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August 10, 2024 14 mins

Gisborne-based trapper and hunter Sam Gibson is a bushman through and through as he reveals in his new book.

In his new book, Sam the Trap Man, Gibson shares stories of exploring the bush and hunting and surviving cold winter nights - and how life in the wilderness steered him out of trouble as a teenager.

He says his journey began after he was required to spend more time with his godfather in the Te Urewera forest.

"I found I really resonated with a lot of the bushmen that we came into contact with - I found my place in the bush and I haven't really looked back."

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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talk SEDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
This might be something that you don't know about me,
but I am a keen trapper.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm not afraid of a decomposing rat or possum. So
when I read about my next guest, I knew I
needed to get him on the show. Sam Gibson aka
Sam the Trapman, does it all, hunting, fishing, trapping and
adventuring a life in the bush, steering Sam out of
trouble as an unruly teenager. And Sam has written about
bush life in a new book. It's called Sam the Trapman.

(00:39):
And Sam Gibson joins me, now, how are you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Sam? Living the dream? Francesca, how are you.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Good to hear?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm good? Thank you. Where did your love of the
bush come from?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
I was? You know, I've got some pretty amazing parents.
My dad took me tramping a lot as a kid,
and my mother, she's a nurse who specializes in herbal medicine.
And my grandparents were both bushman and amen as well, hunting,
fishing and all that sort of thing. So right from
a really young age, we spent a lot of time

(01:14):
in the bourchet.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
But as a teenager that time became more meaningful for you,
didn't it, because it kind of did two things. One,
it kept you out of trouble and helped you find
your place in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Absolutely. I was a very gangly teenager that wasn't particularly
good at school, wasn't very good at sports. I really
struggled to find a direction or a place that suited
me in life. And for a while there I tried
to fit into the party scene pretty heavily. And then

(01:49):
my parents made a deal with my headmaster, and I
was really lucky. I went to Steiner School, so they
were very open minded, and they started seeing me into
Daweta to work alongside my godfather as a trapper. And
I felt that, you know, being six four, I could
carry a lot of traps. And I really found found
I resonated with a lot of the bushmen that we

(02:11):
came into contact with them, and found my face in
the bush and and haven't really looked back.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
That work as a trapper. You have worked on some
stunning but pretty tough places, haven't you. It's tough work.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
It's not for the faint hearted, that's for sure. There's
I've lived in some pretty cold and manky and horrible
conditions of black mold on the walls of hearts, and
condensation leaving your sleeping bag wet when you return to
the heart in the evening, and no fires in your hearts,
and snow and that sort of thing. Some of the

(02:46):
conditions in Fjordland were so bad that some of the
huts the mattresses were, we'd take our hunting knives and
would split them up the middle so that we could
tuck our sleeping bags inside the mattresses, just for an
extra layer of insulation. It was pretty cold for some
of us.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Some of us will know the areas that you worked
in because we've had much more pleasant experiences like walking
the Kepler Track. If you've done the Kepler Track, you
talk about working in rs burden places like that. So
it was what I enjoyed about. It was even though
I didn't quite have those some experiences, I could still
picture those landscapes.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
They're beautiful, aren't they. They're really incredible landscapes.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Do you think we can be predator free by twenty fifty.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
I think we could achieve anything as a nation if
we wanted to. It's just how much we choose to
resource it. I think if we really created university like
Bush Universities and really invested in our people and invested
in our tools, we could get there. But I'm not.
I think we've got other financial priorities at the moment.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
How did you beat the keyas from disrupting the trams?

