Mallards, Maimais and the Farm Accounts

Around this time of year, many farmers start thinking about one thing: duck shooting season. The maimai gets checked, shells are stocked up, and the group chat starts buzzing about who’s bringing the bacon and eggs for opening morning.

3/14/20263 min read

Not long after that, someone usually asks the inevitable question: “Can I put it through the farm?”

It’s a fair question, and like most good accounting questions, the answer is: it depends.

For a lot of people, duck shooting is simply a recreational activity. It’s a sporting tradition, a social event, and for many rural communities, one of the highlights of the year. In those situations, the costs are personal. A licence, shells, decoys, fuel, and the opening morning breakfast generally sit firmly in the “fun weekend” category rather than the farm accounts.

For farmers, however, things can sometimes look a little different.

Anyone who has watched ducks and geese land on a freshly sown paddock knows they can do real damage in a surprisingly short time. Newly sown grass and crops can quickly become a buffet. In fact, it’s often said that a few paradise ducks can eat as much pasture as a sheep in a day. When large numbers of birds move in, they can create genuine problems for a farming operation. That’s where the grey area begins.

Unlike rabbits or possums, ducks are classified as game birds in New Zealand. That means they cannot simply be culled year-round as pests. Their hunting is limited to a short legal season each year. Because of that restriction, duck shooting season may be one of the only opportunities farmers have to legally reduce bird numbers on their own land.

So, the real question isn’t whether you went duck shooting, it’s why.

If the main reason was to enjoy the sport, catch up with friends, and maybe bring home a few birds, then the costs are likely personal. But if the activity genuinely forms part of managing bird numbers to protect crops or pasture, there likely an argument that some of the costs relate to pest control. That doesn’t mean every duck shooting expense automatically becomes deductible just because it happened on a farm but some likely will be.

Take firearms, for example. A shotgun, if costing over $1,000, is a capital item, so it would normally need to be capitalised rather than claimed immediately. Its business-use percentage would then depend on how much it is actually used for pest control during the year. Many farmers use the same firearm for rabbits, hares, possums, or other pests outside of duck season, which can strengthen the business-use argument.

Ammunition is similar. It is often bought in bulk and may be used across a range of pest control activities on the farm. In those cases, some business use may be reasonable. On the other hand, equipment that clearly belongs to the sporting side of duck shooting: decoys, the TV in the mai mai and that labrador’s camo wetsuit can be a bit harder to justify. The taxpayer has the responsibility of proving deductibility.

Game bird licences are another area where caution is needed. For most people they will simply be a personal cost associated with participating in the season. Even for farmers dealing with bird pressure, the licence itself may still sit more comfortably in the personal category, especially as occupiers of the land often do not need a license (see Property exemption, wildlife Act 1953 for further info).

At the end of the day, duck shooting season can be both things at once. For some it’s a recreational tradition, for others it’s a chance to manage birds that are affecting pasture or crops. Regardless, duck shooting season will still arrive every May whether it’s claimed in the accounts or not. And let’s be honest, a good morning on the pond is worth it either way!