"I'd say that was simply a resourcing thing ... they were called out from Turangi and there's only so much they can do."
Ms McFarlane said her family still could not understand why police charged Mears with manslaughter, resulting in a jail sentence of two years and six months, while his two companions with gun licences were only fined by the Department of Conservation for breaching permits forbidding them to hunt after dark.
Coroner Dr Wallace Bain asked Mr Humphries why the rest of the party had not been made more culpable. Mr Humphries said that was the Crown solicitor's directive.
Ms McFarlane and Ms Ives' brother, Tom, agreed the tragedy highlighted the need for a crackdown on illegal spotlighting, which is only allowed on public conservation land under special permission for pest control.
Twenty-three operations targeting illegal spotlighting in conservation areas around the Desert Rd and National Park highway had been carried out since the tragedy.
A large number had been carried out in Kaimanawa Forest Park, where DoC had received two complaints of spotlighting before Ms Ives was shot, and two since.
In other cases this year, a hunter was convicted and fined for illegally spotlighting near Opotiki, while another hunter allegedly fired a crossbow at a possum in a campsite where children were sleeping in Kaimai Mamaku Forest Park near Tauranga.
Tauranga Department of Conservation principal compliance officer Antoni Twyford told the court that without a "significant and sustained" joint agency compliance and education effort across the country, spotlighting in banned areas was likely to continue.
"While there is no question that the majority of recreational hunters do so safely and in accordance with the law, there remains a significant number of people who regard meat hunting as a traditional right."
Dr Bain reserved his decision, but indicated it would include his concerns about the practice of spotlighting and the difference in the way the four men were charged.
