A 48-YEAR-old Danish tourist has been charged with careless use of a firearm causing injury following the accidental shooting of a young Wimborne farmer in New Zealand.

As reported in the Daily Echo, Mathew Purchase was shot in the head at close range during a rabbit hunting expedition in the South Waikato.

The 21-year-old former QE School student has had bullet, bone fragments and destroyed brain matter removed from his skull, but doctors at Waikato Hospital yesterday (FRI) still described the young man's condition as critical.

Mathew's older brother and younger sister also arrived in the country yesterday to join their parents at his bedside, where they have been keeping a vigil since they flew in earlier in the week.

"His father Ian says his son's condition has improved slightly over the past 24 hours and he was able to hold his mother's hand and wiggle his toes," said a spokesperson.

"He says his son has been handling guns since he was a small boy, but always with a religious emphasis on safety.

"They never expected anything like this to happen to him and he says the family is going through a raft of emotions."

Mathew, from the Old Farm, Lower Barnsley Farm in Wimborne, was in New Zealand on an agricultural exchange programme and had been working on a dairy farm.