Young gun on possum trail

Look out possums, five-year-old Joshua Smith is on your tail - and he might be holding a gun.
Joshua will join his Otane family on Pukehou School's Great Pukehou Possum Hunt this weekend and - if he wants to - he will shoot his first possum, his mum Lara Smith said.
"If he's confident, we will let him have a shoot," Mrs Smith said, adding "but he will be well assisted".
Joined by his team members Mrs Smith, Dad Richard Smith and grandfather Paul McBrearty, Joshua would get into his winter woollies and take part in the annual family outing for the first time, Mrs Smith said.
"It's very controlled - we always shoot with my Dad, who has a gun licence. We will see if he (Joshua) wants to do it but we won't push him."
Mrs Smith was aware of safety procedures and said her father was always there to supervise.
It will be the fourth year the Smiths have attended the hunt, which usually took place on Queen's Birthday Weekend but has been extended this year to include this weekend.
It would be a busy weekend for the family, which was also celebrating Joshua's sixth birthday on June 2, and younger brother Finn's fourth birthday on June 5.
Finn and his younger brother Angus, two, were "two little possum-hunters in the making," Mrs Smith said.
"They will all be coming out on the hunt one day."
After hoarding all their old swandri out of the cupboard, the Smiths spent four to five hours hunting on a block of land in Otane, Mrs Smith said.
They usually shot around 15 possums a weekend.
"I don't really care if I kill them or not. The hunt is better than the kill.
"We are not in it to take out any records."
Mrs Smith enjoyed spending a night out with the family, getting some exercise and having fun doing something different. And she was not manipulated by the possums' cute appearance.
"I like spotlighting the best. To see the possum eyes in the spotlight . . . it's really exciting.
"Because they are a pest, I can justify hunting them."
The possums were taken to the school where they would be plucked and sorted by parents and school staff, organiser Christine Morrison said.
The hunt was the fifth the school had organised and it would raise money for school library resources.
It was extended to two weekends because of high demand for possum fur and to increase the chance of good weather - so hopefully people would have a dry hunt for at least one of the weekends, Mrs Morrison said.
A prizegiving and auction of the fur will be at the school's new hall on June 6, attended by members of the Hawke's Bay Regional Council.
The value of the fur was $75 per kilo, Mrs Morrison said. Mixed with merino wool, the fur was often turned into gloves, jackets and "beautiful garments".
Possums could be shot, trapped or poisoned, she said.
"They can get them however they like - without running them over in their cars."
Although the Smith family does the hunt for the fun - not the number of possums or prizes - some teams brought back hundreds of possums, Mrs Morrison said.
"One winning team got 300 possums during one weekend - it was a team of young guys hunting until five in the morning".