exploring ways of getting into the Park valle.
This was a nightmare trip. I would not advise anyone to make that trip as its full of gorges. After a hard
trip up the Ruamahanga river we camped at the foot of Bannister., and the only deer we saw was a stag
on the only piece of ground suitable to pitch our tent. The next day we cut our way out as the deer not
penetrated into that part. He fog was down low , so we cached our ammo and tinned food and made our
way over Cattle Ridge down into the Lower Ruamahanga.

A few days later we set off from the Forks by way of Cattle Ridge to the Park Valley. It was a very hot
day. We were continually deer and going down the sides for their tokens. . it was late in the afternoon
when we got to Bannister and there was still plenty of shooting. One mob we surprised on the Twins
panicked and bolted downhill to find they had no where to go. They went sailing into space. Ray and I
went back the next day and collected their tails. It was 10 o’clock before we reached the Park valley. By
the time we cooked a meal and dossed into our sleeping bags it was after midnight. Not one of us stirred
before 10am the next morning. We got over 150 tails there but had to return to base when we ran out of
food and we were now low on ammo. We made several trips to the Park Valley but the weather often
beat us”.

Bert Barra – Deer Culler (1899–1993) From www.nzdeercullers.org.nz

Renowned deer culler and animal control expert, is a significant figure in both Wairarapa and 20th
century huting history. During the 1930s and ’40s, Bert shot for Internal Affairs, exceeding 24,000
animals over his career and often had the top seasonal tally for Government shooters. He came to
Wairarapa in 1935 as a Field Officer for Deer Control in the Tararuas, where he was responsible for
the hunting programme. Retiringfrom the New Zealand Forest Service in the early 1970s, Bert lived
out his days in a simple hut with no power at Kaituna in the Upper Waingawa, on the main route to
Mount Mitre . Photo – Bert at his hut in the Waingawa valley (Photo by Grant Timlin)
 This is named the Barra Track in his
honour. Hunters who passed Bert’s
hut in his later years would often drop
him a back steak. Bert was always
most appreciative, proclaiming each
offering as “the best bit of vension I
ever had!” He was certainly well
qualified to know. It is hoped that this
story of what is thought to be Bert’s
last deer will be of interest to those
who knew him. He didn’t shoot it, in
fact at nearly 90 years old with poor
health he may not have been able to,
but it certainly wouldn’t have
happened without him. Kaituna
farmer Chris Tait who owns the land
on which Bert’s hut stands tells the
story.

“Bert was a good neighbour and a

great bush cook. If he ever caught
me coming past from mustering late
he would drag me in and feed me
one of his stews with camp oven bread. I often wondered what he made of me, a non-hunter from
Wellington —he could be pretty tough on “townies” as he called them. One morning in April 1986, I
was coming in from town with some groceries for Bert when I noticed a strange looking cow crossing
the creek near the home paddock. It was a young stag, a spiker, looking a bit lost. He wandered
across the track and disappeared around the corner. We didn’t see many deer around there but as
I’m no hunter and had never shot a deer, I didn’t think any more about it and went on up to Bert’s hut
with the grub.

We were sitting there having one of Bert’s “ever ready”

brews when he looks out the window and says “there’s a
bloody deer in my paddock!” I started to explain how I had
seen it down the track but he immediately staggered to his
feet and lurched off to his bunk room. There was a lot of
crashing and banging and Bert eventually emerged loading
his old .303; the very same one with which he had shot
thousands of deer. “Go on and shoot it” he growled
slamming the magazine into the rifle. I started to say
something about never having shot a deer before but he
grabbed me by the shoulder, thrust the battered rifle into
my hands and pushed me out the door.

The spiker had continued his wanderings and was now out
of sight. I got into the Falcon station wagon, laid Bert’s rifle
across the bench seat and somewhat uncertainly began my
first deer hunt. As it happened, he hadn’t gone far and I
managed to knock him over with one shot.
(Photo left – 20 Tararua point stag shot by Bert)

Five minutes later I was back at Bert’s with the whole animal in the back. “You missed the bastard
eh?” was Bert’s first query. He’d only heard the one shot and assumed I’d missed it. “No, I got it. It’s in
the back of the car” I replied, beginning to feel a little proud of myself. “Where did you hit it?” he
asked. When I responded in all innocence “In the head. Where else do you aim?” Bert laughed and
laughed. I think he liked me a bit better after that.
Bert went and got his knife. He looked at the spiker and decided he wasn’t up to skinning a deer
anymore. “He can still take one apart though,” I thought as I watched his bent figure astride the
carcass grunting and muttering as he did the business.

We chucked the lumps of deer into sacks for delivery to some of Bert’s mates in town. Bert gave me a
list of names and asked if I would do the honours. “Who are you?” asked one old culling mate as he
 peered into the back of the Falcon. “I’m Chris,” I said thrusting a bloody sack into his arms. “This is for
you. From Bert”. He smiled. “Good one” he said. “Good old Bert”.

In 1999, Deer Cullers Society Incorporated met near Bert’s hut and planted a totara in his memory.
The plaque reads “In memory of Bert Barra. Deer Culler. Died 1993 aged 93.”

Tararua deer - Extracts from reports by Bert Barra 1938-39

Deer have made a rapid increase since 1935 esp. in Mangahao, Ruamahunga, Waingawa, Waiohine,
Tauherenikau, Hutt & Otaki.
In various places the damage done by deer is equal to anything I have come into contact with
elsewhere, but more so in the bush than in the open country. The reason for this appears to on account
of the deer in the Tararuas being more a bush living animal. At the same time there is very poor variety
of deer fodder on the open country. Wherever there is an abundance of fivefinger deer are always
found to be very numerous, and it appears to be their main food.
Quite a large amount of undergrowth in the main bush has also been seriously damaged since our
1935 operations, such as the headwaters of the hector, Waiohina, mangahao and Ruamahunga rivers.
Also on the nor-west side of the Hutt and Tauherenikau Rivers. In various places during our previous
operations the undergrowth was so dense that it was almost impossible for a human being to get
through it, but at the present day, owing to extensive damage done by deer, it is almost impossible to
scramble through the dead undergrowth of sticks.
In the scrub above the bushline there is a good deal of fiverfinger which the deer are rapidly destroying,
and it gives one the appearance of the scrub having been destroyed by fire and a very large proportion
of these scrub areas have been damaged since our 1935 operations. Many large landslides have
already taken place and eventually they will develop into large shingle fans; this applies to many more
places than the Tararuas.
….in the Tararua area… the majority of deer spend at least six months in the bush and some never
leave the bush. In the early spring quite a number of the breeding hinds move out on to the open tops
and spend a few weeks until nearing gestation then return to the bush and remain there until their
offspring are strong enough to enable them to follow the mother when disturbed.

The older stags seem to adapt themselves to some outlying place from one mating season to another.
As for younger stags and young hinds, the majority of them commence to leave the bush for the open
tops in the early spring and remain there until the fall of the following year…. Deer use warm low-lying
eaten out country during the winter…. In quite large numbers especially on spurs lying to the sun.

Deer tracks
Since our 1935 operations many of the large deer tracks that were then being freely used by deer,
have now become impassible mainly on steep country. In most places, I have noticed that erosion
takes place on the lower edge of the deer tracks in the shape of a V and in the early stages of erosion
some of the V shaped pieces are on average from 30 to 40 yards wide and very often over 100 yards
wide and 150 yards in length and show increase after heavy rainfall.

Riverbed Erosion
Increased damage has been done to practically every riverbed in the Tararuas since our 1935
operations and some of the tributaries which were then small streams of from 4 to 5 yards in width
have now developed shingle beds from 20 to 40 yards in width, and strewn with dead timber. Some of
the rivers have also have increased the width of their beds by about 40 to 100 yards. In 1935
operations portions of these riverbeds were only about 40 to 50 yards wide, the water passing over a
rock foundation, and bush bound. In our 1935 operations these portions of increased riverbeds were
hidden by surrounding timber and undergrowth.
Extract from Shelter from the Storm

NEW ZEALAND FOREST SERVICE HUTS

The NZFS Takes Over
By Shaun Barnett

… it was the New Zealand Forest Service that had the structure, the money, the clout and the will to
scatter orange huts across the wilderness like Jaffas sent rolling through the landscape.
– Mark Pickering in his book, Huts: Untold Stories of Back-country New Zealand (2010)

By the mid-1950s deer continued to persist in New Zealand despite the combined efforts of meat
hunters, recreational deerstalkers and a sustained twenty-five-year culling programme by Department
of Internal Affairs cullers. The word ‘extermination’ no longer peppered the department’s annual
reports, and it stated success largely in terms of deer shot – an increasingly meaningless figure. After
its quarter-century deer-killing campaign, the DIA lost responsibility for deer control to the New
Zealand Forest Service in 1956, a change that was to have far-reaching implications for hut
development in New Zealand.

Ever since it lost its bid to control deer to the DIA in 1930, the NZFS had maintained that it was the
logical choice to manage culling operations, for two main reasons. First, the NZFS managed many of
areas where deer were considered to be a problem. And second, the Forest Service was better
resourced, with trained foresters and scientists who – it hoped – could research and understand the
deer problem more thoroughly. The Forest Service argued that shooting deer was all very well, but
were culling efforts focused in the right places? Deer, the NZFS believed, most needed controlling in
the erosion-prone catchments of major towns and cities, and it had long advocated the policy ‘Look
after the catchments and the rivers will look after themselves’. Forest Service managers, notably
Assistant Director Lindsay Poole (a botanist), firmly believed that control of wild animals preserved
vegetation, thereby conserving soils and preventing erosion in key catchments.

A new statute passed in 1956, the Noxious Animals Act, made the transfer to the NZFS official, and
the takeover came on 1 April that year. Some of the DIA old hands saw this as the worst of April
Fool’s Day jokes. Mike Bennett, author of The Venison Hunters (1979) had a sour view of the change:
‘It was not that the Old Firm had been exactly static over the years, but in the tradition of new brooms
everywhere, dust had to fly and something had to happen to create the impression that something
extra was being done. It was rather reminiscent of a supermarket chain taking over the village
grocer’s shop.

In one sense, little changed. Virtually the whole of the former DIA staff – including some 15 field
officers, 100 hunters, and support staff – transferred en masse to the Forest Service. Yerex, soon to
retire, stayed at the DIA, and in his place Ron Fraser took charge of deer-culling operations.

But in another sense, particularly with regard to huts and tracks, revolution was afoot. Not long after
the NZFS took over responsibility, it embarked on the greatest hut-building programme ever
undertaken in New Zealand and, possibly, the world. Mike Bennett summed it up: …the Forest
Service early took on a comprehensive campaign of hut building; contract carpenters were employed
and larger parachutes were used for dropping off pre-cut timber. Later, the helicopter completely took
over the role of the aerial packhorse.’

Initially, however, NZFS hut design centred on fixed-wing plane transport. Jock Fisher was one of
those had worked for Internal Affairs and was transferred to the NZFS in 1956. He oversaw hut-
building for both outfits, and recalled:

‘I always look back on the hut building as three eras: The Auster era where we dropped rolled
up flat iron and four-foot lengths of framing timber from inside the plane. The Cessna era
where we dropped rolled up iron and wing loads of six-foot lengths of timber from the wing
racks. Then the Helicopter era where we carried in all components for huts.’

Initially, the use of fixed-wing planes had a disadvantage in that the length of any materials had to be
limited to what could fit inside the fuselage. For this reason, the NZFS in Hawke’s Bay experimented
with a design using a bolt-together Dexion aluminium frame in the Kaweka Range. In 1957, it
constructed two four-bunk Dexion huts: Makahu Saddle and Back Ridge. Jock Fisher recalled that
Popeye Lucas, a major aviation figure in New Zealand who was heavily involved in air-drops, was the
agent for Dexion, and so possibly influenced this decision. Unfortunately, no extant records indicate
how many Dexion huts were built, but the two surviving Kaweka huts are important examples of this
brief flirtation with the framing.

Culler Ron Turner began work with the NZFS under Jock Fisher in 1956, serving in both the West
Coast and Nelson-Marlborough conservancies. He recalled:

‘The Forest Service, with its vastly different attitude towards the welfare of their shooters,
started to improve operational standards, and I was part of that new hut building effort. This
attitude is not surprising as most of the field officers were former shooters with the old Internal
Affairs Department. The push for better huts was repeated in many of the backcountry valleys
where shooting operations were carried out.’

