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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 10 (January 1, 1936)

The Girl Gunner

The Girl Gunner.

Those pioneer daughters could shoot, for one thing. Their brothers had schooled them well with shotgun and rifle. So, like many other settlers' wives and daughters, they often kept the home pot replenished with bush food. “In the good old days, when the wood pigeon was so numerous,” she writes, “a sister and I would go out shooting them. With our brothers, we would make an early start on horseback, reaching the feeding ground about sunrise. The birds sleep in the middle of the day. One day as we were having our lunch there was a movement in the trees overhead and some ripe berries fell. My sister fired into the foliage and down came a pair of fine blue wattled crows. Then, towards sunset, the pigeons began their evening meal, and we would have great sport with our four guns, muzzleloaders at that. With a heavily laden packhorse we would reach home soon after dark.”

Again, a story of survey camp life where Feilding is now:-

“On one occasion we took with us a young Englishman to shoot wild pigeon. I had a beautiful Frankfort rifle, and my bag was twenty-one birds. My fellow sportsmen were not so lucky, as they got only a half-dozen between them. There must have been something amiss with their guns!”

But the pot once supplied, the Mair girls were mèrciful to the bush birds. They kept many of them as pets at various times, and I have read no more interesting little tales of the birds and their habits than those contained in the annals of this old New Zealand family.