{"id":447690,"date":"2026-05-27T12:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/447690\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T12:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:06:11","slug":"two-youths-caught-by-police-after-illegal-stag-hunting-in-central-otago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/447690\/","title":{"rendered":"Two youths caught by police after illegal stag hunting in Central Otago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rGEveXCr\" style=\"display:none\">One of the youths was a firearms licence holder. This licence, as well as the firearms, were seized by police during the search warrant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rGEveXCr\" style=\"display:none\">Police also recovered antlers that were believed to have belonged to the two stags. These will be returned to the owner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rGEveXCr\" style=\"display:none\">A police spokesperson said they were pleased to have caught the offenders to hold them to account, but disappointed with unlawful hunting occurring in the first place.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rGEveXCr\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cUnfortunately, poaching and unlawful hunting continues to be an ongoing issue across the wider district,\u201d the spokesperson said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"rGEveXCr\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThese are not only for personal safety reasons but also for the flow-on effect from the damage caused to rural residents, farmers\u2019 properties and trophy hunting businesses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rGEveXCr\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cHunting without explicit permission from a landowner, farmer, or forestry manager is illegal. On public conservation land, a Department of Conservation permit is mandatory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"rGEveXCr\" style=\"display:none\">Police urged anybody who has been a victim of poaching to make a report to police via 105 or online. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the youths was a firearms licence holder. This licence, as well as the firearms, were seized&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,3595,9525,1853,32655,16484,78,6148,3375,19720,111,43,139,69,9629,384,675,1136,10512,5204,10117,228164,228165,210,1237,45082,3608,1533,4741,1079,678],"class_list":["post-447690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-by","tag-caught","tag-central","tag-hunting","tag-illegal","tag-in","tag-justice","tag-killed","tag-land","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-otago","tag-people","tag-police","tag-private","tag-prize","tag-process","tag-shot","tag-stag","tag-stags","tag-through","tag-two","tag-unlawful","tag-were","tag-will","tag-young","tag-youth","tag-youths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}