Indeed, the regional hut-building efforts began by DIA staff on the West Coast spawned a major
development centre for NZFS hut design. At first, the Forest Service had a rather decentralized
structure, meaning regional conservancies often led the way in hut design. Ex-DIA staff, now part of
the NZFS, contributed a great deal to the early hut design and building, especially on the West Coast
and in Nelson. Some of the earliest huts built by the NZFS were two-person bivouacs, as they solved
the problem of accommodation on the tops. Ron Turner wrote:

‘Initially, on the West Coast, and after completion of the Wilkinson Hut [an early hut built in the
Whitcombe Valley during 1957], we built some of the early bivouacs or ‘bivvys’ … Being in a
snow zone meant the bivvys had to be water-and-moisture-proof and have a dry wooden floor
for sleeping on. Food and ammunition would be dropped in by arrangement, also fuel for the
kerosene stoves as there was no timber or alpine scrub nearby. These bivouacs may not
have attracted a ‘star rating’, but when the weather suddenly turned foul they were just great.’

At first, these bivvies were very basic indeed, comprising of not much more than a tent-shaped shell
on piles, with a door at one end and a window at the other. In essence, the tent camp had evolved
into a bivouac, with flat iron replacing canvas. The dimensions were essentially the same: 3 metres by
2 metres. During the late 1950s, this basic biv design changed rapidly, and by the 1960s bivs were
more like small stand-up huts with bunks, and sometimes even boasted small fireplaces and
chimneys.

Helicopter Huts
While air-drops from fixed-wing planes had enormously increased hut-building efficiency, helicopters
ushered in a complete revolution. From mid-1950s onwards, commercial helicopters began to operate
more widely in New Zealand. Despite the fact that the first ‘choppers’ were not particularly useful –
culler Jack Lasenby called them ‘unstable dragonflies’ – helicopters rapidly ensured a transfornation
in hut design and building efficiency.

With summer and autumn fully occupied by actual culling operations, winter and spring became the
default hut-building and track-cutting seasons. In the spring of 1958, NZFS Nelson Conservancy
building overseer Phil McConchie erected the first hut in New Zealand built using helicopter-
transported materials.

Snow Corboy, the NZFS Senior Field Officer in Nelson, engaged a Bell 47 helicopter to transport in
pre-cut framing for four new huts in Northwest Nelson (now Kahurangi National Park): Mid Matiri,
Luna, Kakapo and Karamea Bend. The huts were a basic four-bunk model, different to the later NZFS
standard S81 design, and another example of how specific regions led hut development before
national standards came into force. Materials for all four huts were stacked at Karamea before being
flown in by the Christchurch-based Braziers Air Works. To save flying costs, the helicopter was
transported to Karamea by trailer, but this ‘did more damage to the helicopter than the actual flying.’

Ron Turner was employed to help McConchie, and recalled all did not go smoothly with the first of the
planned huts, Mid Matiri, in September 1958: ‘There were two trainee hunters with me and my
objective was to prepare a landing site for the helicopter, to ready a smoky fire to indicate both the
landing zone and wind direction, and to clear the construction site. It rained, and rained, and kept on
raining for days with low cloud.’

After running out of food, Turner returned to the base hut at Murchison, only to be reprimanded by
Snow Corboy for abandoning his post. Happily, Turner got to fly back in with the helicopter, although it
remained cloudy, and he remembered having to ‘wipe moisture from inside the Perspex bubble’. He
continued:
 ‘My flight was really exhilarating but noisy, lasting some 11 or 12 minutes. It was so easy
compared to the wet, miserable hours of struggle and slippery rocks endured the previous
day. The first load of timber and iron were placed on site, undamaged, with my pack.

‘The particular method of construction of these huts called for the flooring to be put down
extending to the outer edges of the building prior to erecting the walls. This was an effort to
prohibit the entry of any rats, mice and possums, and to cut down on cold draughts. At the
entrance end of the hut there was a covered-in area for firewood and a place to store our
backpacks.

‘A ‘new’ insulating material (sisalation) was provided and we actually installed this sheeting
back to front so that the silver side faced into the hut thus creating a better, lighter interior.
This was a vast improvement from the rolls of dark malthoid sheeting or brown builder’s paper
used to line earlier huts which, while deflecting condensation from the under surfaces of the
roof, made the interior dark. Overlapping joints of the flat metal exterior sheeting were sealed
with ormonoid, a thick, black bitumenous paint (which had a dual purpose of playing noughts
and crosses on the chimneys).’

Swarms of insects often caused hardships for builders working on huts. Turner recalled, ‘the
sandflies were particularly thick at the hut sites practically driving everybody mad. We must have
killed at least 10,000 of them but about 40,000 came to their funeral.’

In order to convince the NZFS head office that the £60 per hour cost of the helicopter was justified,
Snow Corboy kept meticulous records of the hut-building exercise. His figures proved emphatically
that helicopters were more efficient than a fixed-wing plane, in terms of both cost and time. There
were other advantages, too, as Jock Fisher recorded: ‘Huts could be precut by the NZFS carpenters
at Golden Downs and landed safely on site, with no breakages, making it easier for unskilled hunters
to erect.’

Altogether, the NZFS experiment with helicopters was an unqualified success. In recognition of Phil
McConchie’s efforts, Mid Matiri Hut was later renamed after him. Although modified, McConchie and
Kakapo are the only two surviving huts of the four built that momentous spring of 1958. Karamea
Bend Hut has been replaced twice, and Luna Hut was flown out intact when the new Trevor Carter
Hut replaced it in 2003.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, helicopters almost completely supplanted fixed-wing planes as
the first choice for hut-building. Helicopters allowed precision flying, with few lost or damaged loads.
Later, longer lengths of timber could be carried on a strop slung beneath the machine, enabling
efficient delivery of materials to even tiny bush clearings – something difficult to achieve with a fixed-
wing aircraft, as parachutes often went astray in the forest. Helicopters ensured the NZFS could
embark on a grand hut-building program at lower altitudes.

During the early 1960s, a second phase of hut-building using helicopter got underway in the Nelson
area, but this time they were mostly six-bunkers. The team involved, including overseer Phil
McConchie and carpenters Ray Osman, Graeme Coombes and Bob Sutherland, introduced new
professionalism. Osman recalls that prefabricating materials back at base, such as cutting dwangs to
the correct length, and scarfing corners joints, enabling swifter construction in the field. Among others,
the huts they built included Speargrass, East Matakitaki, Sabine Forks and Mole Tops in Nelson
Lakes; Roebuck in the Richmond Range; Wheel Creek in the Victoria Range; and Pell Stream at
Lewis Pass. In addition, base huts were built at road-ends or places accessible via four-wheel drive
tracks; these included Mid Glenroy in Nelson Lakes, Branch River in Marlborough and Station Creek
in the Maruia Valley.

Employing trained carpenters, and working over summer dramatically improved hut-building
efficiency. During the 1961-62 season, for example, Osman completed an Awatere Valley hut, toilet
and all, in just five days with fellow carpenter Bob Sutherland. Several factors helped: ‘Long summer
days, fine weather, good digging, and Bob under pressure from his fiancé to get back to town
employment.’

Ben Gibbs, who worked briefly for the NZFS as a labourer in the Nelson district, recalled building
Stone Creek Hut on the Wangapeka Track in the 1960s. He says that eight days was the usual time
needed to build a hut, depending on site’s suitability for digging holes for the piles and, of course, the
weather. One of the builders usually spent a day hunting to ensure fresh camp meat. Gibbs also
recalls:
 ‘[We] used to lay waste to acres of bush in those days – no regard for conservation values! –
in order to clear a safe landing area for helicopters. Helicopter … pilots were still learning how
to fly them safely in mountain areas. We NZFS hunters and track builders never managed to
get a ride in a helicopter. We always had to walk into and out of the site, carrying all our own
gear. We baked our own bread and cooked the meat we shot in camp ovens over the open
fire.’

By this time the carpenters were using the standard designs formulated in the NZFS head office.

Standard Hut Designs: the Classic NZFS S81 and SF70

During the late 1950s, engineers at the NZFS head office in Wellington adopted the best features of
each regional design and combined them to form national standards. The chief architect of these
designs was civil engineer Max Cone. By 1958–59, the NZFS had formalised standard designs for a
two-bunk biv, a four-bunk huts (S81) and a six-bunk hut (SF70), with 3, 5 and 7-bunks variations
possible. They owed much to the design work of Stan Fokerd on the West Coast, and also to the
helicopter-construction methods developed by Snow Corboy in Nelson. Soon after, NZFS huts and
bivs began to pepper other parts of New Zealand’s backcountry.

By the early 1960s, the NZFS hut-building machine had become highly efficient. Its hut-building
peaked in 1960, when, remarkably, more than sixty huts were erected, and in 1961 a further fifty-five
were built: twenty-five four-bunkers, seventeen six-bunkers, and thirteen two-bunk bivs, equating to
more than one per week.

Despite its incredible efficiency, hut-building did not always proceed smoothly. In the 1961–62
season, for example, the NZFS dropped materials onto a flat at Mokihinui Forks after the accepting an
offer by the Westport deerstalkers to move them across the river to a site cleared in the forest for the
hut. Disaster struck, however, when a flood swept everything downstream before they got there. Ray
Osman recalled the strange sight of mattresses caught 3 metres up in dead tree spars.

NZFS deer-culling huts were basic but comfortable, usually well positioned near a water supply or
provided with a water tank. Although perhaps not intended to last for decades, many of the basic
SF70 six-bunk and S81 four-bunk huts have survived remarkably well – a testimony to their sound
design. It is no exaggeration to say they became the classic backcountry hut, and an icon of the New
Zealand mountains.

In the 1960s, most major catchment areas controlled by the Forest Service got a fair smattering of
huts, among them the Ruahine, Tararua, Kaweka and Aorangi ranges in the North Island, and large
parts of the Southern Alps, Northwest Nelson, Eyre Mountains, Takitimu Range and the Marlborough
mountains. Culling huts were also established on high-country leasehold land, such as at Poplars
Station near Lake Sumner Forest Park. The West Coast’s Hokitika catchment, flagged early on as a
priority area for hut-building soon became so well endowed with huts that one ex-culler quipped, ‘How
can they possibly have a noxious animal problem in the Hokitika? Half the bloody watershed is under
corrugated iron.’

With responsibility for all wild animal operations, the Forest Service also built huts on lands not
directly under its jurisdiction, including national parks managed by the Department of Lands and
Survey. For example, the Forest Service built the vast majority of huts (more than 80 per cent) in Te
Urewera National Park, plus several in Nelson Lakes National Park. In the 1960s and 1970s, Lands
and Survey also began building many huts in national parks, but the magnitude of their efforts paled in
comparison with that of the NZFS.

Statistics often blunt a good story, but not this one. Between the years 1957 and 1972, the prodigious
NZFS machine built 644 huts, 36 shelters, 26 vehicle bridges, 142 footbridges, 22 cableways, 2900
kilometres of roads, 1400 kilometres of 4WD tracks and about 4000 kilometres of tramping tracks. By
the 1970s, New Zealanders could boast perhaps the densest network of backcountry facilities in the
world, and certainly the only one almost wholly constructed by a government.

In The Venison Hunters, Mike Bennett takes a rather jaundiced view of all this development
(somewhat echoing modern-day complaints against DOC’s recent hut-building programme):

‘However, despite such innovations as foam-rubber mattresses to replace the old sack bunks
or beds of fern leaves, the entire programme got out of hand. There is a suspicion that the
 unspent portions of the generous annual budgets were burned off in one way by an almost
ludicrous surfeit of huts in some areas.
… Orange-coloured huts with large black numbers painted on the roofs blossom every two
hours along the river bottoms of some valleys, and on the tops practically every basin has its
bivouac or home away from home. They were expensive and largely unnecessary.’
How did the NZFS cullers themselves view these huts? Some, like Bennett, thought them too
salubrious and lamented the good old days of tent camps, but that was partly nostalgia. In his book
Pack & Rifle (1986), NZFS deer-culler Philip Holden recalled one 1960s Ruahine Range culling stint
when he moved from the Big Hill tent camp to the newly-built Ruahine Hut. The change was

‘sheer heaven … For Ruahine is the latest kind of Forest Service hut: they have six bunks for a start,
and each one has a foam rubber mattress. There’s also a verminproof food cupboard, a workbench,
and several bins for perishables such as flour, butter, cheese and so on. These huts are spacious,
very practical and damn comfortable to live in.’

Most hut food cupboards were regularly stocked by helicopter drops, and gone was the need to lug in
supplies and dismantle tent camps for the winter. NZFS cullers could concentrate on their main task –
killing deer. By the 1960s, the days of skiing deer were long over, and cullers simply took tails as
proof of kills – which were then counted and burned by the field officer at the end of each culling stint.

