Country Life: Pongaroar hunting competition raises $13,000 for rescue helicopter

There's a steady stream of utes winding down the usually quiet main street of Pongaroa, waiting their turn to have their game weighed as part of the Pongaroar hunting competition.

The annual Easter event brings together hundreds of hunters, farmers, locals and spectators to raise funds for the Grassroots Rescue Helicopter.

"There's a few people around here who'd be telling a different story if we didn't have it," event organiser Abbey Maher told Country Life. "It means a lot."

She and her parents farm out the "back of the boonies" in rural Tararua District, and she said the chopper meant a lot to her family. They are beef farmers and have relied on it more than once for motorbike, tractor and other on-farm accidents.

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The Pongaroar hunting competition was first started in 2011, by a group of Pahiatua hunters who wanted to bring an event to Pongaroa.

The event turned into a fundraiser and since then they've raised over $36,000 for the rescue helicopter. This year's event saw another $13,000 raised with up to 350 competitors - a "good turnout".

"It keeps the chopper healthy," Maher said.

Waka Rimene, a winch operator on the Grassroots Rescue Helicopter and a keen hunter himself, was also there to support the event.

"We fly out here quite often from the Manawatū," he said.

Callouts range from cardiac events, to rescuing hunters and trampers, to helping people being injured on farm by bulls or rams, or in quadbike accidents, which he said were on the rise.

While it takes over two hours for an ambulance to get out to the remote settlement - when they're available - the chopper can be there in about 16 minutes.

"That's probably our specialty, is to get people out of the ugly situations."

The event also helps the local community tackle pest species such as deer, pigs, goats, possums, and more, with plenty of prizes up for grabs for successful hunters.

It coincides with the roar - the mating season when stags become more vocal.

"The reds have finished roaring but there's still some reasonably heavy ones and fallow are weighing up quite nicely," Maher said.

There are prizes for the heaviest red deer, fallow deer, boars and goats. For the kids there are prizes for the heaviest possums, turkeys, rabbits and hares, and there's also an obstacle course.

Hunters can also be judged for the best red deer, fallow buck and goat heads, and best boar tusks.

"One we threw in a little while ago to kind of promote is "ugliest deer head" - so people are culling those because seems a shame to shoot a nice one."

There's also the "roar four" event for teams with the heaviest combined weight across the red stag, fallow buck, pig and goat categories.

This year's entries included 43 red stags, 52 fallow buck, 23 boars, 34 goats, 22 rabbits, 51 hares, 51 turkeys and 34 possums.

"Everyone in the committee hunts for the comp, we all hunt, we all enter," Maher said. "It's good to get rid of them."

Maher said pigs and deer were particularly destructive on farm, damaging paddocks and fence lines.

"I have one at home that's probably being eaten by deer as we speak," she said with a frustrated laugh.

"You look at the pig side of things, you get a pig come out on the farm certain times of the year they root up the ground - use their nose to dig up the ground and eat the grubs underneath. For the farmer, that usually means not only is the soil disturbed, especially if you have a crop or new grass paddock, but quite often that particular area will grow back in thistles or all sorts of weeds."

Some pigs even eat newborn lambs - some farms have seen their docking tallies "significantly impacted", Maher said.

Along with possums, pigs and deer can also carry TB, or Bovine Tuberculosis, which puts cattle at risk.

Keen pig hunter Peter Sorensen has been judging the competition as long as it's been running, though this is his last year.

"It's good for the locals and more than locals as well," he told Country Life, adding someone from Coromandel had driven down to compete.

"These deer numbers need to be kept down a bit. They're just out of control everywhere. Red deer used to be dominant around here but slowly but surely the fallow deer have taken over. Now they're everywhere."

Local farmer Jason Ellmers agreed. He's been hunting on and off most of his life, with eight-year-old son Syd shooting his first hare this year.

Jason said it was good to keep on top of the pests and get the kids involved in these type of things.

"Hunting and gathering, it is a way of life. There's always stuff you don't want on your farm and you can get something out of it to eat."

He said pigs had become an even bigger problem due to conversion of many farms into forestry which gave them a place to hide, but possums and other TB-carrying pests were also an issue.

It was also a good weekend for Marama Karehana from Owāhanga Station, a 7700-ha property operated by the Aohanga Incorporation that stretches 22km along the coast from the Aohanga River in Tararua, south to the Mataikona River in Wairarapa.

"I managed to shoot a 13-pointer stag. I think it was 120kg," she told Country Life.

Originally a "city girl" she'd been hunting for the last seven years after learning from her partner.

She said she was pretty stoked with her catch, which took out the heaviest red stag category.

She nabbed the winning stag just before dusk, though she'd spent the day stalking him as he chased hinds, or female deer.

"He was definitely still noisy and he had heaps of girlfriends."