Should hunters be held

to greater account if
they fail to ensure its
an animal not a
human being in their
sights before they
pull the trigger?
Joanna Wane reports.

shell casing sits on a chest

of drawers in Aron
Timms bedroom, next
to his sports trophies, his
Calvin Klein deodorant
and the box that contains his ashes. But it isnt from the bullet
that killed him.
On the day before his 19th birthday in
March 2008, Aron was hunting in the
Tarawera Ranges with his girlfriends father
when the older man heard a noise in the
bush. Aiming at what he thought was a deer,
he shot the teenager through the heart and
lungs as he leant against a cabbage tree just
a few metres off the track.
People are affected differently by grief.
Arons father withdrew, leaving the family
home in Taradale and moving to Australia
because he couldnt stand being in the same
country as the man whod shot his son.
Arons mother, Lorraine, remembered the
handsome boy with an old head on young
shoulders whod helped nurse her through
a brush with illness several years before.
His little sister stocked up her ammunition belt and went out with his gun.

JOANNA WANE IS NORTH & SOUTHS DEPUTY EDITOR. PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIMON YOUNG AND JANE USSHER.
6 6 | N O R T H & S O U T H | N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 0

+ Issues

SIMON YOUNG

in
the
line
of fire

omeone who didnt know Lechelle with her white-blonde

hair, immaculate nails and tiny,
doll-like frame might picture
her putting a fluffy teddy bear
on the shrine in her brothers room to keep
him company through the night. But she
was five when she fired a rifle for the first
time; the bullet shell is from her.
Country kids, they grew up around guns,
hunting with their father, Brian, and their
granddad Poppa since they were nippers.
When they sat their firearms licence together, Lechelle outscored Aron on the test.
Excited about landing a plumbing apprenticeship, due to start two days after he was
killed, Aron had headed into the Taraweras
determined to shoot his first deer. It was a
coming-of-age that was never to happen.
So Lechelle shot one for him.
He died doing something he loved, but
he didnt achieve his goal, she says, showing pictures of her cradling the hind she
took down with one clean shot through the
chest. That was my goal for Aron. He cant
enjoy the meat, he couldnt be in the photo
graphs, but he was right there with me and
I cried for him like a little girl. That empty
shell from the first kill of a deer is his.
In July 2008, Garth Porter pleaded guilty
to carelessly using a firearm causing death
and was sentenced to five months home
detention and 250 hours of community
service. Aron had been going out with his
daughter, Nicole, for two and a half years,
but since his funeral, the two families have
broken contact. Porter, a Napier businessman,
declined to be interviewed for this story.
Lechelle is now 19 older than her big
brother was when he died. Shes stood in
the bush where he was shot and, like her
parents, still struggles to understand how
the accident happened. Before you open
your eyes in the morning, you see it, that
haunting image, she says.
At the time, there were calls from the
deer-stalking community for Porter to face
a manslaughter charge.
Her mother, Lorraine, will never forget
coming home that day to find a policeman
sitting in her kitchen.
You put it to the back of your head and
when people at work ask how you are, you
say, Good, thanks. Then you come home
and think about it again before you go to
bed. But you hold yourself together and get
up the next day. Ive been doing that for two
and a half years.

Taradale teenager Lechelle Timms cradles

her brother Arons gun returned to the family
after he was shot and killed in a hunting
accident. His guns were his babies.

