David Buick at the New Zealand Shears in Te Kuiti in 2021, one of his last competition shears before his farm accident later in the year. Photo / SSNZ
David Buick at the New Zealand Shears in Te Kuiti in 2021, one of his last competition shears before his farm accident later in the year. Photo / SSNZ
Tararua District shearer David Buick, who suffered life-threatening injuries in a mishap on his farm near Pongaroa two years ago, has achieved official acclaim as a Master Shearer.
The honour was decided at the annual meeting of Shearing Sports New Zealand in Christchurch.
When he was told on Tuesday by wife Rebecca after a call from committee chairman Sir David Fagan, he was out on the lambing beat, something he’d wondered if he’d ever do again after being crushed in a ditch and buried up to the neck in October 2021.
“She said, ‘Aren’t you excited?’ I said I’m dumbfounded,” he told Hawke’s Bay Today.
He said when he was young he “looked up to and idolised” shearers on the list, which is still less than 70, and he couldn’t find the words to describe now being among them.
It had been six years since the last acclamation of a Master Shearer, that of England-based former Hawke’s Bay shearer Matt Smith in 2017.
Fagan, himself a Master Shearer, said the status is based on nomination, with guidelines on performance criteria, and needs the support of at least 80 per cent of voting delegates.
Buick first shore in competition almost 30 years ago, as a 16-year-old Smedley Station farm cadet, and he had 12 wins in lower grades, including an unequalled treble of wins in all three lower grades at Te Kuiti’s New Zealand Shears in 1997-2002, and the Golden Shears Intermediate title in Masterton in 1999.
In the Open class, he’s had more than 30 wins including the Australian crossbred (ewes) title in Warrnambool, Vic, in 2014 and 2015, the New Zealand lamb shearing title in Fairlie in 2018 and 2019, the NZ crossbred lambs finals in Winton in 2019, 2020 and 2021, the NZ fullwool title at Lumsden in 2021, and both the South Island and North Island Shearer of the Year series’ finals.
David Buick at Waipukurau, where he beat two World champions in winning the 2020 Central Hawke's Bay A and P Show title. Like both of them, he's now a Master Shearer. Photo / SSNZ
He’s also shorn 15 tests for New Zealand, in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, including in 2019 as a replacement at short notice and largely at his own expense flying to Wales, where he joined Smith to claim New Zealand’s first shearing series win in Wales since 2011, including a win over a team featuring then-new World champion Welsh shearer Richard Jones.
Buick has shorn in six Golden Shears Open finals, all won by Smith, with a best of runner-up in 2018.
Fagan said most in the shearing industry regarded it as a miracle when they saw Buick back on the shearing board late last summer.
Buick, who runs about 500ha, with 200 bulls, and a sheep flock with about 3500 lambs expected by mid-October, said that while he’s had to take a step back “the body is pretty good”, he plans to get to competitions with the family as he follows the performance of son Michael, and possibly daughter Gemma, and he’ll “probably chuck a handpiece in as well”, in case he feels like competing.
“I’ve been shearing the odd sheep,” he said. “It’s great for the mental health. Shearing has been a big part of our life.”
