Despite the name and cover photo, this book is not about killing and butchering our beloved national bird.
For the past 14 years the author has been at the sharp end of recovery programmes for kiwi, kokako, kakapo, kaka and blue duck. As a result he has spent thousands of hours in the bush observing, capturing and monitoring some of New Zealand's most endangered icons. Kiwi Hunter is an unsanitised firsthand account of the battle to save New Zealand's most distinctive animal, the kiwi, now threatened with extinction. Sid frankly confronts the issues - the counter productive conservation politics, aerial 1080 poison operations, and some of the unsavoury blood'n'guts aspects of trapping and hunting control measures. This book also strives to bring to the public notice today's conservation heroes and personalities - kiwi field workers, goat/deer hunters, stoat and possum trappers - who work hard to protect the kiwi and its habitat. Finally it presents an unprecedented view from ground level of the cyptic flightless birds themselves.