Published 2009 | RRP$49.99

The Wanderings of a Deer Hunter is an autobiography written by Don Kiddie about his fourth dimension as a authorities employed culler in central N Isle, New Zealand.

This book is a historical account written past i of New Zealand's most accomplished hunters of his time. Don became a culler in the 1952 summer season and retired 8 years later, in 1960, due to a back injury sustained past years of hard, concrete labour, only not before etching himself into New Zealand hunting folk lore.

Don writes factually and insightfully about his fourth dimension living and working, for months at a time, equally a hunter in the dorsum-blocks, which by the 1950s was overrun with introduced animals that were in such loftier numbers they destroyed native bush-league and competed with livestock for nutrient, and therefore farmers' livelihoods.

This book covers a large diversity of subjects including, most interestingly, supplying camps using airdrops, hunting dogs, wild cattle, building huts, accidents, photography, and the furnishings of deer on their environment, so offers the reader various reading material.

In his early days Don worked with the infamous Barry Crump, himself an writer of more than than 20 books of comic Kiwi yarns, the first of which, A Good Keen Homo (1960), was one of the nigh pop books always published in New Zealand.  Dotted throughout Don'south book are some interesting and enlightening anecdotes about Barry's unscrupulous exploits, seemingly contrary to the laughable rogue Barry was portrayed as.

Best suited for readers with a keen interest in hunting history, and peculiarly in the regime'southward deer command programme, Don details his trials with 1080 poison at Oamaru Flats in the Kaimanawa Forest Park (so known as Wood 90) on sika deer and at the Caples Valley, Queenstown on fallow deer, which, in each instance, were successful and formed a blue print for continued poison utilise in New Zealand today.

Don's book is not your average 'light reading' hunting volume, which is a good matter.

There has been a lot of books written on the bailiwick of deer culling in the Southward Isle and it is cracking to run across a high quality book on the subject of Due north Island culling too.

Don is known to sika hunters because, in conjunction with the New Zealand Forestry Service (NZFS), he published a guide to sika hunting called The Sika in New Zealand (1962).

The Hunter's recommendation is: buy it

The Hunter's ratings are:

  • Overall rating : 6.v out of 10*
  • Photos and illustrations : four out of v
  • Trophy quality : 1.5 out of 5
  • Writing quality and mode : iv out of 5
  • Page-turner status : iii.v out of 5

*Annotation: The rating is skewed downward because Don was non a trophy hunter.

Publisher's blurb

For your data the following is the book'south blurb:

In 1962 the New Zealand Forest Service published a 36-page booklet past Don Kiddie, The Sika Deer in New Zealand. It was the first information published about Sika deer in New Zealand and was based on hundreds of hours of observation and research from a skilled hunter. The booklet was for many years the only data about a relatively unknown breed of deer in New Zealand, which was gaining popularity with hunters as they presented a new challenge on the hunting scene. As a event he soon became known to every serious hunter in New Zealand, and the original booklet had to be reprinted several times.

From an early historic period don was destined to become a hunter, his power was honed from years of professional deer culling as well as his won recreational hunting. These skills immune him to not only accept the animals he sought only also to get close plenty to take nearly all of the photographs in this volume without the use of modern telephoto lenses.

In this book he not merely recounts his many years of professional hunting by likewise shares his observations of fauna behaviour, the effect animals have on the bush and the changing human relationship betwixt deer, the hunters and the environment.

Bibliographic data

Championship: The Wanderings of a Deer Hunter
Author: D. Grand. Kiddie (Donald George) (1932–)
Editions: 2009
Publisher: Halcyon Press, Auckland, New Zealand
ISBN: 1877256900, 9781877256905
Format: Softcover, 368 pages, illustrations (some color), 24 cm

Book review of The Wanderings of a Deer Hunter past Don Kiddie book review