Brian returned to New Zealand but lives

apart from his family in another part of the
country. Lechelle, still at home with her
mum, has faced her loss head-on, speaking
out through the Mountain Safety Council
to drill home the most basic hunting code
of all: clearly identify your target.
What would you rather take home a
bit of meat, a trophy or your friend? she
says. I know I cant change what happened
but I can make sure Arons story gets heard.
If people could just walk a day in our shoes
before they went out into the bush and
touched that trigger. All I want is to make
sure every hunter comes home safe.

mong the many people who

contacted the Timms after
Arons death was Ian Purchase, whose 22-year-old
son Matthew had been
shot in the head while rabbit hunting near
Putaruru only a few months earlier.
An agricultural exchange student from the
UK, Matthew survived but was left permanently disabled. Danish tourist Bjarne Jensen,
48, defended a charge of carelessly using a
firearm causing injury and was found not
guilty at a high-court jury trial in Rotorua.
New Zealand law means the Purchases
cant sue for compensation to help towards
their sons ongoing medical bills. They dont
qualify for ACC either, because Matthew is
back home with them in England.
Ian Purchase, who flew to New Zealand
for the trial, told media outside the court
he was shocked by the verdict. It seems
6 8 | N O R T H & S O U T H | N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 0

Above left: Born into a family passionate about hunting, Aron Timms learnt to shoot as a boy.
Above right: The Taradale team from the Kennels Gun Club. Aron is wearing
the red cap; his father Brian is sitting at the far end on the left.

quite extraordinary that when a person

discharges a firearm, he is not always accountable for where the bullet goes.
In Taupo, Bronwyn Gillies knew better than
most what both families were going through.
In 2005, her husband William was killed
when the friend hed been hunting with for
35 years opened fire on what he thought was
a deer and shot his mate in the head.
Bernard Lee admitted firing the fatal bullet but pleaded not guilty to careless use of
a firearm causing death. At his trial, the jury
initially told the judge they couldnt reach a
unanimous verdict before finally returning
an acquittal.
Five years later, the anger and bitterness
is still fresh in Bronwyn Gillies voice anger
at the way her husband was discredited in
court and blamed by defence lawyer Kevin
Ryan for straying into his hunting partners
firing zone; bitterness towards Lee for not
accepting responsibility for Williams death.
Just as Arons shooting and the subsequent
trial split apart two families and their small
Hawkes Bay community, the Lee-Gillies case
evoked strong emotions. A hunter who wrote
a letter to the newspaper denouncing the
not-guilty verdict had a threatening message
left on his answer-phone.
After initially supporting Lee, who came
to her husbands funeral, Bronwyn took out
a non-association order after learning hed

been out hunting again. She still wont acknowledge him if they happen across each
other in town.
Ironically, William Gillies was troubled
by arthritis in his knees and had already
decided it would be his last hunting trip.
Together since high school, with four adult
children, the couple had also weathered
Bronwyns recent brush with cancer.
We were getting to the stage where we
were going to do things together have our
time. Now thats not going to happen.
Willie was a lovely, quiet sort of guy. My
parents thought the world of him; his death
really threw them. Theyve never been the
same since. My son, who was so strong, just
crumbled recently. I believe were still grieving and going through things now.
The only way I can handle it is knowing
he went in the bush, doing something he
really loved.

ne of the key arguments in

Lees defence was that he
really did have a deer in his
sights but somehow Gillies
head had popped up in between at the moment he pulled the trigger.
Velocity tests conducted after the trial
and presented at a coroners hearing showed
that was simply not possible because of the
speed of the bullet.

Taupo coroner Dr Wallace Bain found Lee

had not properly identified his target, relying
on what he thought were antlers and the
possibility of a head (a patch of brown that
was, in fact, Gillies face as he stood barely
16 metres away in dense bush).
Such accidents were a tragedy, wrote Bain,
himself a keen huntsman. Mates who have
been hunting together for 20 to 30 years
end up in a situation where one of them is
dead, the one that fires the deadly shot is
devastated, and two families lives almost
invariably will never be the same again.
In his findings, Bain called for tougher
laws to hold hunters more accountable and
urged the Law Commission to urgently
investigate a change in legislation to make
the offence one of strict liability, essentially
shifting the burden of proof.
Instead of a jury having to decide what
amounted to carelessness taking into
account factors such as the surrounding
circumstances, the terrain, the weather and
the time of day the prosecution would only
have to prove the facts of what happened,
while the person charged would be required
to prove an absence of fault.
The issue here is target identification, and
if a hunter chooses to fire at an object that is
not the whole body of a deer, then the risks
of doing so must fall with the hunter.
Bains recommendations were reiterated

