Al Pacino's Scarface notwithstanding, butchery and cinematography rarely go hand in hand, yet the New Zealand Food Safety Authority might be on to a winner with its latest release, a DVD that explores carcasses rather than corpses.
Since 2000, there has been a fourfold increase in the number of people getting new firearms licences in Dunedin.
According to police, the New Zealand Deerstalkers' Association and others involved in the sport, that rise has been largely driven by a growth in recreational hunting.
In a climate of rising food prices, the prospect of harvesting wild game makes sense to those wishing to combine exercise with the occasional adrenaline rush.
Of course, the activity comes with a dash of danger.
Shooting accidents are the stuff of headlines and heartache, yet there are less obvious risks, too.
On Monday, the New Zealand Food Safety Authority releases Wild Food Safety, a DVD com-prising three 10-minute segments aimed at minimising the risks involved in consuming deer, pig, duck or shellfish.
The star of the show is Darran Meates, from Stokes Valley, near Wellington.
The 35-year-old, who specialises in processing game meat for hunters, says he has noticed a rise in the number of people seeking their own food in the past couple of years.
"I put it down to the tough economic times. You look at the price of meat in the supermarket. It is also that healthy lifestyle - you're getting out in the hills."
Going by the name "The Game Butcher", he is also adept at dissecting myths.
Hunting may be healthy exercise, but it can have some unhealthy side-effects, he says. "I write a lot of articles in a lot of hunting magazines on that sort of thing. There are a lot of myths. People get it wrong.
"The English say you've got to hang a deer for a week before you cut it up, but it goes off in this country because it is a different climate.
"On the DVD we go out and shoot a deer and I gut it properly. We go though all that, right down to packing it into your freezer."
Mr Meates (pronounced "mates") stresses the importance of gutting game immediately and removing any soft connective tissue, which can turn surrounding meat "off".
And don't hose out a carcass as that just spreads any bacteria.
A keen hunter who has a trophy room in his butcher's shop, Mr Meates has concentrated on shooting pigs since his teens, though he has also killed "a lot of deer".
He spent a year in Gore about 10 years ago and enjoyed hunting pigs in the area, including the Blue Mountains.
"That's why I moved down there; I went pig-hunting everywhere," he enthuses.
The only parts of a pig he doesn't process are the trotters ("They're always dirty").
As for venison, he prefers back steaks, seared then cooked more slowly.
"It comes out beautifully," he says, almost salivating.
Gary Bowering, communications manager for the NZFSA, says the organisation's decision to produce a DVD follows a 2004 wild-food review aimed at addressing safety concerns surrounding the non-commercial sector.
"It is something that we've been looking at for quite a while. We knew there were some risks around collecting shellfish - in particular algal blooms and that sort of thing.
"We started a science-literature review to look at what work had been done. Since then we've been looking at what information people need and in what form, hence the idea of the DVD and booklets.
"You can take a little booklet in a pack when you go into the bush.
"One of the things we have heard people say is that in the old days dads would take their sons or daughters out hunting and they would be taught this.
"Nowadays, it's a bit of a sport and people learn as they go. They don't have that traditional knowledge."
Of those, 192 are from Dunedin.
The remainder are spread among Queenstown, Wanaka, Cromwell, Alexandra and East Otago.
In 2007, 486 licences were granted and in 2006, 406 new licences were issued throughout the region.
That compares with just 55 in Dunedin in 2000.
To obtain a firearms licence, an applicant must be aged 16 or older and attend a two-and-a-half hour Mountain Safety Council course.
At the end of the course, applicants must complete a test covering aspects of handling firearms.
The number of people attending mountain safety courses in Dunedin has increased from 55 in 2000 to 236 last year.
The largest yearly increase was between 2005 and 2006, when 89 more licences were issued.
Ms Calder says the number attending the Dunedin courses, held every six weeks, remained "consistent" at between 30-40.
Trevor Dyke, media spokesman for the New Zealand Deerstalkers' Association, says members of his organisation have also noticed a growing trend.
"There are definitely more people out there gathering and harvesting wild game for the table over the last couple of years . . .
There would be venison and pig, stuff like that.' Duck, too, is on the menu.
Cliff Halford, a Fish and Game New Zealand field officer who covers the Cromwell-Wanaka area, believes there is more interest in game birds, though he says game-bird licence numbers have remained static.
"One thing we have found is people are enjoying getting game. There are a lot of people, a lot of younger guys coming into the scene, who have found ducks are nice to eat. I think it is a reasonably cheap form of recreation: they require a firearm and a duck-shooting licence and that is it.
"I think deer shooting goes hand in hand with game-bird hunting. There are a lot more deer out there than in past years. I think there is just more interest in general."
The relative cheapness of equipment - from firearms to clothing, even more realistic bird decoys - is another attraction, Mr Halford says, adding hunters are also car-pooling to reduce costs.
Scott Liddell, of Alexandra, is looking to recoup some of the cost of the $500 second-hand shotgun he bought a year ago by making some rabbit-fur gloves for him and his family members.
Perhaps they'll be reward for the patience of wife Vicki who, for six weeks, has had to walk around a brine-filled plastic rubbish bin sitting in a corner of the kitchen.
"I found this recipe for rabbit tanning," the former policeman turned ACC case manager recalls.
"I was walking to work one day with these flash gloves and they were just useless so I thought the next time I shoot some rabbits, I'll try skinning them.
"I went on the Internet and found a recipe for tanning rabbit. It's going a bit slower than I thought it would be. The hard bit is getting the membrane off the skin - it's like stripping really old wallpaper."
Mr Liddell (35) won a firearms trophy during his police training, yet he uses a semi-automatic shotgun to hunt rabbits.
In his defence, he says the targets at Police College are "stationary and bigger . . . they weren't rabbit-shaped".
He says a box of 25 shotgun shells costs about $12.
"I go through a couple of boxes a night . . . for about 10 rabbits."
He pauses, attempting to work out a cost-benefit analysis.
Expenditure aside, getting out into Central Otago's hills is "great fun", Mr Liddell says.
"You take your gun and go for a walk and for three or four hours you're wandering along in this amazing scenery, then a rabbit will pop up; you'll take a shot and miss, or hit it . . . It's like going for a walk but with perks."
When Scott Graham started hunting more than 20 years ago, he mainly shot small game, rabbits mostly.
Now the 36-year-old Alexandra man prefers much bigger targets, deer in particular.
Being based in Central Otago means Mr Graham doesn't have to roam too far for venison steaks, one of his favourite meals.
"In winter we generally do the Blue Mountains, which we ballot for. In summer and around Easter we'll do the hills around Central Otago, the conservation areas and tussock areas like around the Old Man Range and Hawkduns.
"It's really good exercise. That's probably one of the most enjoyable parts of it. You get out and get away from the rat race, sniff a bit of fresh air.
"It's not just a walk; it's a bit of a challenge with the potential for some great excitement."
Mr Graham chooses to shoot with people he knows.
He is well aware of the dangers a .270-calibre rifle holds.
"They are not forgiving at all. If you were shot by, say, a .270 or a .303 . . . I often wonder how people survive being shot by those rifles. There is an element of risk. You've really got to be aware where you are shooting and where your mate is.
"It's not so bad in the tussock country, but in the bush there is certainly a risk, particularly in the roar when things are a little bit more exciting.
"You tend to have the guys you go with regularly, people you can trust."