Some thieving from huts by trampers or recreational hunters did occur. Jock Fisher recalls one such
occasion when he was shooting in the West Coast’s Whitcombe Valley:

‘[I] had picked up and stacked an air-drop in the Cave Camp, a party of CMC [Canterbury
Mountaineering Club] came over the pass and scoffed the only two tins of fruit in the air-drop,
which I had put aside for a Christmas treat. We normally did not get tinned fruit in an air-drop
in those days. They left a bag of rice in its place. When they got to Prices Flat Hut they noted
in the visitor’s book their names and the comment “looks like the Cave Camp has been hit by
a grocer shop.” When I got to the hut, I added ‘…and it was not the self help.’ At that time in
NZ there were a number of stores called ‘The Self Help’.

However, Fisher recalls that theft was the exception, not the norm, and generally relations in the
backcountry were congenial:

‘Cullers always had a reasonable outlook regarding trampers and mountaineers and never
objected to a hungry man obtaining a feed in our camps … It was often good to meet and
hear where they had been and what deer they had seen. And there was always a bit of
outside news and world events that they could pass on, and for those sports-minded shooters
how the All Blacks were faring in the latest test or how the cricket was going. Nobody had
radios in those days.’

The Forest Service – to its credit – continued to allow free use of its huts by trampers and
deerstalkers. Indeed, the NZFS had recreational use firmly on its agenda as early as 1961, the last
year it built more four-bunkers than six-bunkers. Cullers usually worked in pairs, and so rarely needed
more than four bunks – the fact that the NZFS six-bunkers became the most commonly built huts in
1962 shows how early the agency broadened its view of hut use. Officially, members of the public
needed a permit to enter state forests as late as 1965, but for decades the NZFS turned a blind eye to
this.

By the end of the 1960s, deer-culling operations were highly organized. NZFS cullers had good tracks
and bridges to get around on, and comfortable, well-stocked huts. Rex Forrester wrote in the 1960s
that deer-culling had become ‘very civilized, with untold luxuries like mattresses, kerosene stoves and
lamps in advance camps, which are now huts landed by helicopter instead of flytents; and even at the
base camps electric stoves and showers.’ He noted that shooting has changed from ‘an affair of the
individual against nature to a concentrated campaign organized like an army exercise … Today there
are lots of blokes rushing round with forestry degrees, goatee beards and clipboards covered in
figures.’

Forrester’s words were not dismissive; he was just commenting on how much had changed since his
DIA days, adding: ‘In areas like the Urewera Country, the Government has really got the deer down.
Only a few years ago Allan Duncan killed 1,100 deer in six months in one Urewera district, but in 1962
it took six hunters as long to kill that many between them.’

Venison Recovery
There is little doubt that the hut-building programme had a positive impact on the efficiency of
backcountry animal control. Rather ironically, however, the great advantages brought by helicopters in
transporting hut materials and supplies also made them ideal for shooting deer – so much so, in fact,
that by the late 1960s and early 1970s, helicopters made Forest Service ground cullers almost
obsolete.

As early as 1964, John Henham shot deer from a helicopter piloted by Jack Eskew and in the West
Coast’s Arawhata Valley, signalling an entirely new approach to deer hunting. By 1967, commercial
venison-recovery helicopter operators began out-gunning the foot-sloggers. These dextrous machines
could flush deer out of the most inaccessible places, surprising them by their sudden arrival and
outmanoeuvring the animals with their speed. By the early 1970s, prices for wild venison soared, to
the extent that dozens of commercial helicopter operators began to exploit the new bonanza. Many
NZFS cullers jumped ship, lured by the better money and kerosene-fuelled adrenaline of a job that,
though more dangerous, often got you home in time for tea.

At first these machines were strictly for venison recovery, but as the market for deer meat expanded,
entrepreneurial hunters developed techniques for capturing live deer to stock the country’s
burgeoning number of deer farms.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Forest Service responded slowly at first to these momentous changes,
virtually ignoring them in its annual reports. As Graeme Caughley points out in The Deer Wars, the
NZFS was very reluctant to admit that part of its raison d’être had been so quickly outgunned by
private helicopters, and for not one dollar of taxpayer expense.

Soon though, the NZFS recognised that the end of its ground-culling days were in sight, and in 1967
granted permits to private venison-recovery operators. On the West Coast, the Forest Service trialled
aerially drops of 1080-laced carrot for deer control in the mid-1960s, and in August 1967 undertook its
own aerial hunting trial. By 1970, the last ground culler on the Forest Service’s books finished up on
the West Coast, although other areas, such as the Kawekas and Tararuas, ground cullers continued
to operate as late as 1987. By then, however, the supreme effectiveness of aerial culling had become
undeniable.

Huts continued to provide accommodation (and still do) for ground cullers shooting goats in places
like Marlborough and the Richmond Range, as these animals were not targets for helicopter
operators.

Parallel to the decline of deer-culling was changing understanding of the nature of erosion. Pioneer
hunter Newton McConochie, whose hunting heyday was in the early 1900s, later became an
influential member of the New Zealand Deerstalkers’ Association. As early his 1966 book You’ll Learn
no Harm from the Hills, he expressed a theory ahead of its time: ‘There is the indisputable fact that
erosion has been with us throughout the ages … May I suggest that erosion runs in cycles, varying in
locality and time of activity?’ McConochie reckoned that possums posed an even greater threat to
native forests, and should be targeted rather than deer.

Scientist Patrick Grant later proved emphatically that McConochie’s ideas on erosion were correct. By
comparing historic photographs with modern one of the Ruahine Range, he convincingly
demonstrated that many slips had been present long before introduced animals arrived in the range
and had not grown significantly. Erosion was more about natural cycles than deer browse. Deer were
off the hook – at least concerning their contribution to erosion.

Forest Service research using deer exclosure plots did, however, clearly demonstrate that deer
dramatically depleted certain palatable plants, notably broadleaf, changing the natural composition of
the understorey. But possums soon supplanted deer as the pest of most concern. The Forest Service
had begun aerial 1080 possum control on the West Coast in the late 1950s, and by the 1970s control
of the pest became one of its major functions.

How much huts helped deer control seems, in hindsight, something of a moot point. At least part of
the Forest Service’s intention was to encourage private hunters into remote areas, and huts certainly
helped achieve this goal. The NZFS continued to build huts, recognising their value for outdoor
recreation. For trampers and other outdoor enthusiasts such as anglers, the impact of these huts was
nothing short of transformational and set recreational patterns of use that persist to this day.

Backcountry Boom
As tramper Mark Pickering points out in his 2004 book A Tramper’s Journey, all the extensive new hut
and track network, combined with accompanying well-sited bridges, contributed significantly to a
tramping boom: ‘For over 40 years the initials NZFS meant one thing to trampers: tracks and huts.’ All
of a sudden, these facilities opened up vast areas of the bush and mountains to less experienced
trampers. Huts negated the need to carry a tent, bridges avoided the problems of flooded rivers, and
tracks offered easy, quick passage. Trampers could accomplish in a weekend trip what had taken
their predecessors several days. In the 1970s, tramping clubs enjoyed a second golden age, and the
NZFS huts and track played no small role in that surge in outdoor activity.

Pickering also reckoned the basic NZFS hut has probably never been bettered: ‘There was nothing
flash or clever about them, but they kept you dry through wet spring storms, were airy in summer and
warm through winter. They did not intrude on the landscape, and were often positioned superbly well
by men who knew the value of being close to water, firewood and views.’

In the 1970s, the encouragement of outdoor recreation became an increasingly important role of the
NZFS. As early as the 1920s, the Forest Service’s first director, Leon MacIntosh Ellis, had stated ‘The
rapidly increasing popularity of the national forest domain as a people’s playground is being
encouraged by the Service.’ By the 1950s, the Forest Service had responded to demands from the
public for better access to, and opportunities in, its state forests, developing the concept of ‘state
forest parks’. Tararua State Forest Park, first established in 1954, was New Zealand’s first, followed
by Craigieburn State Forest Park, the first in the South Island, three years later. From the mid-1960s
onwards, the state forest parks concept took off, with fifteen gazetted in the 1970s alone. The deer-
culling huts and tracks neatly dovetailed with this development, and it is no accident that most state
forest parks were formed in areas that previously had been a priority for deer-culling.

Admittedly, forest park development was partly a reaction by the NZFS against proposals for national
park, which would have resulted in the agency losing land to its rival, the Department of Lands and
Survey. But only the most cynical would dispute that the Forest Service increasingly encouraged
outdoor recreation, simply because this was a worthy public service. For example, in 1965, after
responding to calls from the Golden Bay Alpine and Tramping Club to establish a park in Northwest
Nelson, the NZFS recut the overgrown Heaphy and Wangapeka tracks, and established new, larger
huts. The size of these huts undeniably indicated their sole function as facilities for outdoor recreation.

The Forest Service also allowed clubs or other groups to build huts, subject to certain conditions, as
this 1960s working plan for Northwest Nelson explained:

‘Approved organisations wishing to build their own huts in the park may be allowed to do so,
provided the site, design and materials are approved by the park administration and adequate
provision is made for rubbish and sewage disposal. The huts shall be open to the public at all
times. To assist with construction costs a 1 pound for 2 pound subsidy may be granted, but
the maximum subsidy shall be 250 pounds.’

During the 1970s, the Forest Service continued to build an impressive number of huts, although its
pace had slowed. For example, in 1976 it built four two-bunk bivs, and ten six-bunk huts. Hut-building
generally helped curry favour with the public too – an important consideration at this time, when the
agency was facing increasing opposition to its native logging operations in places like Pureora,
Whirinaki and the West Coast.

As outdoor recreation gained popularity, pressure on facilities created new issues, particularly
rubbish, overcrowding and firewood use. At first, the Forest Service simply dug rubbish pits into which
people threw all their refuse. When one filled up, rangers dug another. But not only were these pits
unsightly, they also attracted rodents and even posed some degree of risk, as one NZFS ranger
discovered during a night spent at Kings Hut on the Wangapeka in 1976: ‘our Senior E.F.
[Environmental Forestry] Ranger took the opportunity to inspect and gauge the depth of the rubbish
disposal hole by the unusual method of stepping into it in the dark. The depth was O.K. but the water
level was rather high.’

Rubbish pits were clearly unsustainable, and by the mid-1970s the Forest Service began considering
alternative methods. Not long after the formation of the Department of Conservation in 1987, rubbish
pits were abandoned in favour of a ‘pack it out’ policy that has succeeded in reducing rubbish to a
large degree.

As the popularity of huts on tracks like the Wangapeka and Heaphy increased, firewood became
scarce, often resulting in damage to live trees by irresponsible trampers and hunters. The NZFS
responded by supplying huts with firewood, cut from local trees at the beginning of the busy summer
tramping season. In 1985, however, a revised indigenous forest policy meant pubic consultation had
to occur before native trees were used for purposes such as firewood. For this reason the NZFS
decided to investigate charging users for staying in huts to offset firewood costs, and to encourage
trampers to carry their own portable cooking stoves and use the hut wood stoves only for essential
heating. Gas cookers offered another solution, and were trialled in several Heaphy Track huts during
the mid-1970s.

By the time DOC superseded the Forest Service in 1987, NZFS huts were a far cry from the shelters
used by the early deer-cullers. The agency had built large huts with twenty bunks or more, including
Kings Creek Hut on Nelson’s Wangapeka Track, Hope Kiwi Lodge in Canterbury’s Lake Sumner
Forest Park and Hamilton Hut in Craigieburn Forest Park. Others, like the Lockwood huts in the
Kaimanawa Forest Park, boasted two bunkrooms and a central living area, joined by a covered
veranda.

Overstayers were one measure of how good huts had become. In 1982, the Northwest Nelson State
Forest Park Advisory Committee received a complaint from a ‘Mr Cook’ who felt he had been unfairly
evicted from Trilobite Hut in the Cobb Valley by a Forest Service ranger after a stay of several
months. Consequently, the committee recommended a maximum stay of seven nights when the hut
was not occupied by other users, or a two-night maximum when others were in residence.

In short, the Forest Service had fully embraced outdoor recreation as one of its public services, and
attempted to provide a range of facilities to meet a diverse range of needs.
Recognition of the role played by the Forest Service to foster recreation, particularly with its six-bunk
huts, has been undervalued.

The Heritage Value of NZFS Huts

After the demise of the Forest Service in 1987, many of its deer-culling huts survived surprisingly well
with only basic maintenance. During the 1990s, there was a trend in DOC to paint huts in more earthy
colours, but recently this has been reversed, with bright orange making a colourful comeback.
Makahu Saddle Hut (Kaweka Forest Park) and Makaretu Hut (Ruahine Forest Park) are shining
examples of this switch. For many ex-NZFS huts a colour change back to orange has been the result
of practical as well as historical reasons, as Southland tramper Robin McNeill opined about those in
the Takitimu Range: ‘As it would be darn hard to find the huts if they were painted green, orange is an
enlightened choice.’

