Hunter
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Meet possum hunter Herta Jakle
Photograph by Simon Young
Herta Jakle reckons she’s shot 1300 possums in the past three years. She doesn’t like doing it—“I love living things,” she says—but it’s a matter of survival.
Herta and her husband Reto are both Swiss, and spent most of their holidays with grandparents in traditional alpine villages, where things were done the old way. “They did everything by themselves and by hand, including hoeing the ground for the potatoes,” says Herta.
It’s an approach the Jakles are now repeating on their own land, a 220 hectare sheep and beef farm on the Whakapirau Peninsula, on the northern Kaipara Harbour in Northland.
The couple keeps bees and sells honey at the local farmers’ market. Herta, famous in the area for her hand-made bread, also makes yoghurt and gouda cheese from milk their house cow produces. They grow nearly all their own fruit and vegetables—and that’s where the possums come in.
“When we moved here 20 years ago, the previous owners told us there were some citrus trees but they didn’t know what type because they never got any fruit,” says Herta. “It was the possums getting them.”
The Jakles have brought the population under control and, in the spirit of self-sufficiency, have turned what was a problem into a resource.
Herta plucks the possums and spins the fur with merino wool for the jerseys she and Reto love to knit. Any surplus she sells. “I’ve sold four kilos of hand-plucked fur and got more for it than Reto got for the entire wool clip.”
The possum meat is fed to the dogs. “When you’re living this sort of life, you learn not to waste anything,” Herta says, “even what other people consider to be a pest.”
