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Bad luck comes in threes they say
Scored an Aorangi Awarua permit (thanks 30late) and my cobber Shaun and I were off up Golden Crown ridge headed for Aranga, Mistake and Rockslide Bivs hoping for spring growth somewhere on Labour Weekend. We knew it would be a gamble and with further big trips planned for spring this was a test of fitness as much as anything and a chance to see some country we had wanted to see for some years.
4 hrs later we were at Aranga and 1 hr after that we lucked onto an incredibly skinny stag and spiker feeding on the Makaroro bush edge making the most of the brief easing of the westerly wind that had plagued Hawkes Bay for a month.
The deer were at 300 yards and it should have been a sitter. We both fired at the stag , were rewarded with two hard thumps from the 270 and 300wsm and the sight of the deer tipping over and flailing about in the air. However we then saw it get up and stumble off into the tall tussock and disappear.
Taking our dogs Finn and Gus over to the hit site we then searched for 3.5 hours for this deer for over a kilometer, only finding hair and chunks of meat with no blood to speak of. The two dogs were winding each other up jostling for top position on the find and not concentrating on the job at hand. So it was two sad hunters that walked back to Aranga with no venison aboard. Bad luck.
The next morning dawned claggy, cold and windy so we waited for the clag to lift and dropped down into Mistake Biv off a spur that was promising as our allotted two day permit had come.
Mistake Biv was certainly a mistake and a more forbidding place in bad weather would be hard to find anywhere. Swallow shit coated every surface and the overall malaise was not helped by myself arsing up into the creek headfirst and getting saturated, with a rifle that became full of water.
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While the gun dried out we mulled over our options.
We had only scouted the area through google earth and reality presented a different picture with the slips being devoid of real spring growth. So it was out of there and down to Rockslide biv via the Apias, seeing no deer but quite a few whio. I imagine it’s nice in the height of summer but in full wind it was rather average with some deep pools to wade.
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Rockslide has had a do up and the hut slip was the best slip I’d seen in the catchment.
A very nice place indeed.
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Lo and behold an emaciated looking hind poked its head out high on the hut slip as Shaun and I were sitting having a yarn outside. Sneaking around onto a better vantage point I had a crack at the deer while Shaun spotted for me, seeing the bullet go high and just miss her neck. I was aiming at the shoulder so I must have knocked the scope in my earlier fall. A second piece of bad luck.
I swore to Shaun that any further deer we saw were all his and I cursed myself for the easy miss.
Three trappers came down the creek and stayed with us for the night chattering away amongst themselves into the wee hours. They were good sorts so not wanting to wake them up, we waited until we heard them shuffling around then set off up Rockslide spur to Aranga trying to beat the severe gales forecasted for the Monday, covering some absolutely incredible country at the wrong time of year!
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We were not successful in seeing any more deer, and 3 hours later in howling wind we sat at Aranga, and a further 3 hours got us back to the car deerless but mostly content.
The next weekend Shaun had scored some access onto a local station for a morning, hoping for easy meat and he kindly invited me along. After combing likely looking country the only deer seen were dead ones from previous hunters but it was nice to be out somewhere new. Bad luck again!
The following weekend, my partner suggested I go for an evening hunt while she had other events on with our toddler. I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth so a slightly early knock off on the Friday had me in some likely Ruahine country close to home, hoping for a slip dwelling deer with young Finn in tow.
It was a stunning evening with my trusty 7mm08 popgun in hand and the smell of flowering rangiora and manuka hung in the air as I hiked up past a big side creek that I knew to hold animals.
It was a good spot to sit with the big creek singing a song as it poured out into the main river. The dog and I sat peacefully until half an hour before dark waiting for the wind to swing downstream. When the wing swung, the dog immediately started indicating well, so we shuffled upstream peering onto some handy slips.
There didn’t appear to be any activity on my slips I had staked out so I chose to follow the dog and see what happened. He took me up onto a bush terrace, moving very slowly on the wind.
Half an hour or so later with minimal light left I was perched at the bottom of another slip having somehow come down to the main river again and the dog was looking straight up the slip, vibrating as he leaned into my leg. I climbed up a few m with the dog hugging my leg , to spy a spiker as he popped over a fold in the slip at about 50 m looking down at us. A short shot was made and the spiker rolled down the hill to my feet.
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He was a very small deer and the shot had made mincemeat of both shoulders and somehow one of his backsteaks. I sat for a minute smiling to myself about this change in fortune, before giving young Finn a good scratch and taking the remaining meat off the deer for the walk back to the car.
I guess bad luck comes in threes after all!
