Hunting

As a young man, Manuel Dunn carried his butcher’s knife while out hunting pigeons. Occasionally, he would carve his initials into trees on his route, sometimes adding an arrow pointing in the direction the pigeons preferred to congregate. From his own trips in the bush, Charlie came to know the trees that marked his father’s path. Similar to Manuel, Charlie’s understanding of the bush can be measured through food.

“My mom’s brother used to be the ranger here for years. He was a bushman,” Charlie said, referring to Warawara. “He showed me how to eat worms if it came to the worst, ground worms. Huhu bugs. I’ve eaten grub worms just to try them. Roast them, put them on the fire, or eat them raw, open them up and squeeze all the inside out of them– which is all mud and dirt. Huhu bugs, they may be called silkworms, they’re white. You find them in rotten logs. You break open the logs and you’ll find them. They are the size of cicadas,” he said, holding up his fingers to approximate their size. “I haven’t eaten them raw to tell you the truth, but I’ve eaten them cooked. My dad used to eat them raw, but cooked they are beautiful. They taste like cashew nuts, when you roast them. They are beautiful, it’s just the look of them that puts people off. Like a big maggot, oily.”

Charlie has never been lost in the bush long enough to need to forage for his dinner, but he has had opportunities to test out the old ways of eating in the ngahere. While his grandfather worked out on the farm, he shared, “us kids used to take him his dinner and tea and he would break open an old log with all of these bugs in it and he’d cook them over the fireplace and we’d eat them. It was beautiful.”

Māori have always hunted pigeons in the bush, though shooting wild native fauna is illegal in New Zealand. Today, wild pigs and cattle (both introduced species that are quite a nuisance) are the usual catch for hunters, but if a wild pigeon flew past an alert bushman, it’d likely be shot down and whipped up for that evenings’ dinner.

The Kererū or New Zealand pigeon is an iconic animal endemic to New Zealand. The bird, also known as kūkū or kukupa in Northland, is relatively large, averaging 51cm in length, and has a green head and white breast. Kererū are recognized for their distinctive noisy wingbeats and hold status as the only remaining New Zealand fowl capable of swallowing large fruit, which makes them an important seed disperser for native trees as well as a tasty full-bird dinner. I’ve been told that wild pigeons make a very nice meal, especially when they’ve recently eaten nettle berry. The flavor of the bird has not been identified as anything more specific than “beautiful” to me so, having never consumed a cooked kererū, I trust that the flavor is unique to the native bird. According to Charlie Dunn, “the taste goes through the whole bird, and the smell, you walk inside and you just want to feed straight away from just the smell of it. Coke and fries got nothing on that.”

As Hugh and I nursed our second cups of tea, Charlie described how to prepare and eat kererū. “You don’t eat it with anything, you just boil it. Boiled with a bit of salt, that’s all. I know a lot of people back when we were kids they would roast it and all of the flesh would go hard and it sort of kills the taste. Boiling it doesn’t do that. They didn’t even time it, you know, they’d go ‘the water’s hot’ and throw it in. You would open it up and it was still bloody and they’d eat it like that, they wouldn’t even take the stuffing out of it. It’s the only bird that when it eats the fruit, the fruit goes straight through them, they don’t digest it into shit. The berries go straight through the wild pigeons so you cook it with the innards still in them and all the fruit is still in there, and that taste just goes through the whole bird. It’s just amazing. I’m sure you guys would eat it if you smelt it. You’ve just got to smell it. That’s why there are no pigeons anymore. That’s why they are protected. Because everybody, the Māori and the white man, they all eat them. They aren’t safe from anybody, the wild pigeons. You know, the pigeon in town, they look just the same but they digest their food. But they are beautiful to eat,” he concluded, his mouth watering.

Since it is illegal to eat New Zealand natives, the wild pigeon dinner remains a covert celebration today. Though, dereliction hasn’t stopped Charlie from sneaking a taste of these illicit treasures. In fact, he has eaten a good chunk of the banned spectrum of New Zealand fare. “I’ve eaten the city pigeon,” he admitted. “I once had 24 here. I had a friend who lived in Whangārei who came here with them and gave them to me. I thought that he gave them to me to eat, which I did, they were fat and he had about 100 of them in Whangārei. One day, I came across him and he asked me how the pigeons were doing and so I told him and he started crying. He thought I would breed them. This guy was in his seventies or eighties. I was so ashamed of myself, but I thought he gave them to me for me to eat! You know, I reckoned they were old birds, fat birds, I brought them back and ate them. He wasn’t very happy. He passed away 8 or 9 years ago and I went down to his funeral. He’s got kids around the same age as me, and I told them what happened and they all cracked up. Also, I’ve eatean kiwi quite a few times. Pig dogs are a problem for kiwis. My uncle used to have a pig dog, but they had kiwis and so he had to get rid of the pig dog. He would get kiwis and he never ate them he would give them to me. They were beautiful, the kiwis, to eat. The only problem is that they are hard as old gum boots. You’ve got to really cook them to really get them good and soften them up. With the pigeons, you know, you just had to get the water warm and put the bird in and pull it out. With kiwis you’ve got to put it in a pot all night until the next day. Just slow cook it, it won’t soften up otherwise and it’ll taste like old gum boots,” he warned.