by fellow coroner Christopher Devonport

in 2008 following the death of Aron Timms
in strikingly similar circumstances.
Three years after Bains findings were released, he is clearly frustrated at the lack of
action. He told North & South his report
seemed to have fallen into a hole somewhere, despite the proposal receiving warm
support from a number of legal colleagues.
It has to be brought home to hunters if
you fire and youre not absolutely certain,
theres no defence and youre likely to go to
jail for a period of time, he says.
The Coroners Act says we are to look at
the general circumstances and draw to public attention any matters which, if drawn to
their attention, may help save a life on a
future occasion. Well, this will save lives on
a future occasion.
Dr Warren Young, deputy president of the
Law Commission, disagrees. He says the
commission has not received any reference
from the government and did not regard it
as an issue of merit that required independent investigation.
Crown prosecutor Simon Moore has reservations, too, about the effectiveness of a
law change. Although hes never prosecuted such a case, he saw first-hand the terrible consequences of a hunting death when
he was at university and a friend in his mid20s shot and killed his best mate.
He was obsessively careful and an experienced hunter who swore black and blue
that he saw antlers and a deer, says Moore.
It was absolutely awful.
The thing is youre generally dealing with
responsible people who are devastated by
the consequences of their actions and will
probably never pick up a firearm to venture
into the bush again. Thats why very often
you get in these sorts of cases perverse verdicts from juries, who see how utterly
racked with grief the individual is [and dont
want the consequences of a conviction].
Police are currently looking at whether
an existing offence of discharging a firearm
with reckless disregard for the safety of
others should be promoted as an alternative charge. A middle ground between careless use and manslaughter, it carries a
maximum sentence of seven years in jail.
New Zealand law already takes a relatively hard line compared to countries such as
the United States. There, accidental shootings are often viewed as reasonable mistakes
and buck fever where the excitement of
the chase overrides rational thinking and the
eye sees what the mind wants to believe is
a recognised defence. In 1989, a hunter in

Maine was found not guilty of manslaughter

after killing a young mother hanging out
clothes in her rural backyard, apparently
because the white mittens she was wearing
looked like deer tails.

bout now, as the grass starts

to green, the first deerstalkers will be pulling on
their boots for a spot of
spring hunting. But its
around Easter during the roar, when stags
call for a mate, that the central North Island
bush heaves with more traffic than rush
hour on Queen St.
Given the estimated 260,000 hours spent
deer hunting each year, fatalities are relatively rare on average, one hunter is accidentally shot dead by another every nine
months. But the human cost is heartbreaking.
In 2009, on the opening day of the duckshooting season, Napier father of two
Michael Meehan was killed by a member of
his own family who was walking behind him
and tripped, accidentally discharging his gun.
Then there are those who survive.
Veteran deerstalker Nigel Ross knows the
terrible damage a high-calibre bullet does
to an animal. So when a shot slammed into
his shoulder, lacerating his lung and shearing off four ribs millimetres from his spine,
he looked up at his hunting mate, Winston
Handcock, and croaked, Ive had it.
The pair were walking back to their car
on a gravel road in the Kaimanawa Forest
when a truck swung round the corner carrying two men spotlighting for deer. I
heard the crack of the rifle and the first shot
hit the ground between us, recalls Handcock. I threw myself into a depression next
to the road and started digging my way
through to China.
A second shot winged Ross, who was wearing a headlamp. (It was later claimed in court
that the shooter, who was spotlighting illegally, mistook the bluish LED light for the
eye of a deer.) Handcock bundled Ross into
the mens truck and phoned ahead for an
ambulance to meet them at the main road.
They asked what colour the truck was and
I said it was red; it was actually grey but
blood running out the door was all I saw.
He then drove the ambulance himself at
full whip to Taupo Hospital, where hed
arranged for an emergency team to be on
standby. Ross was given 12 units of blood
and stabilised before being flown by helicopter to Waikato.
A year later, the 70-year-old has made a
good recovery but has no use of his shoulder
N O R T H & S O U T H | N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | 6 9

and accepts his own hunting days are over.

