A man found duck hunting in a wildlife reserve has been arrested.

A string of hunting accidents is proof New Zealand's firearms laws need to be reviewed, a leading gun control advocate says.

'Some muppet has failed to determine his background,' says the Dunedin man who believes a hunter put a stray bullet in his deck.

The duck shooting season has claimed its first hunting injury.

'I've always been a shooter,' the 44-year-old said as she prepared to return to the family's shooting spot on a dammed pond at Maraekakaho today.

About 40,000 hunters will be heading to huts, ponds and rivers from tomorrow as duck shooting season begins.

A man who died after the ute he was driving in rural North Canterbury rolled and crushed him yesterday morning has been named.

A 56-year-old Tuatapere man has been charged in connection with a fatal hunting shooting in Southland earlier this month.

Two Hawke's Bay men are facing charges of unlawful hunting and are likely to be among the first to face tough new penalties which were introduced last November.

Search teams have this morning located a hunter who had been reported missing in Te Urewera National Park.

The year's busiest hunting season has been marred by a "disappointing'' run of four serious incidents in the first week.

A 22-year-old Hamilton man with a gunshot wound in his chest lay on the ground of a Bay of Plenty forest for four hours while his father gave him first aid and his brother ran for help.

A Japanese whaling ship is reported to have tailed an anti-whaling ship into waters off Otago against the wishes of the NZ Govt, which labelled the move 'disrespectful'.

The Government should strongly censure Japan after one of its whaling vessels entered New Zealand's waters, the Green Party says.

Washington and Tokyo have been drawn into an unexpected diplomatic spat over the annual slaughter of dolphins in Taiji.

A kiwi which was savaged by a dog near Coromandel has been euthanised at Auckland Zoo.

Two hunters and a farmer investigating the sound of a rifle shot found a poacher hiding, cuddled up to a dead deer near Bruce Bay early yesterday.

Gun in hand, Kiwi millionaire Mark Gunton stands proudly over the corpse of a fallen African elephant.

A new Game Animal Council is to be set up to take a leading role in the management of game animals - deer, tahr, chamois and wild pigs.

A hunter has described how he and a mate spent an icy night in the bush huddled with their dogs for warmth after losing their way back to their ute.

A late-night walk in the countryside by two Wairarapa men and their dogs turned into the "hunt of a lifetime" last weekend after they stumbled across and captured a mammoth wild boar in the bush.