DOC has made welcome improvements to many ex-NZFS huts. Good examples include those in the
Ruahine Forest Park, where a veranda was added to several, the layout changed to accommodate
eight people on platform bunks, and skylights installed for extra light.

However, hut modifications are not always appropriate. To the heritage-conscious historian, some
huts must survive in near-original condition. By 2006, a half-century had passed since the first NZFS
huts had been built, and their heritage value needed fresh assessment. To this end, DOC employed
Wellington historian Michael Kelly to research and write about deer-culling huts, the result being his
informative 2007 publication Wild Animal Control Huts: A National Heritage Identification Study.

Crucially, Kelly identified key NZFS heritage huts, including Mid Waiohine (Tararua Forest Park), Top
Maropea (Ruahine Forest Park) and Mt Fell Hut (Mt Richmond Forest Park). His report, together with
the work of DOC historian Jackie Breen, has led to a renewed appreciation of these simple structures,
the cullers who lived in them and their place in our history. As Kelly put it:

‘the iconic status of the government hunter was inspired by the writing of Barry Crump and
others. The role of the hut in all this is not often explicitly acknowledged but it certainly
provided the ‘settings’ for the books. The hut was an ever-present stage or prop in such
books. Some hunters remember particular huts with fondness, either for particular events, or
for the scenery surrounding them, or the length of their association with them ... Huts are
therefore our abiding, tangible heritage of decades of wild animal control.’
 Training to become a Deer Culler.
(From www.NZDeerculler.org.nz)
The ‘Skipper’ Captain Yerex, insisted on a high standard of organization, effort and safety. He recognized
early in the deer destruction campaign that some form of training would be beneficial.
The first training began from a basic tent camp in the Boyle River, Lewis Pass in 1938. Jack McNair, one
of the original cullers was the instructor until the onset of the second world war in 1939 interrupted
proceedings.
In late autumn of 1946 a new training camp was established at Tyntesfield Station in the Omaka Valley
,Marlborough. It’s purpose was to train recruits until the required national manpower level of about one
hundred hunters was reached, and also to take part in a winter campaign against feral animals in
Marlborough.
Logan Bell, an exceptionally hard taskmaster, was the officer in charge, assisted by field officers, Bert
Barra, Jim Mills, Les Owen, and Jim Ollenrenshaw.
The trainees lived under canvas and received instruction in camp cookery, bread baking, rifle care and
safety. Camp and hygiene standards were very high, with no second chance, and immediate dismissal
for transgressors. Photo below; Trainee hunters accommodation - Dip Flat

Trainees were paid second grade hunters rates of Three pounds and five shillings per week.
Dependant on prior experience and progress, a new hunter could be posted to a block in as little as
one week or as much as three weeks.
Once manpower levels reach the required level, training was scaled back, then discontinued, and the
camp closed.
The 1946 winter campaign in Marlborough accounted for 50,460 goats, 4,604 pigs, 3,570 wild
sheep,1441 deer, and 14 Chamois. A total of, 60,089 animals.
Following the NZ Forest Service takeover of wild animal control in 1956, a training facility was aquired
at Dip Flat, in the upper Wairau valley, Marlborough. The camp consisted of a number of two man ex
-Electricity Dept huts and a kitchen/mess hall.
In 1958 Ron [Jock] Fisher a senior field officer was asked to organize and get the program up and
running. He appointed Jim Gibson and Jack Wildermoth to be the first instructors. These three men,
seasoned professionals all, ran a very successful operation on a very tight budget.
After they moved on to other positions the camp was managed from head office Nelson, by Peter
Logan, with a team of instructors based at Dip Flat. With the advent of venison recovery and deer
numbers in operational areas decreasing, it became harder to retain hunters. The cost of training
became prohibitive and Dip Flat closed down in May 1963.
Courses were originally of six weeks duration but expanded to eight weeks by 1960.
Numbers per intake varied from 12 initially, to as many as 28 in later years. The attrition rate, both from
being fired and dropping out, was high with instances of as few as three or four trainees from an intake
succeeding in graduating.
As with the earlier camps, initial training concentrated on camp building, camp hygiene, cooking,
baking, first aid, bush navigation, river crossings, rifle care etc, all the essential skills to equip a man to
live and work comfortably and safely in the mountains for long periods of time. The trainees were paid
at second grade hunters rates which in 1960 were Fifteen pound and ten shillings per six day week.
Typically the trainees would spend their first night or two in the huts then shift into tent,camps, both in
summer and winter. The first two weeks were devoted to basic training followed by four to six weeks in
the field. Those lucky enough to make the grade were then posted to a conservancy as a second grade
hunter. Physically, the course was extremely demanding, particularly so for those who were unfit when
starting out. Successful graduates who went on to spend several or more years culling made many life
long friendships and share fond memories of their time at Dip Flat.
Following the closure of Dip Flat each conservancy instituted some form of training of their own, or
posted new recruits to a block, and let them learn on the job.
There was also a basic training course conducted at Blue Glen, in the Golden Downs Forest, Nelson,
under the tutelage of Jim Ollenrenshaw. This catered mainly for personal from the Forest Service
Woodman Training School.

PAST AND EXISTING DEER CULLING HUTS

McGregor Bivouac – built 1966 Winchcombe Bivvy. Built 1966. Removed 1990

Angle Knob Hut – destroyed by wind 1981? Neill Forks – built 1963

Cattle Ridge Hut – built 1961, chimney blown off Eastern Hutt hut – built 1962
Mid Otaki hut – 1968. Relocated to Andersons Carkeek Ridge hut 1962

Cow Creek Hut – built 1960 Maungahuka 1962

Dundas Hut – built 1961 Arete Forks hut – built 1960

Anderson Memorial Hut; built 1947. Replaced 1983 Nichols Hut – built 1963
Dorset Ridge hut. Built 1955. Replaced 1968 Bannister Basin Hut. Built 1955. Removed 1981

Mid Waiohine hut – built 1962 Penn Creek hut – built 1968. Plus original camp
 Tararua Work progress March 2014 to July 2016
Mid Waiohine Hut
Repaint exterior
with traditional
NZFS Orange.
Repaint interior with
original NZFS
green colour.

Carkeek Hut
Repaint interior, Install wagener
Cooktop wood burner, relocate
toilet

Arete Forks Hut

Repaint exterior, repaint
interior, remove wood burner,
build new chimney and build
open fireplace to S70 specs,
Build tradional shelving,
relocate toilet, construct collar
ties

Dundas Hut McGregor Bivvy

Install new Repaint and install new
anchors to door. Install new toilet
stablize the hut and build helicopter
pad.

Mid King Bivvy

Repaint interior and exterior. Install
toilet, build new helicopter pad
 Tararua Aorangi Rimutaka
Huts Committee

HOW HUTS ARE MANAGED

Public backcountry huts in the Tararua, Aorangi and Rimutaka Forest Parks are the responsibility of the
Department of Conservation (DOC).
The participation of tramper’s and hunters in the building and upkeep of huts and tracks has a long history
in these forest parks. Before the hut and track development programmes of the NZ Forest Service (NZFS)
in the 1960s, most of the hut networks in the forest parks were developed by clubs. In the Tararua’s, nearly
all 30 huts were built by clubs and most of the track network was developed by clubs also.
Arête Forks and Mid Waiohine huts, two classic deer The beginning of the intensive deer culling operations by the
culling huts recently restored thanks to funding from
the ORC and Huts Committee.
NZFS saw 20 huts and bivouacs built, mostly in remote
areas of the forest park. An extensive track network was
also established to support the deer culling. Today, many of
the club huts remain, and some have been replaced or
removed. Trampers and hunters still play an active role in
providing huts in the forest park. In the Tararua’s, clubs
maintain or have an historical involvement in 31of the 44
huts that now exist in the forest park.
Since 1988 DOC, tramping and hunting clubs have worked
collectively to maintain the hut system. This is done through
the Tararua Aorangi Rimuataka Huts Committee (TARHC).
A total of 16 clubs that manage huts are represented on the
TARHC as is DOC. Funding of hut upkeep was initially
achieved by the collection of hut fees the department
receives from Hut Ticket and Pass sales. This enabled
several huts to be replaced (Waitewaewae, Mangahao
Flats, Tarn Ridge) plus several major upgrades. A major
injection of funding by DOC also saw improved upkeep of
huts as part of an upgrade of all recreational facilities
throughout the country.
The TARHC still coordinate the upkeep of huts and provide
funding derived from the hut fees system to groups
managing huts. The hut ticket and pass purchases by hut
users are an essential source of funding for the work of the
Huts Committee. The exNZFS is a member of the TARHC.
In 2015 the Outdoor Recreation Consortium (ORC) was established, to support funding the upkeep of huts
and tracks by volunteer groups on Conservation lands throughout the country. Members of the ORC are
Federated Mountain Clubs, NZ Deerstalkers Association and Trail Fund NZ. The ORC have enabled
volunteer groups to undertake many hut and track maintenance and construction projects.
The exNZFS have been fortunate in receiving funding from the ORC and also the Huts Committee for
upgrading projects of huts managed by our group.
 Wild Animal Control Huts
Historic Heritage Assessment

Photo above; Carkeek Hut, Tararua Forest Park, 1965.

Left to right: Athol Geddes, Colin McIntyre, Ross Lockyer, Russell Hulme and Aubrey Hohua
in doorway, Dick Hetherington, Tony Newton, and Jim Taylor. Carkeek Hut, originally a WAC
hut, is being maintained by the exNZFS volunteer group and used by trampers and hunters.
(Athol Geddes collection)

Michael Kelly
Published by
Department of Conservation
PO Box 10-420
WELLINGTON 6011
 Part 1: A General History

THE GENIE OUT OF THE BOTTLE

Wild animal control, for the want of an all–encompassing description,

had its origins in the decision to introduce exotic fauna to New Zealand.
At first, these introductions were an attempt to make the country seem
more familiar to European colonists and most early releases were birds
and insects, with the odd mammal. The first successful liberation of
possums, for instance, took place possibly even before the Treaty of
Waitangi was signed. 2
As the colony developed, pressure gathered to include animals to stock
the forests, primarily for sporting purposes. Many of the colonists had
never been able to hunt at ‘home’, as so many of the forests were locked
up by large landowners. The first attempt to introduce red deer into New
Zealand came in 1851 with the gift of a stag and hind from New Zealand
Company director Lord Petre of Thorndon Park in Essex, England. The
hind died just before arrival. In 1853 a stag and hind were sent from
Richmond Park, and again the hind died just before arrival.
In 1860, Lord Petre again sent three red deer to Nelson. This time
they arrived safe and well and were successfully liberated in the Matai
Valley, Nelson. The first acclimatisation societies began in New Zealand
in the early 1860s and they were responsible for many of the liberations.

The first deer liberated in

northwest Nelson, 1860.
AAQA6506,156,1–3–G–
1DEER, ANZ

2. McKelvey P. 1994, Steepland Forests: A historical perspective of protection forestry in New

Zealand, Canterbury University Press, Christchurch p. 131

Part 1: A General History 3

 Official recognition for their efforts was given by the Government with
the passing of a succession of animals protection acts, starting in 1867,
which protected European game animals and gave statutory recognition
to the acclimatisation societies.
Many species did particularly well in New Zealand, albeit that some
needed several releases before they eventually took off. Among the first
of these to attract attention was the rabbit. It multiplied in such numbers
and so quickly that it was decided to introduce another alien species
– mustelids (stoats, weasels and ferrets) – to control the pest. This proved
to be disastrous for New Zealand’s flightless native birds and soon they
were under threat themselves. Eventually, with forests under pressure and
native birds in decline, it was decided to protect native fauna as well
and they were brought under the Animal Protection Act in the 1890s.
The first recorded public concern about the impact of deer on native forests
came in 1892 when the Rev. Philip Walsh voiced fears about the affect
hoofed animals were having on undergrowth, but little attention was paid
and releases went on until 1920, despite gathering evidence of the harm
deer were doing. Other game animals such as chamois and thar, as well
as goats and possums, also continued to be enthusiastically liberated. On
the other hand, protection of forests had begun in earnest, with national
parks established in Tongariro (in 1894) and Egmont (in 1900). Special
reserves were set aside by the Department of Lands for the preservation
of native fauna at Resolution, Little Barrier and Kapiti Islands under the
Land Act 1892. The Scenery Preservation Act was passed in 1903 and
under this legislation a great deal of forested land was protected for scenic
purposes.

