duck shooting, golf, mountain biking, immunisation
Winter warmer and raffle for mountain biker
The Golden Bay Mountain Bike Club has arranged a fund-raising initiative to contribute funds in support of Reece Potter, who will represent New Zealand at the UCI 2011 World Mountain Bike Championships this August in Switzerland.
In association with Takaka’s The Quiet Revolution, the initiative will kickstart with a raffle, with a main prize of a GT Agressor mountain bike. Tickets will be on sale from the shop at $5 each. Proceeds of the raffle will go directly to Reece. The draw will take place on 20 May with a cut-off day for buying tickets on 18 May.
The club is also organising a special Reece Potter’s Winter Warmer. This six-hour event will consist of laps of the local mountain-bike tracks known as One Klick and Two Klicks that run alongside Rameka Creek Road. Reece will take part and will obtain sponsors to fund him per lap. Anyone else may enter in teams of two, to ride the same laps on the same sponsored basis. All sponsorship monies received will be donated to Reece. It will be free to enter the event, and all participating sponsors will be put in to a draw to win a selection of spot prizes donated by mountain-bike members and local businesses.
The event will take place on Sunday 12 June from 10am till 4pm and will be followed by a social evening at the Roots Bar with the draw for spot prizes taking place at 6pm.
Submitted by GB Mountain Bike Club
Mountain bikes take off on Heaphy Track
Last Sunday’s opening day for the Heaphy Track cycling trial drew a good response from mountainbikers, with 43 riders leaving from Brown Hut.
Another 16 who had departed from Kohaihai on the West Coast were recorded on Monday at Perry Saddle Hut.
The only riders to make it through in one day were avid Golden Bay mountainbikers Bruce Chick, Melanie Miller (photo above) and Mark Godden. It took them almost nine hours of pedalling to reach Kohaihai just before 4pm. As rivers were low after the sustained good weather, they had been able to ford all the major rivers and avoid the awkward swingbridges.
Bruce Chick said that though the three of them all had a high level of fitness, the ride definitely took it out of them.
“I’d recommend it over two days at least, to really enjoy it and take it all in. It’s another way of seeing the wilderness and there’s bound to be some adjustments between bikers and trampers required. Maybe it’s about developing respect for the other.”
Greg Napp of the Department of Conservation’s Golden Bay office said Heaphy biker bookings were “pretty light” at this stage.
“Weekends are definitely going to be busier. Already we have Gouland, Saxon and Mackay huts all booked out, or just about, for every Saturday in May.” The Heaphy bike trial will run from 1 May to 30 September for three years, during which DOC will monitor its social and environmental impact.
Mountainbikers are allowed in either direction on the Heaphy, but must have no more than six riders in a group. Oh yes, and no biking at night, when the roaming nocturnal native snails become potential roadkill.
Gerard Hindmarsh
Riordan brothers set to battle in Golden Bay Golf Open
Takaka brothers Sean and Blair Riordan will again be vying for top honours at the Golden Bay Open this weekend.
The two have dominated the title over recent years, and Blair is in very good form, having reached the semi-finals of the New Zealand Amateur Championships last month.
Blair had set himself the goal of making the second day of the matchplay section, having been beaten in the first or second round in his three previous trips to the Amateur.
“Only the top 32 players get through from the strokeplay so every match after that is tough,” said Blair. “To get past the second round I had to beat Sean Jones, who was seeded second after the strokeplay. I was pleased with that. In the end I lost on the 20th hole in the semis, after the biggest individual match of my career so far.”
This year Sean and Blair face plenty of competition from most of the region’s top male golfers including Brett Allan, Hamish Campbell, Simon Hollyer, Jared Armstrong, Joel Taylor, Shay Hamilton, Steve Lummis, Nick Loach, Josh Simpson, Tom Dasler, Nick Thomsen and Dale Rutledge.
Takaka’s own young guns will also be there in full force too: Leon Schrader, Merlin Fredrick, Luken Chamberlain, Mitchell Hone-Dixon, Saxon Balck and Alex Fersterer-Gawith.
Club secretary Linda Sanders said that more than 140 players would be coming from all over the South Island.
“The course is looking wonderful because of the work done in last couple of months by our greenkeeper David Win and a club member Doug Collis. Doug has worked wonders with his digger. A large number of mature pine trees have been harvested and the course is transformed.
