Jobs at DOC: Hunter, Kim Dawick

Every Monday Jobs at DOC will take you behind the scenes and into the jobs, the challenges, the highlights, and the personalities of the people who work at the Department of Conservation.

This week we look at DOC hunter, Kim Dawick:

At work…

Name: Kim Dawick

Position: Ranger – Hunter Supervisor, Waikato hunting team

What kind of things do you do in your role?

I work as part of a seven person hunting team. We hunt the remote back country culling goats; occasionally we also control pigs and deer if they are causing problems to other work programmes. We camp together in huts, tents or bivies for ten day runs and then we come out for a four day rest period.

My main role is to support the hunters. It’s a very strategic position where I try to have everything organised in advance, accommodating the individual needs of six others who will all be away from home for ten days without communication. If I’m doing my job properly I should have pre-empted all the possible contingencies and the hunters should think that I’ve done nothing at all. But if I’m failing in my role… all hell breaks loose and nothing goes to plan with seven people on “hurry up and wait’’ or worst case we are stuck in isolation with inadequate equipment.

In our team we collectively own 21 dogs. To maintain high standards we put all newly recruited dogs through a rigorous selection and training process, but unfortunately only about 20% of the dogs we trial ever eventuate into anything special. Those dogs in the upper percentile that do make the cut are worth their weight in gold and no dollar value can be put on them, as by this time at least two years of intensive hunting/training has been invested in them. Our dogs are part of the family and we really look after them—they are the real hunters and we just follow them around in the bush to take their glory.

What is the best part about your job?

We work off track, and go to places so remote that very few people will ever venture. I get to work with real characters; it takes a special person to be able to do this job. But one thing they all have in common is that they are all honest, tough people who measure the value of a person by their loyalty and the amount of work they can do in a day.

What is the hardest part about your job?

It’s a tough job, period.

Where we work there is no cell phone reception, no internet, no heaters, no electricity, no refrigeration, no toilets, no corner store or supermarkets. We have to be successful at our job or we would go hungry because we rely on getting some of the meat from the animals we hunt due to lack of refrigeration. Often the only way out is a pre-scheduled helicopter ride in ten days time. We walk for eight hours a day, all completely off track without a break for ten days in a row, and often team members will hunt in excess of 12-hour a days in the summer months and they never collect TOIL. But when it’s your passion it never quite feels like work (in the conventional way).

We spend ten days away from our families—this means that the hunters only see their wives and children for 26, four-day periods a year! Our families are stuck in the real world paying the bills, getting kids to school, working in their own jobs and dealing with all the issues of raising a family by themselves, while we are away completely out of contact. It’s very hard on relationships and many marriages don’t survive. But, given the high risk nature of hunting, we try to look after each other as much as we can and because of this there is a comradery amongst the hunters that I’ve never witnessed in any other career.

What led you to your role in DOC?

After high school I qualified as a mechanical engineer, then did a post graduate Diploma in Teaching. I worked for a couple of years in both roles however, I was never happy in these careers. Whilst on my OE (teaching in London) my wife stumbled onto a job advertising for a couple wanted for work in Scotland. We had no idea what we were getting into and just hoped that it wasn’t a dodgy b-grade porn film! It turned out that they needed a nanny and someone to work the ‘farm’. It was quite fortuitous—the ‘farm’ turned out to be a castle game estate that ran driven pheasant shoots and deer stalking. I worked in this role for about 18 months and decided that I could never go back to teaching or engineering again… I was hooked on hunting for a living, so it was a natural progression for me to end up securing a job within a DOC hunting team upon my return to New Zealand in 2004.

What was the highlight of your month just gone?

This month I’ve been doing my planning for the year ahead, organising logistics, landowner permissions and putting out tenders for goat control. I wouldn’t call it an exciting month.

The rule of three…

Three loves

1. Family
2. Dogs
3. The ease at which we can experience so many interesting things in New Zealand

Three pet peeves

1. Laziness
2. Quitters 
3. Liars

Three foods

1. Banana Swiss Maid dairy food
2. Goody goody gumdrops ice cream
3. Meat

Three favourite places in New Zealand

1. Coromandel
2. Marlborough Sounds
3. Matawai

Favourite movie, album, book

1. Donnie Darko
2. Anything ‘’unplugged’’
3. More of a magazine reader than a novel reader… it suits my short attention span.

Deep and meaningful

What piece of advice would you tell your 18 year old self?

Relax, you’ll find a job that you enjoy doing.

Who or what inspires you and why?

People who stand up for what they truly believe in, even if it’s unpopular.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Umm tall and good looking? Oh you mean: an engineer, a pilot or a hunter… two out of three isn’t too bad eh?

And now, if you weren’t working at DOC, what would you want to be?

Stay at home dad? Although this is most likely a bit like hunting for a living… everyone wants to do it, until they actually try it.

If you could be any New Zealand native species for a day, what would you be and why?

As a goat hunter we tend to defend our honour a lot by denying any involvement between man and beast. However, if you want me to play this game I may as well be at the top of the food chain and choose to be a falcon. I guess it combines two out of three from that other question before about what I wanted to be when I grew up!

What piece of advice or message would you want to give to New Zealanders when it comes to conservation?

Get out there and do it. It’s a sad indictment, but I hardly ever meet New Zealanders in the bush. Probably 85% of the people I meet in the bush are tourists using our walking tracks, 5% would be New Zealand tramping clubs made up of senior citizens (good on you, you’re much tougher than our PS3 playing teenage couch potatoes) and 10% would be hunters. Pretty sad really that we pay for all these huts and walking tracks with our taxes and the average New Zealander doesn’t even know they exist, or choose to go there.