When hunter Murray Thomas ventured to New Caledonia more than 40 years ago, it was not sun, sea and sand in his sights.
"New Caledonia traditionally grows the biggest rusa deer in the world, so the antlers are well sought after," he said.
It was the first of many trips to the French territory for Mr Thomas, who spent 37 years leading guided hunting tours through New Caledonia's rural terrain.
He felt at home among Indigenous Kanak people, who like him, loved to hunt and used it to make a living.
"It's almost to the point where just about everybody there hunts, so there are a lot of guns," he said.
But in recent decades, the much-beloved pastime has had an unintended consequence.
Firearms have multiplied quickly, with some estimates placing New Caledonia second to the US in gun ownership per household.
Experts have long feared the oversupply was not being driven just by hunting, but by civil unrest between Indigenous Kanak people seeking independence from France, and New Caledonians of European descent.
The fears grew urgent when deadly riots, sparked by voting reforms, claimed 13 lives and caused about 13,000 people to flee the territory.
Most armed place in the Pacific
Guns have long been a way of life in New Caledonia.
Wild rusa deer are an easy source of venison, and they need to be culled regularly to preserve native plants and vegetation.
However, since firearm reforms more than a decade ago, many New Caledonians have been stockpiling hunting rifles and shotguns.
Restrictions were lifted in 2011, letting people purchase an unlimited number of weapons to make hunting easier.
Sales tripled.
According to 2022 data from the High Commission of New Caledonia, there were 64,000 registered privately-owned weapons and somewhere between 64,000 and 128,000 additional unregistered weapons.
A 2016 study from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime cited similar figures, showing there could be as many as between 100,000 and 150,000 privately-owned guns in the territory.
That works out to be an average rate of 48 per 100 people, and makes New Caledonia the most armed place in the Pacific by a country mile.
Figures by comparison showed Papua New Guinea only contained 71,000 firearms — a modest sum considering its population of about 10 million.
In a 2013 petition to the French government, the Caledonia-based think tank Centre for a Common Destiny said: "If New Caledonia were a sovereign state, it would be the second most armed country in the world behind the US."
More worryingly, the 2016 study cites anecdotal reports which attribute the stockpiling to concerns over civil unrest.
Stockpiling for unrest
Patrick Laubreaux witnessed as much during last year's deadly riots in Noumea, where gunshots could be heard just outside his home.
"A policeman was shot dead a few yards from where I live. We could hear the gunshots all the time," he said.
Mr Laubreaux is a lawyer who lives just outside the capital Nouméa.
Having hunted in his younger years, he knows a hunting rifle when he sees one.
However, he said some of the weapons being used in New Caledonia's riots last year were not designed to hunt animals.
"They were specially prepared for this sort of activity and that is distressing," he told the ABC.
According to Anna Powles, a senior lecturer at the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at New Zealand's Massey University, the threat of conflict has been one of the key drivers of gun ownership in New Caledonia.
"Weapons certainly contributed to the violence in 2024 and were responsible for a number of deaths," she said.
Historical accounts also suggest stockpiling has occurred in Indigenous and non-Indigenous sections of the community.
Adrian Muckle, a senior lecturer and New Caledonia historian at Victoria University of Wellington, said large rates of stockpiling took place among French descendant communities in urban areas during the civil war period in the 1980s.
"Some of the worst acts of violence during that period involved the use of weapons by descendants of French settlers against Kanak people," he said.
A 2021 survey from the Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies of New Caledonia backs up that claim, saying concerns about safety and political insecurity were highest in Nouméa, where non-Kanak residents made up the majority of the population.
"We saw during the insurrection last year that it was a urban phenomenon," Mr Muckle said.
"I think that fear exists on both sides but it is especially evident in the settler communities."
Meanwhile the French government, which holds overarching authority over firearms legislation in New Caledonia, has not been able to put a lid on the issue.
New Caledonia's local administration also plays a role in firearm regulation, according to Adjunct Associate Professor Philip Alpers, a gun expert from the University of Sydney.
The ABC approached the New Caledonian government for comment.
Despair, sadness and bankruptcies
This week marks 12 months since the riots began after voting reforms were proposed aiming to give voting rights to French settlers who had lived in New Caledonia for 10 years.
The reforms angered pro-independence groups, fearing they would dilute the votes of Kanaks who made up about 40 per cent of the population.
[YouTube New Caledonia explainer]Reforms were later suspended, but the damage had been done, with president of the New Caledonia Chamber of Commerce and Industry, David Guyenne, saying economic conditions one year on from the riots were worse than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We lost 12,000 jobs and 13,000 people left the country, so the economic system is shaken in every part of its model," he said.
Among the hundreds of businesses lost was Mr Guyenne's shopping centre, which was burnt down on the second day of the riots.
Like many business owners, he is still waiting for insurance to fund a rebuild.
"The past 12 months has been full of despair, sadness and bankruptcies," he said.
"We are trying to change that mindset because we cannot stay in this state forever."
However, the road to a crucial new agreement between pro-independence and anti-independence parties remains unclear.
Last week, formal negotiations to forge a new political agreement around New Caledonia's future fell apart.
France's Overseas Minister Manuel Valls had been holding preliminary roundtable talks with pro- and anti-dependence groups since February, but said no agreement could be reached.
The issue of electoral reforms remains unresolved.
With another local election set for November, Mr Muckle said the political and social conditions that sparked the riots 12 months ago remained.
"The level of insecurity and instability is probably as high as ever and there's some big question marks not over what happens over the next few months," he said.