“We’re hoping for some nice weather so the crowd can enjoy watching the golf from our new deck.
Submitted by the Takaka Golf Club
Duck shooting starts this weekend
This Saturday will see eager duck shooters converge on many of the district’s waterways, shotgun and steel shot at the ready, a bag of food and the all-important bottle of water to prevent dehydration. The first weekend in May is an exciting time for hunters throughout New Zealand as it marks the opening of the duck shooting season.
Over the past weeks, mai mais have been built or refurbished, grain has been fed on some ponds, guns checked and cleaned, decoys put out and licences bought in preparation for what is the biggest weekend on the duck shooter’s calendar.
Opening weekend is when most hunters go out, which means there are fewer safe havens for the ducks and they are “kept in the air”, giving the hunter a better chance of bagging some game.
The hunting of ducks and other gamebirds has been a popular sport in New Zealand since the earliest days of settlement. Believe it or not, native birds such as kaka, godwit, tui and wood pigeon were legal game before 1900.
Mallard ducks are the most common and widespread water bird, but they did not arrive here by natural means. Like sparrows, blackbirds and starlings, they arrived on ships with people, deliberately brought here to surround the colonising British with vestiges of “home”. The fact that hunting mallard ducks was great sport was a bonus, even if, at that time, the native grey duck and brown teal were providing that in abundance.
It was the Acclimatisation Societies of the late 1800s that introduced mallards to New Zealand’s waterways, although the process was slow with only 14 separate importations by 1910. However, throughout the 1910s and 1920s many societies decided they had to have mallards for their hunters. This was partly a reaction to grey ducks declining almost everywhere - a consequence of heavy hunting, land clearance and extensive drainage. Once established in New Zealand, the mallard found our environment perfect for its needs and interbred with the grey ducks. Today, a “pure” grey duck is a rarity.
An adult full-season licence costs $86 and permits the holder to shoot 15 birds a day. (See table below.) One-day licences are available for $19, but not until after the first two weekends. This is because most duck shooters only go out on those weekends and no one would purchase a full licence.
Fish and Game New Zealand is an angler and game bird hunter organisation which has a statutary mandate to manage New Zealand’s freshwater sports-fish fisheries and game-bird hunting. Fish and Game relies on the money from duck shooting and fishing licences to survive. So, just what do they do with the licence money?
One of the decisions Fish and Game makes is how much pressure the resource can handle from hunters. They do yearly counts of gamebirds to determine whether the bag limits need to be lowered or raised.
The booklet provided with each duck-shooting licence has all the relevant information and lists birds considered as protected and “gamebirds”. Canadian geese, for example, are currently a gamebird but they may be moved off the game schedule.
According to Fish and Game ducks have had a good breeding season and the wet weather that has been predicted means that ducks will be flying nice and low, so the outlook for opening weekend is pretty good.
For the “Essential Provisions for Duck Shooting” see page 6 in this issue.
Lindsay Nelson
Immunisation Week – Protect your child
Nelson Marlborough District Health Board (NMDHB) encourages parents to protect children and family members through immunisation against serious diseases.
The vaccines on the National Immunisation Schedule are safe, effective and free and include vaccines to prevent measles, mumps, rubella, polio, diphtheria and whooping cough (also known as pertussis). These diseases can all cause serious illnesses and may cause long-term harm.
Medical officer of health Dr Ed Kiddle said, “When an immunised person comes into contact with a disease that they have been immunised against, the person’s immune system responds quickly to prevent the disease from developing.”
He said despite immunisation being recognised as one of the most effective ways of preventing a range of infectious diseases, low immunisation rates among New Zealand children have contributed to regular outbreaks of illnesses such as measles and whooping cough. These are not mild illnesses and can have serious consequences.
Your family doctor, or practice nurse can check to find out what immunisations your child has had. Or contact your local immunisation co-ordinator Nelson 0800 731 317 .
NMDHB was recognised with a certificate for consistently achieving the 2010 immunisation target of having 90% of two-year-old children immunised. This has been achieved through GPs and practice nurses in the community working with families and setting up robust systems to recall families for immunisation along with the outreach programme and public health nurses programmes.
Submitted by NMDHB
