Thread: Trip Report

Hey Fellas,

Thought I'd post quick trip report as many of my learnings so far have been helped along from advice on here combined with boots on the ground.

Big week on the tools last week but was itching to escape down bush for a night for reset and to try to find where these deer are hiding in the cold.

Got down set up camp and did a bit of pre spring house keeping.

Left camp around 9 and decided to walk over into next stream/catchment where I'd seen a fair few animals last spring.
The frost down low made me think that the deer were pretty unlikely to be down at stream level so I left the track and started sidling around above the stream through the tawa.
Small pockets of sign but nothing to get to excited about with no real decent Tucker around.
I dropped down into a fork in the stream crossed over and found my way onto quite a decent but thick ridge.

I climbed slowly and skirted around the broken areas of supple jack and popped my head into the ferny guts that were catching the mid morning sun - still not alot of sign but I pushed on.

Worth noting that I am only just starting to get truly comfortable with navigating the thick pureora native by myself and every time I get back to the track efficiently is rewarding.

By this stage I'd been stalking for 2 hours and was starting to lose focus, I'd told my mate I should be back by 3 ish so decided to turn around at 1.

At 1 I was met by a wall of supple jack so decided it was time to start looping back around.

I noticed a almost benched track headed into a very steep gully so started following that, as I got further down more and more prints were joining the game trail and it was starting to look good, I got to a point where 3 trails converged and it looked like a small horse had recently been through so I deployed my new trail cam in a cunning location.

When I got over the next rise I thought I was guaranteed an animal... fresh sign absolutely everywhere in a broadleaf feed belt, hundreds of square meters of almost cattleyard type ground, I stalked through this stuff for 45 mins absolutely studying every bit trying to spot an animal but to no avail!

So to round out i learnt a great new spot and gained a little more confidence hunting solo, I managed to boost back to camp by my estimated return time.

Looking forward to heading back in to grab trail cam and knocking over a nice fat spring spiker!

Cheers.