Today marks the start of a season enjoyed by tens of thousands of people around the country, and a season reviled by animal activists.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to be in their maimais and on wetlands this morning with a chance of a free-range dinner very high.

But every year, activist organisation SAFE puts out messages against duck shooting season, and opening weekend in particular.

SAFE campaigns manager Marianne Macdonald has concerns young children are being taught to shoot and kill, and doesn't believe that the majority of duck shooting is done to put food on the table.

"This is really primarily based on fun," she said. "It's really unacceptable that this sort of cruelty is going on in this day and age."

Macdonald believes it's inevitable that duck shooting will one day be banned in New Zealand.

"Thousands of birds are just left there to die a slow lingering death and its totally unacceptable, because this really is indiscriminate slaughter."

However, Don Rood of Fish and Game New Zealand insists that duck hunters people do an incredible job of nurturing wetlands, which are some of most endangered habitats in New Zealand.

More than 90 percent of wetlands have been lost to farm and city developments.

"When it's perfect opportunities and conditions [ducks] will breed more than normal and that's what they've done," he said. "Duck numbers are up around the country."

Rood says hunters pay money out of their own pockets every year to stop wetlands from going extinct and in the process protecting other species besides ducks, such as "native birds like the bitten and the fern bird, and other species that live in these environments."

Meanwhile, the Firearms Safety Council is hoping the hunts will be done in a safe and careful manner.

Interim council chair Joe Green is urging hunters to fire in a safe direction away from people and property, to remember to make sure guns aren't loaded when they're on the move, and to never consume alcohol.

"Don't touch the alcohol until the guns are unloaded and secured away where they're meant to be," he warned.

Green also points out that children must be supervised by a gun license holder and the child should never be shooting at the same time as the supervisor.

"What tends to happen is sometimes people think 'I'm shooting here as well and I can keep an eye on them'," Green explains. "But you have to be in a position to take physical control of the firearm."