He describes what happened as exceptionally irresponsible and is an advocate of
tougher sentences. While the judge who
heard the case was highly critical of the lack
of care taken by the hunter to identify his
target, Ross wasnt impressed by the sentence: a $4000 fine and $5000 reparation.
Its a bit of a slap on the wrist, you know.
A lifelong hunter, Ross once heard a group
of young lads in a back-country hut talking
about firing sound shots where you hear
a sound in the bush and shoot at it. I found
out where they were going hunting that
morning and we went off in the opposite
direction.
Hed like to see youngsters taken down to
the firing range by police before theyre
given a firearms licence and wouldnt dream
of going out in the roar, when the bellowing
stag youre stalking can turn out to be another hunter roaring right back at you.
All these Rambos come down from Auckland to Taupo and scare the wits out of you,
he says. Honestly, for every one [person]
shot and hit there must be a dozen nearmisses when a bullet goes zinging by.

Pig hunter Scott Candy (front) and his 15-yearold son Dean use GPS transmitters to track their
hunting dogs through the bush.

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JANE USSHER

heres an old Forest Service

slogan from the 1960s:
Better No Meat than No
Mate. In an analysis of 33
deer-hunting deaths from
1979 to 2002, To Hunt and
Return, target identification was a factor in
two-thirds of them. Most were experienced
hunters and 58 per cent of all fatal shootings
involved mates whod become separated and
lost sight of each other.
The NZ Deerstalkers Association has
stopped short of making high-visibility
clothing mandatory but recommends clothing that contrasts with the conditions (deer
are colour blind so they dont get spooked).
At best, that offers limited protection. Blaze
orange the favoured colour has been
mistaken for the reddish tinge of a sika deer
in certain types of bush.
At the end of the day, the sole responsibility for taking the shot is the guy with his
finger on the trigger, says Mike Spray, who
runs the Mountain Safety Councils firearms
and hunter training programme. Youve
got to assume any shape, colour, movement

Left: The coroners

report into Aron
Timms death called
for hunters to be held
more accountable for
accidental shootings.

A Lifetime
of Regret
Taumarunui deerstalker
Dave Alker was sentenced
to nine months in jail for the
death of a young hunting
friend. Seven years later,
hes still doing time.

or sound is human, until proven otherwise.

In the past five years, the number of firearms licences being issued to first-time applicants has doubled to 10,000 a year. Game
has proliferated since the decline of the
helicopter deer-recovery industry (despite
complaints about the ravages caused by
1080 drops) and TV programmes such as
Hunger for the Wild have given new streetcred to the concept of hunting for freerange food.
A proposal to establish a New Zealand
Game Animal Council, to represent the interests of game-hunting sectors and manage
resources, is before the Minister of Conservation. One recommendation is a registration programme with training modules on
ethics and safety; rewards for hunters who
come on board might include extra points
for the oversubscribed wapiti ballot.
Most in the hunting community, including
Mike Spray, favour education over regulation
and doubt whether stiffer charges would cut
the casualty rate. The consequences, they
say, are already penalty enough.
Jim Mattler still has 100 hours of com7 2 | N O R T H & S O U T H | N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 0

munity work to go for shooting a mate in

January on a night hunting trip in the Mamaku Forest (another case of an LED light
being mistaken for the eye of a deer).
The bullet just missed his friends spine.
Although the man holds no hard feelings
and has made a full recovery, Mattler, 52,
cant forgive himself. Hes quit hunting for
good and says his life has done a complete
u-turn since that horrible hell of a night.
Supported by his two brothers, Mattler
pleaded guilty to carelessly discharging a
firearm causing bodily injury. In court,
Judge Chris McGuire warned hunters to
ensure what they were shooting at was an
animal, not another hunter. I accept without
reservation your remorse and the agony you
feel for shooting your best friend.
Its a moment Mattler relives every day.
I dont know how long it will take me to
get over that thing. I thought Id killed him.
I cant even see the guy any more because
I dont know how to face him.
It takes a day and a night for the world to
go round but just a split-second to go on its
arse and turn everything upside down. +

