The branch was formed in 1970, and incorporated on 2 September that year. Queenstown being Queenstown, our membership has always been a real mix — Kiwis born and bred alongside "new" Kiwis from the UK, the US, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, Australia, the Czech Republic, India and further afield, all drawn together by hunting and the outdoors.
Over those years the branch has taken on two back-country huts and kept them maintained — the Mid Greenstone in 2004 and the Upper Caples in 2014. We started a trap line in the Steele Creek valley in 2008, became a trial site for AI trap technology in 2022, and were the first group approved to run AI traps on public conservation land.
We've run the HUNTS course every year, put hundreds of volunteer hours into other people's huts — Kay Creek, Upper Spey, Freeman Burn — and built a working relationship with the local Department of Conservation. We're a club, not a company. Everything here is done by members giving their time.
There are as many reasons to be part of it as there are members: new to the area, wanting to know where to hunt, after a hunting buddy, wanting to learn, or just wanting to put something back into the country we all use.