From hunting to boy racing, a new series The Regions from TVNZ’s Re: News shows what it’s like to grow up in small towns. Zoe Madden-Smith, who was born and raised in central Auckland, shares what she learnt from young people across the country.
I watch as Brodie Green pulls out a small scalpel from his bag and slices open the deer he shot just minutes ago.
Within moments he’s taken out the stomach and intestines and is showing us how to wear the deer as a backpack to get it off the ridge and back to his truck.
“First you just make a small incision in the leg so you can thread the other leg through,” he says, so casually it’s like he’s filming a sewing tutorial for YouTube.
Within a few more minutes he has the 60kg deer on his back – carrying almost exactly the same weight as himself. He charges up the hill and scales down a muddy, icy path.
All I was carrying was a camera, a clipboard and Brodie’s binoculars and I was grasping for any root or rock to hold as I went down.
Each time my foot slipped I wondered how on earth Brodie was doing this with a deer strapped to his back.
I stupidly had worn chelsea boots that day, which had almost no tread. Believe it or not, they were the most adventurous/waterproof shoes I owned.
As I slid down the hill, I realised what a bad decision this was.
I could hear Brodie’s friend Sammi Holland behind me repeatedly trying to explain that if I put my foot horizontal in the mud and walked down sideways I won’t slip.
By the time I finally got to the bottom Brodie was already hoisting the deer onto the front of his truck and within the hour it was hung up in a shed, completely skinned and ready for the freezer.
That day I learnt four things:
1. How to make a deer into a backpack (or that this was even a thing).
2. How deeply inadequate my survival skills are.
3. How I need to buy tramping shoes (which I since have).
4. And how much I have to learn from regional rangatahi.
Urban population
Just 50% of New Zealand’s population lives in the big six urban areas of Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton, Tauranga and Dunedin.
But the other 50% can often feel ignored, misunderstood and that the issues their communities face are neglected.
Re: News often gets messages and comments like “Auckland is not New Zealand!!”, reflecting the sentiment and frustration among young people when city issues are presented as universal.
As someone who has lived in central Auckland all my life, the stories of young people in the regions can feel distant.
The rural news that gets attention is so often centred around things like farming politics, water quality – and dare I say it, older people.
But what about what it’s like to be a 17-year-old who is going to high school for the first time after leaving Gloriavale?
Or how does it feel to be a teenager living in a town that only has 30 people?
We travelled around the country to find stories from young people we don’t hear about enough.
We hung out with the self-proclaimed car bogans of Invercargill, saw what life is like for a teen on Stewart Island, and met the Hokianga rangatahi who have surf classes at school.
When we first pitched the series to NZ On Air we talked about how telling rural stories will create understanding between regional and urban communities that can so often be pitted against each other.
And I can say this understanding happened for me.
Like many city slickers, guns have never been part of my life. I genuinely think the first proper gunshot I heard was when we went deer hunting with Brodie in Canterbury.
Bombarded with horror stories about gun violence and then having no connection to the experience of hunting, I’ve always seen guns as an avoidable evil that the world would be a better place without.
While I won’t say one trip hunting turned me into a gun lover, it did make me understand the necessity of them for people like Brodie.
Here I am whinging about how much supermarkets are ripping me off each week, and there Brodie is hunting his meat and only going to the supermarket every few months to bulk buy supplies.
“Some butchery sessions we do, we can do over $1,000 worth of venison mince, which might last a couple of months,” he says.
But more than this, what I took from meeting Brodie was how much hunting is intertwined with his mental health.
When Brodie went through depression, hunting was the thing that got him outside. It got him moving. It got him fed and even put a roof over his head as a taxidermist. He says it gave him purpose when life stopped making sense.
“Hunting for me, it is more than just meat. It’s more than just a hobby. It’s more or less my way of life,” he says.
The Regions made me check my city-ness when it came to things like hunting and guns and hear from the people who rely on these things to survive – whether it’s for food or purpose.
The Regions is a docuseries that gives a snapshot of the lives of regional rangatahi in Aotearoa and the issues that matter to them.
Watch the series now on TVNZ+ and YouTube.
Made with the support of NZ On Air.