WAIKATO TIMES

SIMON YOUNG

e can see it now: the

eye of the stag looking
straight at him through
the bush, the soft curve
of its ear. Again and
again hes replayed it
over in his mind and
always he sees exactly the same thing.
But when Dave Alkers shotgun
cracked the mid-autumn morning,
the stag hed been stalking the stag
he was sure he had locked in his
sights broke cover off to one side
and crashed away through the scrub.
Outsmarted, the experienced
bushman knew hed hit something;
probably a hind or a spiker hanging
around the edge. It wasnt until I
walked up there that I knew what
had happened. It was Hamish.
That April, in 2003, was a
black month in the bush, as the
hunter became the hunted.
In the North Island, three men
were shot and killed in as many
weeks at the height of the roar,
the peak deer-stalking season when
rutting stags call for a mate.
Only nine days after the death of
26-year-old Hamish Harland near
Turangi, a father of two was shot in the
head in the Kaimanawa Ranges after
being mistaken for a deer. Another
hunter was killed in the Ureweras, and a
man was hospitalised after being struck

by a bullet while hunting in Fiordland.

In the moment that it took him to
pull the trigger, the world closed in on
Alker. He pleaded guilty to carelessly
using a firearm causing death and served
half of a nine-month sentence two
months in Waikeria Prison then the
rest on home detention. He welcomed
the jail time. I had to pay somehow. It
doesnt change anything but if I hadnt
gone in, it wouldnt have felt right.
Of course, when he came out it still
wasnt over. Not for the Harland family
and not for Alker. A man whod lived
for the outdoors since his father took
him shooting as a boy, he moved away
from his home near Owhango because
he couldnt stand looking at the bush
every day or hearing the stags roar.
Now 53, he hasnt hunted with a gun
since, although over the past year or so

hes started walking out with his two

sons, who are both in their early 20s.
They went through it as much as I did
back then, he says. I dont want to
miss out on time with my boys because
I cocked up. Its not their fault.
These days he works for the council,
clearing noxious weeds and keeping his
head down. Harlands mother wants
nothing to do with him and he doesnt
blame her. Unlike other hunters charged
with fatal shootings whove fought their
cases in court, Alker has never ducked
accountability for her sons death.
Because when you strip away everything
else the trickery of the light, the
excitement of the hunt, his certainty that
Harland was nowhere near his line of fire
he failed to correctly identify his target.
Its been pretty rough; Hamish and
I were good mates, he says.

Its hard to try and find purpose in

life to find things that are worthwhile.
Ive shut myself away quite a bit.
And every time he hears about
another shooting, another death, its
anger he feels more than anything. I
never thought it would happen to me;
I always thought I made sure [of the
target]. And thats what worries me
about other hunters. They never think
it will happen to them and it should
never happen if every rule is applied.
In my mind, that was a deer looking
at me. Every day I think about it and
I still cant see anything different.
There was not even a thought that
it wasnt or I wouldnt have pulled
the trigger. But youve got to be 100
per cent sure you can see the whole
animal because if you get it wrong, the
consequences are huge. Its that simple.
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Brotherhood of Men
A resurgence in the popularity of hunting among a new generation
is behind one of Maori Televisions highest-rating shows.

Hunting Aotearoa presenter Howie Morrison Jnr.

