The Ministry of Primary Industries have released guidelines for how to cook and eat wild game birds.

MPI’s general advice is to follow the 4Cs – clean, cook, cover, chill to ensure that the meat is prepared, cooked and stored correctly to reduce the risks of food-borne illnesses. 

However, they also note that "it is illegal to sell or trade recreational catch."

Any wild game that is found already dead is not safe to eat as there is no way of knowing how the animal died (e.g. the animal may have been sick) or how long it has been dead.

With all that in mind, here is Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand's advice on how to cook a kereru. 

Recipe for kereru

1. Kereru feast on yummy fruits like berries, guava and plums most of the year, making them tasty.
2. Avoid hunting kereru during the winter months. They eat kowhai leaves when food becomes scarce, and their flesh develops a bitter taste.
3. Pluck and clean the kereru before cooking it throughout.
4. Preserve the kereru in the bird’s fat, in containers like bull kelp bladders, totara bark baskets or gourds.

Why kereru shouldn’t be eaten

1. They only breed when there’s plenty of fruit around, so they breed quite slowly.
2. Possums and rats are competing for the same food, which makes it harder for them to survive and reproduce.
3. Cats often feed on them on low plants, and rats and stoats take their eggs and chicks from their nests.
4. Kereru are protected, though some people ignore their protection status and hunt them anyway.

MORE: Tariana Turia defends eating kereru on special occasions 

Note - Newstalk ZB does not endorse the hunting of kereru.