John Barrie Crump MBE (15 May 1935 – 3 July 1996) was a New Zealand author of semi-autobiographical comic novels based on his image as a rugged outdoors man.

[1] Crump's 1986 work Wild Pork and Watercress was adapted into the 2016 Taika Waititi film Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

[1][4][5] Crump worked for many years as a government deer-culler in areas of New Zealand native forest (termed "the bush").

This novel became one of the most popular in New Zealand history, and Crump's success continued with Hang on a Minute Mate (1961), One of Us (1962), There and Back (1963), Gulf (1964), A Good Keen Girl (1970), Bastards I Have Met (1971), and others, which capitalized on the appeal of his good-natured itinerant self-sufficient characters and an idiomatic "blokey" writing style that he developed after his first book.

In 1969, five children drowned after driving a [Land rover]car into Lake Matahina at a camp that Crump helped to run.

[6] Crump travelled throughout Australia (where he hunted crocodiles for two years), Europe, Turkey, and India, the result of which was his conversion to the Baháʼí Faith by 1982.

[9] Towards the end of his life his literary style changed as he wrote children's stories featuring characters he created; vis the Pungapeople.

Crump was also well known for appearing in a series of acclaimed New Zealand television advertisements for Toyota's four-wheel drive Hilux utes, which relied on his image as a stalwart "bushman".

Crump was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal in 1990,[10] and was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1994 New Year Honours, for services to literature and the community.

[13] Posthumously, Crump was accused by ex-wife Fleur Adcock of regularly engaging in violence against herself and his subsequent wives, describing him as a "sadist.