Fraught with Danger

An early working life hunting deer in the mountains of Southern Fiordland for Doc Sutherland led on to crayfishing around the south coast before he gained his ultimate dream goal of a helicopter pilot’s licence that enabled him to extend the deer hunting further afield.

Deer hunting for meat was overtaken in the 1970s by the live capture of these animals but when this work largely ceased in the mid-1980s, Doc turned to some commercial flying work before he had the chance to use his live capture skills in the USA and Canada where the targets species were as varied as the wide expanses of that vast area of the world.

Capturing to tag, take samples and measurements then often to fit GPS collars to animals that ranged from wolves and wolverines to bighorn sheep and donkeys to bears and moose, from muskox to caribou and elk. The work took him and his crew from the coast of California to north of the Arctic Circle. The work was interesting but always there were challenges to face – life was often ‘Fraught with Danger’.

Doc Sutherland

Soft cover • 240x170mm • 216 pages

Over 100 Colour and black & white illustrations