LATE RELEASES AND EARLY CULLING

The first culling of deer began in the early 1900s, as acclimatisation

societies finally started to realise the impact deer were having. Between
1910 and 1913, for instance, the Otago Acclimatisation Society let several
contracts to kill deer in the Hawea District. 3 By 1922 the society had
spent £1557 on culling.
Possums had been busy also and were starting to cause considerable
damage but, despite a wealth of evidence confirming this (and the
profitability of their skins), acclimatisation societies succeeded in
persuading the Government, in 1911, that possums should be protected
under the Animals Protection Act 1908. Settlers in bush districts managed
to have the restrictions lifted the following year, but in 1913 more
acclimatisation society protests led to the reintroduction of widespread
protection for the possum. 4 It took another 30 or more years before the

3. The total was 1100 deer at 2s 3d a head. See McKelvey p. 93

4. McKinnon A.D. and Coughlan L. 1960, “Data on the establishment of some introduced animals
in New Zealand forests, Vol. II”, (unpublished report), New Zealand Forest Service p. 7

4 Wild Animal Control Huts

real menace posed by possums was properly understood and acted on.
In 1914 Internal Affairs designated its first mainland reserve, at Gouland
Downs in Nelson, and appointed a caretaker. In 1916 farmers in Otago
were temporarily allowed to kill fallow deer as pests. 5 Still, by 1919, over
1000 deer had been separately imported and liberated at different places
by private individuals, Government and acclimatisation societies.
In 1921 protection over possums was lifted to allow some trapping for
the fur trade. The liberation and protection of New Zealand–bred deer
continued until 1923. Then, following a conference of various departmental
officers and acclimatisation society representatives, protection over deer
was lifted in the worst affected areas. Bounties, subsidised by Internal
Affairs, were paid by local acclimatisation societies for deer tails. The
Native Bird Protection Society was formed in 1923, later becoming the
Forest and Bird Protection Society, after taking the name of Harry Ell’s
moribund organisation.
Most breeds flourished, especially red deer. Once numbers reached
a certain level it became evident that gradual over–grazing of forests
by deer and other introduced species, including possums, had started
opening up forests and causing erosion, although it was not the only
cause. Newspapers started to target the Government over what it called
the “deer menace”. 6 The divided management of the country’s flora and
fauna – three government departments (Internal Affairs, Lands and Survey
and NZ Forest Service) and the acclimatisation societies – came in for
criticism and this ultimately led to the formation of a single deer control
organisation. In the meantime Internal Affairs made bounty payments for
47,000 deer shot between 1927 and 1929. 7
Soon after its establishment in 1919 the Forest Service attempted to gain
control over forests on all reserves, parks and Maori land, as well as all
fish and game. Internal Affairs held sway but was pressured on all sides
for its perceived failure in the face of the deer menace. It did however
begin to survey land under its management to determine the extent of
the deer problem.

GOVERNMENT CULLING UNDER INTERNAL

AFFAIRS

In May 1930 a Deer Menace Conference was held in Christchurch, attended

by Internal Affairs, the Forest Service and other government departments,
as well as acclimatisation societies, the Forest and Bird Protection Society
and many other interested parties. The conference did not resolve who
would administer deer eradication but remaining protection over deer,

5. Galbreath R. 1993, Working for Wildlife, A History of the New Zealand Wildlife Service,
Bridget Williams Books and Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs p. 17
6. Galbreath p. 16
7. McKelvey p. 94

Part 1: A General History 5

 chamois and thar was removed. 8 Both the Department and Forest Service
began operations against deer later that year on their respective lands
but in the midst of the Depression two complementary operations could
not be sustained. In April 1931 the Department of Internal Affairs was
made responsible for the control of deer operations nationally. 9 It kept
this role for the following 25 years.
A typical tent camp, under
snow.
ATL (Alexander Turnbull
Library) 0_PAColl–6208–4

Joff Thomson (right) and

partner carrying out deer
skins c.1946.
ATL F61636½

The Department of Internal Affairs’ attempts to control

the spread of deer began with limited resources in men
and money. The operation was placed in the hands of
Graham (“Skipper”) Yerex, who ran the operation, in one
guise or another, for 25 years. He became a legendary
figure in his own right and, with few exceptions, was
revered by his employees. Government hunters were
paid a wage and a bonus; the latter a bounty on skins
or, if a skin could not be retrieved, simply the tail (for a
lesser amount). The Government hoped the skins would
partially finance the cost of control. Later this approach
was abandoned when it was realised that skinning animals
was holding up killing. 10 Thereafter payment was based
exclusively on the number of animals killed.
By 1937 the Department had 50 hunters in the field 11
and a campaign that was supposed to have taken a
few years had turned into a permanent operation,
with Yerex designated “Director of Deer Operations”.
By 1938 100,000 animals had been killed. 12 Initially
hunting was based on deer drives made by teams of
six hunters, a seemingly effective method in the valleys
where operations commenced. At least the sheer number

8. Ibid. p. 20
9. McKelvey p. 21
10. McKinnon and Coughlan p. 18
11. Galbreath p. 27
12. Ibid. p. 28

6 Wild Animal Control Huts

 of deer shot seemed to suggest this. As
the work progressed attention turned
to more difficult country and in general
these areas were divided into blocks and
worked by two-man teams, although men
often worked alone and, remarkably, did
so largely without serious incident or
accident. At the very least no one was
killed by a bullet. Many operations took
place in country never visited by humans
before and the cullers became expert in
navigating themselves through the areas
they hunted in.
In the absence of many huts, hunters were
A rock bivouac in
based in tent camps and in the field lived
Westland. in fly camps. The tent camps in particular were elaborate affairs, with
J.S. Johns, NZFS– one common design incorporating a canvas fly draped over a frame, split
AAQA6506,
12–22,96,M8599, ANZ
slab walls, and a detached chimney, at the front, for cooking and heat.
And tents were not the only option. Some hunters simply used the natural
cover around them, as it kept their loads down. On the West Coast, for
instance, hunters often used the same rocks or caves for shelter over a
period of many years. 13
Private hunters were
not generally welcome On the whole Internal Affairs did not train its hunters, at least not
in State forests after until its period of management was nearly at an end. However, there
hunting programmes
were training camps at Makarora during the 1940s. 14 New recruits were
were instituted.
ATL MNZ–F1353¼ generally asked to describe what kind of hunting experience they had
and, depending on the reply, were then
sent out into the bush. Later, training
camps were built; for instance one was
set up at Lake Waikaremoana.
The style of hunting was very time
consuming. Packing in supplies, inadequate
shelter and long tramps to camps meant
that the hunting was often inefficient,
especially on the tops, where men lived
in fly camps and could only last as long as
their food supplies. Yerex realised this and
before World War II he and his staff had
started to explore the idea of airdropping
food, equipment, and most importantly,
huts. It was an entirely achievable concept
but the intervention of the war put an end
to the idea, at least for the meantime.
However, some huts were built – mainly

13. Pers. comm. Alan Farmer (former Internal Affairs and NZFS hunter) to author, 8 July 2002
14. IAD 48/26 Part 2, A.P. & Game Act – Deer Destruction – Conference of Field Staff Head Office,
Archives New Zealand, Wellington

Part 1: A General History 7

 one–offs – and during the 1940s there was a programme of hut building
in South Westland and Makarora, using ex–PWD roadbuilders’ huts. 15
Today just two huts survive intact from that programme — Roaring Billy
and Landsborough, both in South Westland.
During World War II Yerex’s operation was turned over to the war
effort but deer killing went on, partly as training for soldiers, and also
by men who were not required for service. Inevitably the war effort
made it difficult to match earlier killing tallies and the deer continued
to flourish.
At the end of the war the Wild Life Division (soon the Wildlife Branch)
of Internal Affairs was created, broadening the department’s range of
activities to include the control of an expanded range of fauna, but
its main focus remained deer. Yerex remained in charge, with the title
Controller, and a Deer Control Section was formed. Complementing the
work of the government were many amateur hunters, and the occasional
professional hunter, who sold meat and skins to earn a living.
Internal Affairs ran the Deer Control Section in a linear, hierarchical
structure. Head office (Yerex and his staff) issued their orders, which
were carried out by a Senior Field Officer who was in overall charge of a
region. He had a number of Field Officers working for him and they did
the hiring and firing in a district, assigned ammunition and ordered and
distributed stores. Each Field Officer had Area Supervisors (and Sub–Area
Supervisors) whose responsibility it was to check the work of hunters
in an area and report back to the Field Officer. In the field the 'Head
Man' was the leader of a hunting party, 'Hunter First Grade' was a hunter
with some experience, while a 'Second Grade Hunter' was the junior. 16 It
appears that, in the field at least, that structure did not greatly change
when the operation was later taken over by the NZFS, 17 although other
changes were more noticeable.

THE FIRST HUT BUILDING PROGRAMME

With Yerex back in charge after the war, the Wild Life Section revived
the idea of air dropping huts. When it became known what was being
considered, the Canterbury Mountaineering Club offered their expertise
and designs, honed through years of carrying hut materials in on people’s
backs. There is no evidence Yerex was interested in their offer. Instead
he planned a two–pronged programme, dependent on the co–operation
of Aerodrome Services and the Architectural Branch of Public Works. The
former were asked for the use of their planes and pilots to “put in, by
air, material for huts and also to provision them”. 18 From Public Works’

15. Breen J. 2006, ‘Landsborough Ranger’s Hut: Historic Assessment’, prepared for South
Westland / Weheka Area Office, West Coast Conservancy pp. 11–12, 20–21
16. Farmer A. (with Graydon J.) 1994, The best job ever (a life of hunting), Halcyon Press,
Auckland pp. 61
17. Pers. comm. Alan Farmer
18. Letter from Major Yerex to staff n.d. 1945; file 48/51/2 Pt.1, Deer Destruction – erection of
high level huts, Department of Internal Affairs (Archives New Zealand)

8 Wild Animal Control Huts

 architects he asked for help in designing and constructing a hut that could
be transported by air. Depending on who was writing the instructions,
an estimated 50 or 80 huts was the number required nationally. This was
based on a perceived need for huts spaced at eight hour intervals, so a
hunter would not have more than four hours to return to a hut.
It was decided to begin by trialling the air–dropping of a hut in the
Tararua Ranges. The materials for the hut were landed in January 1946
and it was built between 17 and 20 January. The hut was later named
Anderson’s Memorial Hut, after pilot Oliver Anderson who died while
airdropping provisions in Fiordland in January 1947. The hut, with its
distinctive arched roof, was in use until 1979, when it was replaced. As
far as Yerex was concerned the hut was an unqualified success, even
though it cost £250, a significant sum then. After the hut was built, two
hunters using it as a base made 2.6 kills per day, which was the “highest
average kills per day ever secured by our men operating in the Tararua
Ranges”. 19 It was a lesson not lost on the NZFS when they took over.
Yerex thought that the system of huts would also encourage professional
hunters to do more work in remote areas and complement the work
of the government. The Wild Life Section began to purchase supplies
for the new huts, including, for example, a large load of perspex for
windows, left over from the war and acquired from the army. Twenty
huts were proposed for construction in the summer of 1947–48 and in
October 1947 Yerex got approval from the building controller at Ministry
of Works, as Public Words was by then known, for the carrying out of
the work. Timber was ordered by the Government Architect and Yerex
ordered two huts be constructed immediately.
Unfortunately, the absence of subsequent correspondence leaves what
happened next something of mystery. Price's Flat on the West Coast was
Les Pracy's possum rebuilt in 1949, partly with airdropped materials, but whether this is one
research camp, in the of those two huts ordered by Yerex is not known. It would seem that,
Orongorongo, left 1966,
right 1983. The camp is although funding was set aside, the project hit the doledrums. Initially
undetectable today. this was attributed to a delay in the preparation of plans. 20
J. Hansen, DOC

