1948 – 2025
Dr Chaz Forsyth
Chaz Forsyth was an NZDA Life Member, COLFO executive member, teacher, researcher, hunter, and tireless advocate for the responsible ownership of firearms in New Zealand. He passed away on 20 January 2025, aged 76. He had been managing illness through the preceding year with the same quiet resolve he brought to everything: business as usual, still attending meetings, still showing up.
Born in North Otago in 1948, Chaz began his career as a civil engineer before retraining as a workshop teacher at Balmacewen Intermediate, a role he held for twenty years. In retirement he returned to the University of Otago full-time, completing qualifications in economics, physical geography, firearms, and range consultancy, before earning a PhD in human geography in 2023 with a thesis on firearms in the New Zealand community. He accepted the achievement with a humble grin: he was now, he told anyone who’d listen, a “Doctor Bastard.”
A prolific writer of well-balanced submissions and a source of what those around him called infinite knowledge, Chaz gave decades to the NZDA and COLFO as a researcher, range consultant, and firearms safety instructor who trained hundreds of new licence applicants at the Dunedin police station across many years of voluntary evenings. Former NZDA president Bill O’Leary, who knew him for more than forty years, remembered a man with a “brilliant mind” whose analysis of firearm incidents was widely relied upon, and whose interest in range design, rooted in his original drafting trade, shaped clubs like ours in lasting ways.
His guidance and advice were invaluable, and his stories, laced with hard-won wisdom on hunting and politics, were shared generously with members of all ages. His final message, delivered through his daughter Bridget in his last days, was two words: “Keep smiling.” A keen mountaineer, avid hunter, and devoted friend of this club, the range that carries his name is a fitting tribute to a man who gave so much to it.