JANE USSHER

ou can bet Howie Morrison

Jnr learnt a fair bit at the
knee of his famous father.
A certain charm. A love
of music (he has his own
three-man quartet).
A weakness for talking
in puns. Dont let them give you any
stick, he grins holding out a stick.
But one of the lessons hes never
forgotten was when Sir Howard, a crack
shot who culled thousands of deer in his
professional hunting days, caught his
eldest son shooting birds with an air rifle.
He picked one up, put it in the pot,

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cooked it and made me eat it, he says.

You use it, or you leave it alone.
Its a typical slice of laconic
storytelling from Morrison, who
fronts Maori Televisions hit show,
Hunting Aotearoa, now filming its
seventh season, with more than 100
episodes already gone to air. A family
affair, the team includes his younger
brother, Richard, as the soundman.
Sticking pigs and gutting deer might be
a touch too realistic for the squeamish
sensibilities of mainstream TV, but the
weekly half-hour programme has become
part of the rural community for Maori

and Pakeha alike and given it voice.

Churrr this show is the hits, writes a
fan on the Hunting Aotearoa blog. Love
the big-ass pigs and the deer. If u keen for
a hunt just call a brotha up and its on.
On the day Sir Howard would
have celebrated his 75th birthday,
North & South joined the film crew
on location, pig-hunting on a farm
west of Whangarei with a pint-sized
stowaway along for the ride.
Hunting Aotearoa is eight-year-old
Bayden Hays favourite show, ritually
recorded every Thursday night
to watch before school on Friday.
Dwarfed by Morrison and his men,
he was a boy among heroes as they
gathered outside a bakery to throw
down a few pies for breakfast.
Freckle-faced, with a wispy mullet
straggling out of his camo-print beanie,
Bayden has been duck shooting since
he was five and cut class to come on the
hunt. You learn more in the bush than
you do at school, said his dad, Justin,
who runs an upholstery business in
Whangarei. And everyone calls me Fred.
A few hours later, Bayden had streaks
of mud on his face and a dead pig hooked
across his shoulders sharp, white teeth
protruding from its hairy snout, which
slapped up and down on his shoulder as
he struggled manfully under its weight.
The damage caused to spring
growth by rooting snouts meant open
season had been declared on wild pigs
ravaging the farms green pasture.
None of the three squealers caught
on this particular day came close to
making the two-ton club, for trophy
porkers weighing more than 200 pounds.
But after a five-hour slog through hail,
thunder, mud swamps and the sharp bite
of electric fences, there was bacon for
the table and another show in the can.
Today we got enough to feed
three families for the next three
weeks, said Morrison, handing
round some hunting tucker cold
baked beans slugged straight from a
jagged tin. And all its cost is a bit of
walkin, talkin and $10 of diesel.
Reeking with mud and gore, one of
the pig dogs loped over for a rub. Zak
and Diesel, Hays pair of dogs, wear
GPS collars so they can be tracked for
the chase. By the end of the day, the
city slickers among these hardened
hunters wished wed been wearing
them too. In the dense undergrowth,

where there were no marked trails, a

person walking just a few metres ahead
could dissolve into the bush without
warning and simply disappear.
Research shows Maori are rarely
involved in shooting accidents, perhaps
because hunting has traditionally been
about feeding the whanau and less about
who claims the kill taking away the
competitive edge that can cloud good
judgment.
The closest Morrison has ever come
to losing a hunting mate was when one
of the crew slipped off a bluff and was
lucky to escape without serious injury.
For all the bravado and easy camaraderie,
making it home is what matters, even
if you turn up empty-handed.
Every hunter is like a brother; it affects
the whole community when theres an
accident. But in the roar, you get a lot of
part-timers who havent seen a deer for 10
months. Thats whats in their mind. And its
their mind that tells them what they see. +

Above and top: Eight-year-old Bayden Hay heads for home after a day out pig
hunting in Northland with his dad Justin (wearing the blue beanie).

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