19. Op. cit. Yerex to staff, 5/9/1947.

20. Annual Report Wildlife Section 1948, 48/82 Pt.1 Wildlife Section Annual Reports (Archives
New Zealand)

Part 1: A General History 9

 By 1951, the lack of progress was put down to a lack of men and materials,
but that work would begin ‘as soon as circumstances permit’. 21 A lack of
suitable aircraft did not help. All this suggests that, although some huts
were built and aerial supply dropping continued, a national programme of
“high–level” hut construction did not properly begin until 1954.
The evidence on the ground tells a somewhat different story. For instance,
on the West Coast, hut building was making steady progress. Two huts
were built in 1951, five in 1952, three in 1953, five in 1954, four in
1955 and in 1956, 22 the year operations transferred to the NZFS, four
were built. The West Coast was a place where hut building was strongly
supported regardless of the authority in charge. In the Southern Lakes
District, a standard hut design was proposed for widespread use but was
rejected because its deployment in those areas was not a priority. Other
regions, such as the East Coast, got on with their own hut building where
they could. To what extent this local activity was mirrored elsewhere in
the country is not fully known.
The introduction of aerial supply dropping also made a great difference to
the life of the hunters. Not only did it dramatically reduce the amount of
horse and back packing but it also meant mail drops, and a wider variety
of food, some of it fresh. Apart from smaller planes such as Proctors and
Austers, the department used old Vildebeest bombers and RNZAF Dakotas,
which, because of their size, meant parachutes fell from a greater height
and there was sometimes considerable loss of material.
While deer occupied much of the division’s time, possums were becoming
a major priority. In 1946 the first detailed research was conducted
into possums, with Les Pracy’s appointment as a field officer in the
Orongorongo Range, near Wellington. The following year protection over
possums was relaxed further. It was finally removed in 1951, with a
bounty offered for skins.
The zeal with which the deer cullers approached their work continued
throughout the period of Internal Affairs’ management. Cullers were told that
they were ‘saving the land’ 23; even when it became apparent that eradication
was not going to happen, the hunters never lost their esprit d’corps. Later
Internal Affairs and early NZFS hunters were inspired by Joff Thomson’s
Deer Hunter (1952), the first book to chronicle the life of the government
deer hunter, and it gave recruiting an impetus. 24

21. Ibid. 1951

22. Table of West Coast hut construction 1941–58 – from research conducted by Jackie Breen on
Internal Affairs and NZFS regional files.
23. Pers. comm. P.C. Logan (former director of Environmental Forestry, NZFS) to author, 4 July 2002
24. Pers. comm. Jack Lasenby (former Internal Affairs and NZFS hunter) to author, 24 July 2002

10 Wild Animal Control Huts

 NEW ZEALAND FOREST SERVICE TAKES OVER

Great change was soon to come over management of deer control and
one of the catalysts for change was American ecologist Thane Riney,
who was appointed by Internal Affairs to investigate the deer situation
in 1951. Riney’s investigations concluded that the campaign had not been
as effective as was thought. He showed that, in general terms, deer were
able to avoid hunters in the bush and the deer being shot on the tops
Below: Hunters receiving were simply the easier to hunt and only part of the problem. McKelvey
blackboard instructions
outside the Hunter
suggested that hunters were only ‘creaming the herds’ 25 and could have
Training Scheme, Golden left as many as 90% of the deer behind. High infestations of deer were
Downs camp, August always thought to have coincided with areas of high erosion but Riney
1958.
J. Johns, NZFS–
showed this too was not necessarily so. It was the beginning of the end
AAQA6506,12– for the Wildlife Branch’s management of deer control.
19,945.3,3007, ANZ

Right: The hunter

training camp at Dip By 1954 disquiet about the effectiveness of the Wildlife Branch’s culling
Flat, Wairau Valley,
under snow, July 1961.
operations began a round of discussions over the future of the Deer
L. Harris, Control Section, involving the Public Service Commission, Forest Service,
NZFS–AAQA6506,12– Internal Affairs and Lands and Survey. The Branch’s cause was not helped
19,945.3,M8843, ANZ
by the fact that it had little else in the way of field operations outside
its deer control, a considerable contrast with the resources at the disposal
of its main rival, the Forest Service.
Eventually, in 1956, it was decided to move noxious animal destruction,
including the Deer Control Section en masse, to the Forest Service. This
was the single biggest change in management in the history of wild
animal control. The Noxious Animals Act 1956 was passed and permitted
the hunting and killing of axis, fallow, sika, moose, red, sambar, Virginian
and Wapiti deer, chamois, goat, possum, pig, thar and wallaby. The
departure of Yerex and his operation was welcomed by the New Zealand
Deerstalker’s Association who blamed it for excluding recreational hunters
from contributing to the campaign and from hunting in operational areas.
Ironically, although he had much to lose, Yerex himself favoured the
move, according to McKelvey. 26

25. McKelvey p. 97
26. Ibid. p. 98

Part 1: A General History 11

 Squid Creek camp Upon assuming control of operations the NZFS established the Noxious
site from the air. The
Animals Division and largely devolved management to conservancy level.
platform was used by
helicopters bringing in It identified a shortage of hunters as its biggest priority, as it was thought
supplies, May 1959. that the Deer Control Section had been able to do little more than halt
J. Johns, NZFS–
the natural increase of herds. Some areas had never been hunted in and
AAQA6506,12–
22,96,M3258C, ANZ the effects that deer had had on those areas were unknown. Research
was instituted and priority areas identified on
an economic basis i.e. where farming lands or
“watershed values” 27 were badly affected. The
bounty system was abandoned and payment
was based on wages alone, but with closer
supervision to ensure that work was being
carried out according to instructions. Training
was introduced and made largely compulsory,
to the chagrin of old Internal Affairs hands.
As a postscript to the changeover, the 92,000
deer killed in 1956 represented far and away
the best year of any in terms of sheer numbers.
In 1957 the figure was down to 62,500 and
ground hunting would never again reach those
heights. 28
In 1958–59 a survey of the extent of the deer
problem in the Tararua Ranges was undertaken.
This helped add weight to the need for a new
campaign devised on an understanding of ecology
and seasonal migrations of deer. 29 With the
resources at its disposal the NZFS was already
providing better operational support, including
more air drops, and building huts and tracks.
Based on its research it then decided to build
a great deal more infrastructure – huts, as well
A helicopter landing at as tracks, bridges, wires, cages etc. All this was
Styx River base, West
intended to lead to greater and better targeted deer eradication, mainly
Coast. May 1959.
J. Johns, through the efficiency with which hunters could organise themselves and
NZFS–AAQA6506, the consequent length of time they could stay in the field.
12–22,96,M3264, ANZ
Under the new regime progress was finally made in targeting the deer
threat. Some hunters actually resented the large number of huts being built
and complained that there were too many in particular areas. 30 This may
have been because the proliferation of huts was intended to encourage
private hunters into previously remote areas and in doing so threatened

27. McKinnon and Coughlan p. 21

28. The figures come from Yerex p. 86, but McKelvey (p. 96) suggests a figure of 56,208 for the
fiscal year ending March 1956.
29. Maclean C. 1994, Tararua – the story of a mountain range, Whitcombe Press, Wellington
p. 220
30. Bennett M. 1979, The Venison Hunters, A.H. and A.W. Reed, Wellington p. 19. Bennett’s views
may have reflected the attitudes of a certain number of professional hunters.

12 Wild Animal Control Huts

 the government hunter’s tallies. Less predictably, some tramping clubs
were also critical, such as the Wellington Associated Mountain Clubs,
who objected to the flurry of hut building in the Tararua Ranges in the
early 1960s on the grounds that it was compromising efforts to “keep the
central areas in as near a wilderness condition as practicable”. 31 While
that criticism conveniently ignored the effect introduced pests were
having on flora, it was probably true that the network of tracks, bridges
and huts removed the need for many young people to learn basic bush
skills e.g. river crossing, camping, route finding.
For its part the Forest Service definitely wanted the huts used by private
hunters, in the hope that they would be “encouraged to work the
areas after the Government hunters have been withdrawn from them.” 32
McKelvey goes so far as to suggest that 80% of the deer range was
largely left to the private hunter, thus making the huts a necessary
incentive. 33

A loaded Dominie flying in

the Southern Alps in 1960.
J. Von Tunzelman

A timber airdrop near Forbes

Hut in the upper Hunter
Valley, 1959.
J. Von Tunzelman

31. Maclean. p. 224

32. Ibid.
33. McKelvey p. 105

Part 1: A General History 13

 Loading a helicopter with
construction materials in the
Hunter Valley, December
1959. The load was destined
for Mill Basin hut in the
lower Hunter Valley.
J. Von Tunzelman

14 Wild Animal Control Huts

While the NZFS targeted culling was much more effective, it also became
clear to many on the ground that total eradication was never going to be
achievable. It took some time though for this message to be accepted in
all areas of animal control management. Eradication remained the stated
goal but it was becoming evident that control had become the aim.

DIP FLAT

Dip Flat was situated in the Wairau Valley, Nelson, and was so named
because high country sheep used to be mustered down from Rainbow
Station and dipped there for lice etc. The NZFS built a complex there
to train intakes of hunters in six–week courses and hundreds of entrants
went through the place. The complex included a kitchen, dining room–
lecture hall and ablution block, plus tent camp. The school was run by
Peter Logan and entrants were taught, among other things, bushcraft and
survival skills, open fire cooking, use of an axe and accurate shooting.
The dropout rate was considerable. As entrants passed each stage of the
course they were faced with yet more challenges before being offered
a job. The course culminated in a long hunting expedition, the final
initiation. Such was the turnover of hunters that the camp was forced
to close in 1963 when it became too expensive to train the number of
men required. Thereafter training was done in conservancies. Despite the
difficulty the course posed, many ex–NZFS hunters express considerable
affection and nostalgia for their training at Dip Flat 34 and there is no
doubt it played a key part in many young New Zealanders’ lives. Dip Flat
is part of the Rainbow Station and not on DOC managed land.

HELICOPTER HUNTING AND THE DEMISE OF THE

GOVERNMENT HUNTER

The system of huts, bivouacs, tracks and bridges served the NZFS well
while hunting continued to be an operational priority. Over the period
1956–1972 a huge infrastructure was established. According to several
sources, by 1972 ‘644 huts, 36 shelters, 26 vehicle bridges, 42 foot
bridges, 22 cableways, 29 vehicle fords, 2900 kilometres of road, 1400
kilometres of 4–wheel drive tracks [and] 400 kilometres of walking tracks’
had been built. 35 But the scene began to change during the 1960s.
In the late 1950s a few pioneers began sending wild venison overseas
and discovered a ready market. Very quickly a venison recovery industry
got underway and, with the use of fixed wing aircraft, some remarkably
ingenious ways were found to get the deer out of the bush. Jet boats,
tractors, trolleys and of course humans, were all used in the bush or in
inaccessible areas to get the carcasses to airstrips, which were often built
in rugged country on any available flat area. Generator–driven freezers
were installed near airstrips. The inevitable downside was the number
of fatalities in what was a very dangerous occupation.
34. Burdon B. 1993, Of Mountains, Men and Deer, The Halcyon Press, Auckland pp. 12–18
35. Yerex D. 2002, Deer – the New Zealand Story, Canterbury University Press, Christchurch p. 66
and McKelvey p. 105

Part 1: A General History 15

 This new industry increased the number of deer killed, but not dramatically,
because it was largely making money out of the kind of kills that had
previously been wasted, or at least poorly exploited. It did bring more
hunters into the mountains, but it also encouraged government hunters
to go private, which had the effect of making it difficult for the NZFS
to recruit replacements.
The advent of the helicopter added a whole new dimension, but not
with immediate affect. The first helicopters started operating in New
Zealand in the late 1950s and the NZFS appears to have first used one
to build a hut – Luna Hut – near Karamea, in 1958, 36 one of five built
at the same time in Nelson.
It soon became apparent how useful they would be in remote areas, as
they were put to use ferrying supplies for hunters and materials for huts
and other infrastructure. Helicopters were far more consistent than planes
in ensuring accurate placement of materials, and of course they could
also pick things up without landing. There were no breakages, so extra
materials were not needed as contingencies. There was less pre–packing
and bundling and no parachutes to bring out on men’s backs. It meant
that fittings such as doors and window sashes could be pre–fabricated
and flown in, thereby saving time and improving a hut’s finish and
appearance. There were also general savings because helicopters could fly
in conditions that fixed winged aircraft could not, which meant that men
Two hunters leaving
would not have to wait at hut sites for days waiting for air drops.
Dorset Ridge hut in the
Tararua Ranges, 1975. Nevertheless it took a surprisingly long time for helicopters to be used
Gordon Roberts, NZFS–
AAQA6506,
for hunting and longer again for the industry to really take off. It was
12–22,96,M12159, ANZ not until 1963 that helicopters were used for hunting. On that first
day of use, in the mountains near
Wanaka, 210 deer were killed. 37
It seemed to be the beginning of
another boom, but it was a false
dawn. Early enterprises shot many
deer but struggled to make money.
Efficient recovery and processing
took time to develop, as did offshore
markets. Again, it was dangerous
work and many helicopters and
hunters perished while safety
margins were established.
Eventually, towards the end of the
1960s, the industry became more
profitable and by the early 1970s
it was in full swing. The year 1971

36. Yerex p. 71. Luna Hut has since been removed from its site and now sits on a farm.
37. It may have been much earlier. Ash Cunningham states that W. Chisholm experimented with
helicopter hunting on Molesworth Station in 1958, as did Morrie Robson in the Kaweka
in 1962. See Cunningham A. “The Role of Engineering in New Zealand Protection Forest
Management” in New Zealand Journal of Forestry, Vol.2 No.2 1967 pp. 91–102