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Kia are so incredible, aren't they? You know? Kia essentially
when we're in fjor them, we found that Kia were
able to bite through through the mesh on the ends
of our trap boxes, and they were very interested in
eating their eggs and the beat that were baiting our traps,
and so they had too a hole through that mesh
and and get themselves into the traps trap boxes and

(04:20):
steal the eggs and the meat. And we were quite
we were quite consented. We didn't want to be catching
kar as you can imagine, So we trialed using thicker mesh,
and we found out that Kia beats are actually really strong,
so they put through that too, and then we ended
up using a stainless steel end. But the Kia then

(04:41):
found out that they could chew through the tannelized wood,
and so they tuned around the screw and the top
of the trap box and pulled the screw out and
gotten through the top of the trap box, which was
which was a bit of a pain and so and
not good for the tannelized was probably not the best
diet for kir and so we used a really big

(05:04):
heap screw and that got them fulled. But the next
thing they did was they stood on well, they lay
on their backs and they pushed the trap box up
into the air with their feet, so the egg would
roll down out of the trap box, hit the end
of the trap box, crack, and their kit with their
classic would just turn up at the end of the

(05:24):
trap box and lick that broken egg up, and they
were very happy about that. So what we needed to
do was anchor that trap box into the background using
some metal steel reinforcing steel pegs, and that really got
them baffled. So it's been a bit of a journey
to keep Kia out of our trap boxes. But that's

(05:46):
what I really enjoy doing, is making sure our traps
are great at killing the creatures we're trying to kill
very humanely, and also offering the least amount of risk
to those amazing time species that we're trying.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
To pretend so much sort of lay but goes into
and man ours can go into trapping and things. Is
that the best sort of predator control method? Do you think?

Speaker 3 (06:16):
You know?

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Using people or.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
The thing I really like about using people is that
you know, when people interact with their ecosystems, they tend
to care about them. I think that there's a direct
correlation between the amount of time people spend in an
ecosystem and the quality of conservation outcome that we see.
So when people spend time in those ecosystems, they really

(06:41):
care about each creek, each river, each each you know.
I know our trappers. We run a big thirty thousand
hit their project up here on the East Coast called
the Eastern Field Link, and we've got over one hundred
active volunteers, and our volunteers know each pair of field
individually and they understand they know, oh, this is their
favorite rock and this is where they tend to feed

(07:03):
at this time of the day. And so I think
when you have that level of connection with an ecosystem,
you can't help but have really good conservation outcomes. I
think some of the methodologies that more cost effective. Let's say,
sometimes we miss an opportunity for our people to have

(07:26):
that lived experience with the landscape, and when people don't
have that connection, they tend to care less and tend
to look after it less. Well, if that makes.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Sense, absolutely, Sam. You also worked as a track cutter
for a while and as a tramper. I would like
to say thank you to all the track cuts out
there who do incredible jobs of keeping our tracks good
and good shape. How tough was that, oh, Ob.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Firstly, I'd like to say thank you right back at you.
I mean, goodness me. If it wasn't for trampers, I
wouldn't have had that job. And wow, it's pretty incredible,
pretty tough, to be honest. You're in rain, hail and
sunshine and cutting tracks with a scrubbar, and it's dusty
and rocky. But I think the lifestyle that comes along

(08:12):
with that is pretty amazing. All the fishing and hunting
and being able to be in our most remote places
every week for a long time is a pretty incredible experience. Really,
it's it's really grateful to have done it.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
You're right about the many amazing characters that you've worked alongside.
What kind of person looks for a life in the bush.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Oh, there's some odd bulls out there. Ah, there's some
real odd bulls out there. But you know, they're all
likable rogues in a way, you know, and I think
we all are to some degree. There's I think there's
a lot of people that don't necessarily where town's probably
less comfortable because of the social intricacies. Yeah, I think

(08:57):
you get some really interesting people that really care and
enjoy our wild places. But you definitely get some characters
that have some good stories on them. And I'm sitting
here trying not to like dob my mates, and a
yarn about them was the characters. But yeah, you definitely

(09:18):
get some pretty heard case, heartcase creatures out there. My uncle,
for example, he's a great man. He's living in a
tarp hole and camp treating possums at the moment, and
you know, he's living off not very much tucker at all,
and he's got some good philosophies he's coming up with
at the moment.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
You found your place in the bush, but there were
also moments where there wasn't enough to kind of keep
you going. You had a bout of depression in your
late twenties. What did you learn from that?

Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah, I've got a weird personality trait where my mental
health is quite heavily connected to how well I'm doing
at work, and that's very common possibly a and so
found I ended up in a job where that particular
conservation project, there were a lot of things that went

(10:07):
going particularly well, and they questioned my value system quite strongly.
And so that being the case, I started to really
fumble with my mental health and I didn't realize it
at the time. It started to really get me down,
and yeah, I went bush and I didn't realize it

(10:30):
had gotten as bad as it had gotten. And I
came to a realization one day as I was hunting
with my dog that I that might be the end
of the road for me. And that was a pretty
tough realization. It was only really my dog that saved
my life that day. So it's something that I think

(10:52):
many people in the real space and in the bush
particularly struggle with. And we don't have a culture talking
about these things. So that's why I wanted to include
it in the book. A little bit is that, you know,
that's something that I still do with once or twice
a year, I get a little bit down, and it's
something I've really got to manage. But I'm really lucky

(11:13):
now to have my children and I'm not going anywhere,
but you know, because of them, because they're just incredible,
incredible kids. And I think I wanted to speak a
little bit in the book about mental health and the
risk of having of struggling with mental health when you're
alone and isolated and bullsh of that.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Maxim Absolutely, what do you love about hunting? What's your
philosophy around it? You do speak in the book about
not being greedy.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
So I just love the ability to provide really high quality,
nutrient rich food for my family. And so to me,
hunting and freshing and harvesting vegetation out of the bushes,
I consider myself and making out chiropractitioner, you know, So

(12:05):
that ability to by delicious food from the bush for
my family is a is something I take great pride
and being able to read the ecosystem and see what
the ecosystem can afford to give us at that time.
And deer and pigs are definitely that at the moment.
So I really enjoy my hunting. I really enjoy being

(12:27):
able to provide kai fail far no aid.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
I was a little bit worried to somebody who you know,
you work at the bush and things and you were hunting.
How many times have you been shot at?

Speaker 3 (12:36):
Though? Yeah, that's that's been a real worry for I
think I'm potentially like either really unlucky or really lucky,
you know, like I have been. I've been shot at
four times, which on one hand is like very unlucky,
but the people pulling the trigger must have been a
terrible shot because I have not been hit four times

(12:57):
as well, which on the other hand makes me really lucky.
So yeah, I guess it comes with the territory, and
it's it's very much something that I'm aware of now
that I've got kids and I take much less risks.
But also I think it's something we're getting much better
at as a hunting fraternity. There's a lot of education
around that space as well. So yeah, but it's definitely scary. Eight.

(13:20):
It's one of the more freaky things I've ever had happened.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
For sure, because I do a bit of trail running
and sometimes end up in quite remote places. And I've
always said to my girlfriend, because she's worried about and
getting shot, I'm like, I don't know, we look at us.
We dress so we don't look anything. I've always said
to her it's not a problem. But clearly in some
places I won't go quite so remote as you though,
so I should be safe.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Hey.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Look, finally, what is the most stunning part of New Zealand?
Do you think?

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Oh that's a tough question. Goodness me. What's the most
stunning part of New Zealand?

Speaker 2 (13:50):
And who's your favorite child? Yeah, yeah, just get it.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, that's a big one too. The favorite part of
New Zealand. I've got a place in the while worker
that caught on a Falk's hut. That just feels good,
you know, the miss rolls through those valleys and the
steep cliffs and beautiful forests that I really enjoy. But
also sitting at the top of resolution island and hearing

(14:15):
a dawn chorus is pretty phenomenal. Not being able to
see another human or man made structure for as far
as the eye can see. That's seeing a storm rolling
off those southern oceans. That's a beautiful thing as well.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
Sam Gibson, thanks so much for your time this morning.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yea's been lovely to talk to you. Sam The Trap
Man is in stores this week.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudken, listen
live to news talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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