Kia ora from the Bush – Trapping, Tokens, and a Little Bit of Everything

Kia ora, my name’s Keeegs, and I live off-grid in the far north of Aotearoa New Zealand—tucked away in the bush, surrounded by birdsong, trees, and the occasional cheeky Kiwi.

I’ve been meaning to start writing on Hive for a while now, after hearing more and more about it from Splinterlands players. Life’s finally starting to settle down again after a whirlwind month—traveling to a friend’s wedding and then heading to Wellington to compete in the Flesh and Blood Nationals. (For those who don’t know, Flesh and Blood is an incredible competitive trading card game developed right here in NZ by some legendary veterans of the TCG industry. It’s taking the competitive world by storm, and I’ll definitely be sharing more about it in future posts.)

But today’s post isn’t about cards. This one’s about something much closer to home: pest trapping.

Why I Trap

Out here, I run a few trap lines targeting introduced pests, such as possums, mice, rats, and the real sly ones—stoats. The stoats are particularly brutal. They’re egg thieves and efficient predators, often snatching up our chicken and duck eggs before we even know they’re nesting. Figuring out how to outsmart them is a constant challenge.

Possums, while cute and endangered to some (sorry, Aussie friends), are a serious ecological problem in New Zealand. With no natural predators here, they thrive unchecked and cause major damage to our native flora and fauna. Same goes for mice and rats—none of them belong here, and all of them put our unique native species at risk.

I’ll be diving more into the techniques, tools, and stories from the traplines in future posts. For now, I just wanted to set the stage a bit—share where I’m coming from and what I’m about.

A Double Catch and an interesting way to support trappers

I recently restarted one of the lines and had something a bit unusual happen: a double catch in a single trap. Now, often we run two traps in a single box, a larger ones for rats and a smaller one for mice. But this wasn’t that—this was two mice caught at once in the same snap trap. It was a little reminder of how much pressure our native ecosystems are under... and also kind of a weird little motivator to start writing about this work.

That trap, by the way, came from a really cool project called Pest Free Token (PFT). They offer token incentives—rewards for people like me doing on-the-ground pest control—and help fund community projects aimed at ecological restoration. I reckon it's a brilliant initiative, especially since funding pest control at the local level is often a real struggle.

So yeah, shout out to PFT. If you're into supporting on-the-ground conservation work with real-world impact, definitely check them out.

I want to use these posts to educate people about pests in New Zealand, and keep a record of my catches, as well as potentially drumming up some support to help get more traps on the ground here or for other local projects.

In case anyone wants to send a little love my way to support the mahi, feel free to send it through to my hive, and here is my wallet 0x1b884A7E83350ae7deB9f7dd962d06C9A73b0Bf4

What’s Next?

This blog isn’t going to be just about trapping. I’ve got lots of threads I want to pull on—Splinterlands, Flesh and Blood, A game I've been working on for far too long, Earth Building, Off-Grid Living, maybe even some philosophy and reflections from life in the bush.

But for now, thanks for reading this first post. If you’ve got questions, thoughts, or just want to say kia ora, feel free to drop a comment below.

Ngā mihi nui,
Keegan