If you have hunted Australia, you are almost certainly familiar with animals that go by the name of scrub bulls. These are basically feral cattle. They do not have game status so they can be hunted pretty much at will.
Well, here is an interesting wrinkle on these animals. Seems there’s a little-known herd of them on the North Island of New Zealand, and from what correspondent Greg Morton says, they are more challenging and aggressive than one might expect. He writes:
“This small population of shorthorn scrub cattle is descended from domestic cattle abandoned in the early 20th Century by farmers who gave up trying to eke out an existence in the more remote parts of the country. Years later, most of these animals were rounded up and slaughtered, but some landowners decided to protect them. Outfitter Ray Potroz of Upclose Safaris (info@upclosesafaris.co.nz; www.upclosesafaris.co.nz) offers hunts for scrub bulls on a property in the Moeawatea Valley, which backs onto thousands of hectares of uninhabited forest, scrub and undulating terrain. The valley itself is a mixture of forest and open grassland clearings. In addition to wild cattle, the valley has fallow deer, wild goat and a few wild pigs. The fallow deer herd is in its infancy, but on a recent visit I saw over 50 young bucks in just two days, so things bode well for the future.....
