Tim Wallis [1] was the man that pioneered aerial hunting and recovery of deer, back in the 60s and 70s. The whole history of the commercial deer industry in NZ is fascinating.

Originally, they'd use helicopters to drop hunters off on foot, who'd then shoot deer, collect them, and wait for pickup. Then they figured they may as well shoot them from the helicopter.

It's crazy stuff, they basically fly right through a valley, shooting all the deer they can with with an assault rifle. Swiss army surplus SiG rifles were very popular, because they ejected the spent cartridges downwards, reducing the risky of ejecting brass into the helicopter blades. They'd then fly back, and pick up all the carcasses, drop them off in a truck, and repeat. They were then butchered and exported.

In 1969, deer farming was made legal, so they switched from hunting to live deer recovery. They'd chase deer with a helicopter, and a bloke would literally jump out of the moving helicopter onto the deer, tackle it to the ground, and tie its legs up so they could lift it with the chopper. They eventually moved onto using net guns and tranquilliser guns as they were more effective.

Te Ara (the NZ encyclopedia) has a really good online writeup about it all [2].

Most of the pilots weren't Vietnam vets, as NZ didn't field helicopters in Vietnam. They were home-grown civilian pilots. The people down south are a special breed, the most foolhardy, tough people you'll ever meet. It will be sub-zero and snowing, and they'll still be wearing shorts. Nicest people you'll ever meet though, we fucked a wheel 4wd-ing up a river once, and the cocky just lent us a wheel and asked us to return it whenever, the bloke had never met us before and didn't ask for any sort of security at all.

As for Tim Wallis himself, the man's larger than life. He survived a helicopter crash in 1968 that broke his back (and escaped from hospital to go to the pub). He was an avid collector of old warbirds, owning several Spitfire, P-51 Mustangs, and Russian Polikarpovs and started the Warbirds over Wanaka airshow. He ended up crashing these several times, and unfortunately in 1996 had a crash on take-off that left him several injured and brain damaged.

Tragically, he lost two of his sons in 2018 to two separate helicopter crashes. Bush flying is incredibly dangerous, they say there are old pilots and there are brave pilots, but no old brave pilots. Some of the situations I've seen helicopter pilots flying in are just straight reckless. I've seen pilots with a slung load underneath, flying probably 50 feet above the ground, through winding river valleys with hillsides less than 100 feet away on each side. If they had any mechanical issues at all, they'd be dead.

Sadly this kind of "she'll be right" attitude is incredible common in New Zealand, it seems everyone knows at least one or two people who have died in aviation accidents. I knew a guy who passed away recently in a microlight crash (unknown circumstances), and he'd commonly drop down to 100 ft over land or water (which is illegal), often to buzz a friends house or boat. One time I was with him and we shot straight past another microlight (less than 500 ft, technically a near miss and very illegal) and did a barrel roll in front of them for a laugh. Were were at probably 1000 ft at the time, which is also under 3000 ft minimum for aerobatics. Over the course of the afternoon we probably managed to break at least half a dozen aviation laws, we almost landed on a close airfield (2 weeks after he copped a fine for doing the same) until I reminded him it was closed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wallis

[2] https://teara.govt.nz/en/deer-and-deer-farming