16 Wild Animal Control Huts

 was the peak for killing when 131,000 carcasses were exported and many
more shot. 38 The impact on deer was remarkable; firstly animals were
shot in the sub–alpine areas and then, after numbers declined there,
attention moved to gaps in forest canopies, such as slips. McKelvey cites
figures that show that deer numbers in Arawata, South Westland declined
85% between 1966 and 1983. 39 This was probably typical of the rest of
the country. Joe Hansen recalls the final season of full hunting in the
Aorangi in 1971 yielded 58 deer, 56 goats and 34 pigs. 40 By comparison
Internal Affairs figures for 1949 showed 251 deer, 3038 goats, 235 wild
sheep and 351 pigs were killed. The decline in deer numbers was such
that the NZFS had to drop the tally system of payment and move to
wages. The cost in lives and machinery also remained high. In 1980
an extraordinary 62 helicopter licences were issued, but at the same
time there were 44 accidents. In all, in the period from 1976 to 1982,
208 helicopters crashed while hunting, with 72 destroyed and 136 badly
damaged, 17 pilots and shooters were killed, and 40 pilots and shooters
were seriously injured. 41
Interestingly, the NZFS hardly used helicopters for hunting and recovery
itself. It took a long time to be convinced of the value of helicopters
but, once it was, it rarely had to use them anyway because the industry
shot and recovered deer for it. The NZFS managed its ground operations
accordingly. Helicopters removed many deer but they couldn’t get all
of them. The problem for the NZFS was flushing out all the deer in
priority areas. Hunters were sent in to kill those last few deer, but it was
laborious, unsatisfying work and it made recruiting hunters more difficult,
given the money they could make in the risky but profitable commercial
operations. The impact of the helicopter can be seen in NZFS kill rates.
In 1966 the annual kill was 20,000; by 1976 it was down to 7,600. 42
Nevertheless a field force of about 100 hunters was still operating in the
mid–1980s, partly because the fickle commercial operation ebbed and

Graph shows the impact of

The Number of NZFS Huts Built Against the Number of
the helicopter and aerial
Helicopters Registered Per Year.
hunting on hut building
70
was obvious without being
immediately dramatic. 60
No. Huts
50
Number

40 No. Helicopters
registered
30
Fran Begley, DOC

20
10
0
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990
Year

38. McKelvey p. 112

39. Ibid. p. 113
40. Pers. comm. Joe Hansen to the author, 4 October 2002.
41. Forrester R. 1983, The Chopper Boys, Whitcoulls Publishers, Christchurch p. 6
42. Yerex p. 86

Part 1: A General History 17

 flowed depending on the supply of deer. NZFS always had to maintain a
delicate balance between the commercial hunters, who were doing most
of the killing, and recreational hunters, who were, hopefully, operating in
areas helicopters were not reaching. The recreational hunters, led by the
NZDA (New Zealand Deerstalkers Association), were always concerned
that the NZFS would opt for extermination and remove their sport. And
of course the NZFS had to be wary of commercial operators who were
Mid–Waiohine, soon after content to ‘cream’ herds. The NZFS kept building huts simply because it
its completion in 1962. did not want to have to rely on the inconstant helicopter industry.
J. Hansen
The Wild Animal Control Act – the first official
use of the term – was passed in 1977, and it
retained NZFS as the overall manager of pests
and gave it the right to step in and kill deer
in areas where numbers became excessive. At
the same time though it did move management
from the principle of extermination to one of
control, to the relief of the NZDA.
Commercial helicopter operations had such an
impact on deer numbers that, to survive and
thrive, the venison export industry had to find
new sources. The answer was farming. Capture
of wild deer gave the industry some of its
breeding stock (some came from overseas) – and
the helicopter industry yet more business – and
deer farming became a new primary industry.
The Noxious Animals Amendment Act 1967 and
Deer Farming Regulations 1969 paved its way
but the uptake was slow. From 1967, when 20
farms began, until 1979 only 850 farms were
established. It was not until 1977 that the first
live deer auction was held and the $1000 plus
prices the deer fetched showed the industry
their remarkable value. It was only then that
live capture became a really important part of
the helicopter hunter’s business. By 1982 there
Mid–Waiohine in 2002. were 2000 farms holding 180,000 stock.
One of a number of
cullers huts in the Today wild and farmed venison compete in the market, although there
Tararua converted to
recreational use.
is vastly more of the latter.
B. Dobbie, DOC
Helicopter hunting continues to be seen by DOC as the main weapon
against deer. As its own analysis shows, commercial helicopter hunting
achieves “effective control in grassland and open–canopy forest, which
includes large areas of the South Island.”

18 Wild Animal Control Huts

RECREATION

With Government hunting on the wane the huts were made available
to trampers and recreational hunters. Tramping began in earnest in the
early part of the 20th century and some parks contained recreational
huts dating from the early 20th century, mainly built by clubs. The
origins of widespread recreational use of forests began with the trial of
a forest park system in the Tararua Ranges between 1954 and 1964. This
mountain range had been the cradle of tramping earlier in the century
and the Tararua Tramping Club (est. 1919) is still the country’s oldest.
After unsuccessful attempts to make it a national park at the time of the
country’s centenary in 1940, it had been decided to make the Tararua
Ranges an experiment in multiple–use management. Recreation – through
free public access – was to be one of those uses. Previously forests had
largely been off limits to the public, officially anyway, with the exception
of recreational hunters and trampers with a permit.
The success of the trial, and the public appreciation of the concept, saw
recreational use of New Zealand’s mountains grow enormously during
the 1960s and eventually 18 forest parks were created and thrown open
to the public. Trampers in particular appreciated the regular spacing of
hunting huts and tracks, which offered a great range of route options.
It seems probable that, with the success of the Tararua Ranges trial,
some recreational use had been envisioned by the NZFS and, later, huts
were built with multiple uses in mind. Eventually most huts were built
primarily for recreational purposes.
The boom in mountain recreation continued through the 1970s, and that
use only increased when tourism really took off the following decade.
New Zealand’s great infrastructure of huts – internationally an unrivalled
asset – offered backpackers the appeal of a tramping experience in New
Zealand’s magnificent back country. The irony is that many of the more
remote NZFS huts are generally not visited by tourists, only by the very
keen local tramper and hunter.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE DEER CULLER

Few pastimes or occupations in New Zealand have given rise to the level of
literary output that hunting has. Since Joff Thomson’s book Deer Hunter, 43
50 years ago, hundreds of books have been written by professional and
amateur hunters in New Zealand, many of them mythologising the pastime
and all of them adding to an iconic image of a man alone, or with his
mates, hunting the four–legged pest.
The reasons for this are two–fold. One was the life of the hunter. It
was essentially solitary, with the only company a dog or the occasional
hunting partner, and it was very hard, especially in the days before air

43. Joffre Aristide Thomson was one of seven brothers who shot for Internal Affairs and made a
living out of hunting.

Part 1: A General History 19

 drops. So hunting was really only suitable for a certain type of man
who enjoyed his own company and was very resourceful. This ultimately
encouraged the development of a stereotype who could be eulogised,
parodied and iconicised. There were of course no women apart from
Coral Robson, Kuripapango — a crack shot who out-shot many of the
men.
The second reason was the most famous and influential of all hunter/
writers, Barry Crump (1935–1996), who embellished real events or took
the largely fictitious stories other hunters told him and turned them into
A Good Keen Man (1960). It sold in the tens of thousands, as did the
follow–up Hang on a Minute Mate (1961). They were very appealing
to a post–war urban society that had somehow lost touch with its rural
frontier past, and of course, the humour and the nostalgia evoked were
www.teara.govt.nz

key components in their success.

A host of Crump–authored books followed, although none quite as good
as the first two, with most of the content based around the life of the
hunter. One significant source for Crump’s ‘yarns’ was Ted Ray, aka
the ‘Grey Ghost’, who was one of ‘Skipper’ Yerex’s area supervisors
and a legendary culler in the eastern Bay of Plenty. Ray was famous
for his yarns, which were frequently the same story told many different
ways, with the line between reality and fiction constantly blurred. 44 The
campfire story was a stock–in–trade of cullers and Ray’s stories were a
source of the kind of fiction that so epitomised Crump’s work. Some
of his fellow hunters, who thought Crump’s work should contain more
faithful accounts, were outraged by some of the stories.
Many ex–Internal Affairs, NZFS and DOC cullers ended up writing their
memoirs and, although none captured the public imagination the way
Crump did, they still sold plenty of books in a ready market. The sheer
volume of hunting books demonstrates that, while hunting is not for
everyone, it is an extremely popular pastime for many New Zealanders –
almost an obsession for some. It has had a powerful pull on the public
imagination.
Few of these books ever commented on huts with the kind of reverence
and respect that perhaps might have been expected, especially considering
that many of them were built by the hunters themselves. Instead huts
were treated as a place to sleep the night or shelter during bad weather;
places for after–work activities but rarely gushed over. That does not
reduce the value of the huts but merely shows them for what they
were intended – as practical, useful buildings. It is instructive however
that Joff Thomson’s second book Deer Shooting Days (1964), contains
a whole chapter on tent camps, but not huts. He of course hunted in
the days before there were many huts available but perhaps tent camps
held a greater romance for the professional hunter.

44. Pers. comm. Jack Lasenby

20 Wild Animal Control Huts

Part 2: The heritage value of wild animal
control huts

HISTORICAL

The historic value of mountain or back country huts is now well

accepted in heritage management. The New Zealand Historic Places
Trust has acknowledged the heritage value of some of the country’s
most important huts through their registration under the Historic Places
Act 1993. The Department of Conservation actively manages many huts,
and approximately 70 of these are listed on the Department’s website,
where most have a web-page devoted to them.
Although huts are modest in size the special circumstances in which
they have been erected, their isolation, exposure to extreme weather
conditions and enormous value as shelter for trampers, hunters and
mountaineers allows them to be assessed in a different context from the
typical heritage building. It gives them a patina of age far earlier than
many other buildings. Seen in that light, a slab hut built in the Urewera
in the early 1950s, for instance, cannot be readily equated with a building
constructed in downtown Auckland at the same time.
In assessing those huts that have already been registered or conserved
by DOC, the distinguishing feature of most of them is that they were
carried in on men’s backs, or built from materials at hand. On a very
loose scale of significance, the greater the effort required to build a hut,
the greater the heritage value of the hut.
Huts have been constructed for wild animal control purposes for 70 years.
Few of the huts built during the early part of Internal Affairs’ operations
have survived and those that have are mainly already protected. Of those
that remain from the rest of Internal Affairs’ management, many have been
identified during this study and those that were built without the use of
airdrops can be considered particularly significant for their rarity value.
The vast bulk of the NZFS huts were built with the aid of airdrops or,
later, helicopters. They were almost all standardised and all had a largely
similar history, initially at least. Some special candidates stand out from
an historical point of view e.g. huts where important animal control
research was undertaken, huts associated with particularly successful
operations, the first helicopter–dropped hut (Luna Hut in Karamea), huts
with an interesting social history associated with the hunting era, huts
built by significant New Zealanders, etc.

Part 2: The heritage value of wild animal control huts 21

 PHYSICAL

No strong architectural value has been accorded to back country huts, so

their physical significance relies on other values. Huts have been a bastion
of a basic, almost old–fashioned design and structure. As noted above,
even as glass ‘skyscrapers’ were being built in our cities, slab huts were
still being built in New Zealand’s mountains. Many of the early Internal
Affairs huts represent examples of rare hut types. Oddly, the first of the
Internal Affairs air–dropped huts – the experimental Anderson Memorial
Hut – showed an innovation in design that was later spurned by the
NZFS.
For its part the standard NZFS hut was functional, basic, almost backward
looking, in its solid, gabled form. The huts that were built in the period
after air–dropping began are significant for their representative value best
displayed by authentic examples of typical styles. Also noteworthy are
unusual variations built as a response to local conditions. Examples are
still to be identified.
Some huts have close associations with a range of other heritage places,
including tracks and bridges. The extent of these associations has not
yet been properly investigated but could be examined as part of future
work.

