Hi everyone,
For those of you that don’t know much about me, my name is Joshua. I live on the west coast of New Zealands South Island with my wife and 3 boys, Jack, Charlie and Sonny Jim
I spent my childhood years growing up in Napier south. Although I lived in the big smoke my brothers and I spent every spare moment playing on the city outskirts pedalling our BMX’s far and wide to go fishing at the wharf or rabbit hunting at the old winery.
I was a bit of a ratbag when I was a teenager and left home and school at the age of 14 to go work in the forestry and sheep shearing industry, as well as doing a heap of other odd jobs along the way.
I discovered white water rafting in 1996 and this led me to the West Coast, I instantly fell in love with the wild and rugged beauty of the place, and back then there were deer running round all over the shop and the amount of crystal clear rivers was staggering, as were the fishing and hunting opportunities.
There were possums in the bush back then as well so if a bloke ever ran short of a buck he could go bush for a few weeks and make enough dollars to gas the vehicle up and pay for food, beer and ammo.
In the winters I was working in different countries around the world rafting and spending the spring and autumn in the bush hunting deer and trapping possums.
I’m fairly settled in now and during the summer I own and operate a white water rafting company specialising in wilderness expedition trips.
Having a kid put the brakes on my international lifestyle so for the last 10 years I have been trapping possums over winter instead of gallivanting round in other countries.
A few of my mates in Canada wanted to know what this ‘possum plucking’ business was all about so I made a video for them. I kind of take my lifestyle for granted and didn’t really think that a lot of people are real interested in the stuff I get up to on a day to day basis, so I made a few more videos and its progressed from there.
In 2012 I decided to put a bit of effort into it and try make a buck out of it, the reason being there are bugger all possums left on the coast due to the tremendous amount of 1080 poison been thrown around by both the DOC and the AHB.
I hope you enjoy what I am doing and watch this space, good things are coming!
Cheers,
Joshua