SOCIAL/CULTURAL

The deer culler or hunter occupies a special, iconic place in the history
of wilderness land management. Hunters were mythic figures in the
New Zealand landscape and much admired for the difficult job they did.
Hunting also offered employment to young New Zealanders keen to work
in the great outdoors. But deer culling attracted all sorts of people; it
was certainly not an occupation dominated by men from the land, or
by recreational hunters. It became a rite of passage for many university
leavers. The erudition of many hunters reveals just how intelligent and
perceptive many of them were.
The hunters left their mark on the communities they frequented. The
towns and settlements around New Zealand’s forest and national parks
were the places where hunters were reintroduced to the social lives they
left behind each summer, spent their earnings – often in hotels – and
recounted their experiences.
The commentary on the mythology of the hunter in Part 1 shows how
the iconic status of the government hunter was inspired by the writing
of Barry Crump and others. The role of the hut in all this is not often
explicitly acknowledged but it certainly provided one of the ‘settings’ for
the books. The hut was an ever–present stage or prop in such books.
Some hunters remember particular huts with fondness, either for particular
events, or for the scenery surrounding them, or the length of their association
with them. Huts were particularly important as bases for hunting work and
more will be gleaned on these activities in future. Huts are therefore our

22 Wild Animal Control Huts

abiding, tangible heritage of decades of wild animal control.
More recently, recreational users of huts have become more interested in
huts as heritage. This is exemplified by the FMC Bulletin published by the
Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand. Their current, regular ‘Huts
as Heritage’ feature recognises the increasing role that heritage values
are playing in the appreciation of our wilderness accommodation.

Part 2: The heritage value of wild animal control huts 23

 Part 3: Hut building 1946–1985

INTERNAL AFFAIRS 1946–1956

Internal Affairs built huts from the commencement of operations early in

the 1930s, but these were only occasional projects and the vast majority
of hunters lived in tent and fly camps for much of the period of the
department’s management.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s activity increased. With the
cessation of deer culling during winter some hunters were assigned other
duties, among them track cutting and hut building. The beginning of
air–drops in 1946 offered the Wildlife Branch the opportunity to build
many more huts and after the experimental prefabricated Anderson’s
Memorial Hut was successfully dropped and constructed in Tararua that
year, it was decided to begin a programme of hut building. For one
reason or another – incomplete plans and men and resources unavailable
were among the reasons cited – the project stalled in some parts of the
country. It was only revived in earnest in 1954, although hut building
as such never stopped, particularly in the West Coast.
Internal Affairs hunter Allan Farmer recalled progress in hut building:
You couldn’t beat a hut. Huts came in all shapes and sizes
and for a start were usually buildings left over from another
purpose. Even the huts the Department was putting in
retained their individuality. Much of the timber would be
felled on the spot and at that stage there didn’t seem any
good reason to settle for anything but the best. Some of
those huts of heart totara still stand today.
Normally hunters were sent in during the winter season to
work on the construction and there is nothing that says a
good hunter will be a competent builder. A Field Officer was
in charge but he was probably no better. The best you could
say about the results was that his second hut was usually
better than his first and the third might end up much as it
was supposed to be. With the advent of the Forest Service and
the use of planes big enough to carry properly prefabricated
buildings the patterns of huts standardised around two or
three basic models. They were comfortable and effective but
somehow lacked the character of the older shelters. 45
In the period prior to the takeover by NZFS, the Wildlife Branch was in
close consultation with the Ministry of Works. The Ministry’s Aerodrome
Services branch not only dropped supplies to hunters, it helped design
huts and deliver them too.

45. Farmer p. 106

24 Wild Animal Control Huts

 When air–dropping began the first planes were too small to take large
loads and timber was cut to 3’ (feet) lengths. Two of these planks spliced
together formed a four by two. These, along with the tightly bound roll
of flat iron (in 8’ lengths x 3’ widths), formed the basis of any air–dropped
hut. 46 They were built to a standard design, but timber had to be sawn
and iron cut on site to the desired length. With the introduction of larger
planes, like the Cessna, hut timbers became bigger and each hut was
pre–cut off–site at a builder's yard, and assembled on site by hunters. 47
There were still huts of a more traditional kind built for wild animal
control. Internal Affairs built two huts in the Urewera in 1952 that were
constructed of slabs of totara. Two more were added after the changeover
to NZFS (one – Central Te Hoe – has since been demolished), but were
still built of totara slabs, complete with an earth floor. Each hut was built
using pack horses and hunter’s backs to get materials to the site. The only
concession to modernity was the use of airdrops from 1956 onwards. In
the case of the Urewera slab huts there is also considerable evidence that
they were built largely to a standard design, although subsequent changes
have made that less apparent. 48
There were other examples of some
level of standardisation, such as the
construction of a series of three–bunk
huts in the North Canterbury area in
the mid–1950s. One of their common
characteristics was a concrete floor.
With the exception of such examples,
which were unusual rather than typical
and small in number, it appears that
Internal Affairs experimented with
standardised huts but mostly on a
regional level. It certainly asked the
Public Works Department to design
Interior of slab built
Te Waiotikapiti huts, but apart from Anderson Memorial Hut, no other PWD designed
M Kelly hut has been accurately identified at this time. On the West Coast, huts
were built to various ‘standard’ designs, which were simply variations on
a common theme, and this work continued after 1956.

NEW ZEALAND FOREST SERVICE 1956–1985

Under the NZFS, hut design, like everything else, became a great deal
more organised as budgets rose and greater expertise was required.
With NZFS’s decentralised structure, the business of building huts fell
to the various conservancies. Most huts were constructed by local staff,

46. Pers. comm. Alan Farmer to author, 8 July 2002

47. Ibid
48. Kelly M. 1996, “Te Urewera Slab Huts Conservation Report”, East Coast and Bay of Plenty
Conservancies, DOC pp. 7–8

Part 3: Hut building 1946 –1985 25

 including cullers. Initially there was no standard national design and
the first huts were often thrown together by local staff using whatever
materials were at hand and, if carpenters were involved, they had a
considerable say in proceedings. As with the DIA a generation earlier,
the NZFS thought it would win the deer war in short order, so many
huts had a limited design life and the earliest huts were often built with
untreated timber. Frequently bearers rested on concrete piles without the
benefit of a damp proof course.
On the West Coast, Stan Fokerd designed the bivouac B49. Conceived in
1955 and first erected in 1957, the two–person bivouac was based on the
design of the F–tent, and was totally prefabricated. This type of hut was
developed to ‘solve the problem of deer build up in the subalpine scrub
levels’ and it was claimed that if enough were built they would be ‘as great
an advancement to this job as the aeroplane was’. 49 This design, which
became the NZFS standard S86, was adopted elsewhere in New Zealand.
In 1957 the NZFS designed a 4–bunk hut made from steel framing and
aluminium sheets, known as Dexion huts. Several of these huts were built
in several locations in the Kaweka, and possibly Ruahine, Ranges. They
were uncomfortably cold in winter and in 1960 a carpentry team went
around and lined them with plywood. 50 Moss was even stuffed down the
walls of the Makahu Saddle Hut. 51

The frame of Lake Te Au

Hut, Murchison Mountains
1963. Max Evans, local field
officer pictured. This hut
was later moved after the
site was found to be flood
prone.
J. Von Tunzelman

Dates on plans reveal that the earliest 4–bunk timber hut plan was drawn
up in 1957 and was by no means a settled design. Further plans were
produced the following year as the NZFS grappled with producing the
best design. A principal figure attributed with the production of the hut
designs was Max Cone, senior civil engineer of the engineering division

49. Annual Report of Noxious Animal Division 156–57 to the Conservator of Forests, Westland, by
S.E. Fokerd, dated 4/4/57, p. 9.
50. Pers. comm. Ashley Cunningham to Arnold Heine, 16 February 2003
51. Ibid.

26
 of NZFS. Standard designs for two, four and six bunk huts were planned,
with later variations to accommodate three, five and seven bunks (even
eight at times).
The designs were settled on by 1958 and introduced in the field that year.
Initially the timbers were partly pre–cut or cut on–site, 52 although full
prefabrication had been in operation in the West Coast since the mid–
1950s. Inevitably, minor variations ensued, especially as conservancies
were given considerable latitude to do their own thing. Full prefabrication
of standard designs was still some time off. In Southland for instance,
it was not until 1964 that uniform, prefabricated huts were erected in
the conservancy. 53 The NZFS had its own sawmill, at Conical Hill, near
Tapanui, and loads were bundled and loaded at this point. Once full
prefabrication was in place, hut timbers were cut off–site, timbers and
iron numbered, bundles weighed to ensure they met payload limits, and
flown to the site.
Later some huts were built by teams which roamed the country building
all manner of structures (huts, bridges and other facilities), as well as
inspecting the worthiness of structures already built. 54

Two man bivouac at the

head of the Havelock branch
of the Rangitata River,
Canterbury, 1963.
J.H. Johns,
NZFS–AAQA6506,
12–22,96,M8743, ANZ

Initially, planes were used to ferry materials; a variety of planes was

used. The Auster was among the first used but its small payload was a
problem, as it was with the Beaver. The Cessna 180 was probably the
plane employed the most and its much heavier payload certainly helped
facilitate hut construction. Another common plane was the DeHavilland

52. Plans and specifications S 81, NZFS, Wellington (DOC Hawkes Bay Area Office Microfiche
Collection). See Appendix 3
53. Pers. comm. John Von Tunzelman to the author 7 August 2002
54.
Pers. comm. P. McKelvey to A. Heine, 4 June 2002

Part 3: Hut building 1946 –1985 27

 Dominie. It flew very slowly, which was particularly useful for accurate
parachute dropping. They were operated by Southern Scenic Airways
and West Coast Airways (allied companies). For timber drops large silk
parachutes were used, but for food supplies smaller 120cm 2 drag chutes
were used. 55 On the West Coast in the early 1950s, materials were even
free–dropped. 56
Various hut parts could be placed in the four bomb racks underneath the
wings, with iron on one side and timber on the other. Some pilots were
able to land materials close to a hut site with considerable accuracy but
they had to drop above a minimum height – about 90 metres above the
ground – so that the parachutes could open properly.
While planes were a great boon, helicopters made that much more
difference to hut building. 57 They could more easily drop people,
accurately place loads and return with anything left out or forgotten,
supply food when needed, and deliver or remove larger machinery or
tools. Helicopters first transported hut construction materials in 1958, for
Luna Hut in Nelson. A few days later, materials for Kakapo Hut, Buller,
were flown in from Karamea by helicopter. 58 With Luna Hut’s removal
off–site in 2004, this is almost certainly the oldest helicopter–carried,
prefabricated hut still standing on its original site. The success of the
helicopter meant that it was in big demand thereafter, although there
were not many in the country in the 1950s.

Table 2: 2, 4 and 6-bunk huts built 1930–1985

Number of 2, 4, & 6 Bunk NZFS Huts Built Between 1930-1985

Table 1:
Hut constructions 30
1930–1985
25
No. of
No. Built
Bunks
20
2 bunks
No. Huts

2 128
15 4 bunks
4 131
6 185 10
6 bunks

5
Fran Begley, DOC

0
30

53

56

59

62

65

68

71

74

77

80

84
19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

Year

55. Pers. comm. John Von Tunzelman to the author 21 October 2002
56. IAD 48/10/2 pt 2 Animals Protection and Game Act – Deer destruction – Air transport –
General file re: 10/1/48 to13/1/49. Head Office Archives New Zealand, Wellington
57. Ibid.
58. Memo for the Conservator of Forests, NZFS Nelson ‘Transporting of huts and food by
helicopter’ from J. D. Corboy (field Officer). Dated 17/9/1958

28
Generally speaking, after the initial flurry of hut building in the late 1950s
and early 1960s, most conservancies built huts or bivouacs as funding
allowed, perhaps one or two huts annually in a large area e.g. a forest
park or conservation area. As time wore on, the NZFS had half an eye on
the anticipated influx of recreational users and so built more 6–bunk huts,
even though that capacity was not really required for hunting alone. 59
In establishing a hut site it was essential to meet certain criteria.
Obviously the hut had to be built where there were lots of deer and
this decision was made largely by local staff. It had to be a decent
interval (at least a couple of hours) from the nearest hut, off the river
to avoid flooding, with good access to water, the maximum sun possible,
and good firewood. It was often sensible to consult with hunters; they
knew better than anyone the best places to build huts. For instance, it
would not have made sense to build a hut on a clearing where deer fed.
Established camp sites were often the most obvious places to build.
With the reliance on local staff to draw up plans or build huts, local
variations on standard plans were entirely predictable. The 4–bunk hut
only contained one window, so frequently another was added. Four and
6–bunks had a hearth – in the form of a slab of concrete – in front of
the fire. It was only 10 cm thick and if it cracked and allowed embers
to fall through it could start a fire. In some parts of the country the
slab was poured to ground level. Some huts were fitted with features to
enhance the hunter’s comfort, perfectly understandable given how long
they were to live in them.

59. Pers. comm. John Von Tunzelman to the author 7 August 2002

Part 3: Hut building 1946 –1985 29

72 Wild Animal Control Huts
Appendix 3: NZFS hut plans 73
74 Wild Animal Control Huts
Appendix 3: NZFS hut plans 75
76 Wild Animal Control Huts