Sorry for the length of this write up, but it was a long good weekend.
Like all good weekends, this one started early, when on Thursday afternoon, a mate from Chch delivered the lads birthday rifle. A second-hand Howa Mini in 6.5 Grendel, it came with a suppressor, scope mount and rings. Thanks @KATIKATI_KID It’s perfect for him.
Even with the factory plastic stock it’s a fair bit lighter than my a-bolt .243 and fits him better too. We’ve got a very bubba’d carbon stock that I’m going to fix up for it, but that another story.
Friday saw a scope mounted, a Tasco 3-9 to get him started, that one of the good buggers on the forum gave us for free. A massive thank you to @Preacher for that. If the lad sticks with it and we upgrade him to a better scope, this one will get paid forward.
Saturday morning, a leisurely start and pack of the van, saw us heading out to St. Arnaud. A quick stop at Kelly Country for a spare pack of ammo (just in case), and the obligatory stop at Wakey Bakey for some health food disguised as pies, saw us driving out of the good weather and into a freezing southerly front. It was accompanied by torrential rain, heavy enough that even with the wipers on full I had to slow down to see where I was going.
On the drive the lad asked what new and absurd way we were going to find to not get a goat this weekend, and rattled off his list to date, including:
• Not seeing any goats (x3)
• Only seeing goats on the drive in and out of the hunting areas (x2)
• Seeing goats, but rolling a big rock over his hand as we snuck in.
• Seeing goats but them being too far away to shoot
He sees the funny side of it all though, and it hasn’t damped his enthusiasm at all.
We’d pushed through the rain by the time we hit St. Arnaud, and a quick visit to the DOC info centre saw us with the paperwork to use the Teetotal range. Of course, just as we pulled up at the range, the rain started again. After pie time, and a bit of a wait the weather cleared, we got the rifle on paper and sighted in. The lad had a couple of shots and was pleasantly surprised by the low recoil. His shots were a little bit off, but were still minute of goat, and he’ll come right with some practice behind the trigger.
After some fossicking picking up spent casings (him, not me, although I’ll reload the mint .243 case he found) it was onwards to Murchison.
A quick stop in Murch and we went and checked out a riverbed on the way towards the West Coast. The lad has been watching a lot of NZChronicles on YouTube and likes the idea of hunting wide gravel riverbeds and side streams and slips. Access to this river wasn’t going to be easy though, and didn’t tick the lads’ boxes, so it was back to the original plan, and we headed towards the Johnson Creek Track. Thanks for the pointers, and all the encouragement @ROKTOY.
We parked up by the very cool stream with natural rock weirs that look like concrete, faffed around for 15mins and by 3.30 we were starting the walk in. I’m trying to get the lad going at the appropriate speed and doing the right amount of looking based on whether we are after goat or deer. He was going at a good goat speed, but he forgets to look into the bush around him. He’s a micronaut by nature.
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The track had some good old school track building techniques, with boggy areas having a single or double line of sections of tree trunk sunk into the ground to make and elevated walkway. The don’t make them like that anymore.
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The bush up that creek is really nice, and we eventually got to the start of the boulder field with crazy jumbled boulders made up of big alternating layers of hard and very soft crumbly sedimentary rock, and lots of water finding it’s way to the surface in little springs dotted everywhere.
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We got to the end of the track (I don’t think I’ve seen one of these signs before) and sat on top of a big boulder for a feed, a listen, and lots of glassing. At one stage I thought I heard a pig in the undergrowth, but I was only a Weka gonking. There was birdsong everywhere though, with lots of Tui serenading us as we ate.
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The head of that valley is a pretty sobering reminder of the power of a big earthquake. The sizeable cliffs to the west are the scar where half an entire hillside fell off and tumbled into the valley, creating the boulder field that we were on the edge of. We read up on the Murchison earthquake a fair bit over the next two days, and it give a good idea of what might happen when the alpine fault next goes.
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With nothing seen or heard after half an hour or so, we turned around and headed back. Part way down the track the lad wanted to sit and watch a clearing that he’d noticed on the way in. The wind was swirling too much for us to have much chance of seeing anything, but it’s all good practice. We sat still and quiet for about 25mins (that’s a win!) before we went to have a look at the clearing.
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It was stunning, like something out of a fairy story, or a kid’s book. A flat, cropped grassy clearing with a small waterfall at it’s head that turned into a crystal-clear stream, deeply cut into the grass snaking through it. There was even a game trail coming out of the bush, across the grass, through a boggy area (with some good deer footprints) and then over a round boulder where you could see the animals had scrabbled for purchase.
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Leaving the clearing we snuck (at goat pace) back down the track and to the van, getting there at 7.30. Before we left, I filled a 10l plastic water container from the stream, but as I slotted it into the back of the van it exploded! The plastic was all brittle from age. A quick stop at the new Murch 4 square was in order, but at 8.02 I learnt that it closes at 8pm!
The plan was to head out to Six Mile and look for somewhere to park up and be in a good spot for an early start on Sunday morning. When we got there the lad didn’t like the idea of sleeping right beside the road (even though it probably only sees a few cars a night) so it was off to look for a better option, and we ended up in a well-used freedom camping area just outside Murch (but beside the highway!).
Throw everything from the back of the van into the front. The lad blows up the sleeping mats while I heat up some dinner. Bugger - I’ve forgotten to bring any cutlery. Turned the van upside down and found a tiny blue plastic spoon that you get with those tiny tubs of ice cream. That and our knives saw us right.
Into bed and we’re both fast asleep in minutes.
I wake up thinking it’s my usual 3am can’t sleep thing, but when I open my eyes, it’s getting light. Check the watch, 5.40am. Shake the lad awake, throw all the things in the front of the van into the back, grab some cartons of liquid breakfast and muesli bars and hit the road.
As we pull up at Six Mile, a guy in full camo is standing beside a 4wd is getting his rifle sorted and strapping his bumbag on. We’ve been beaten too it!
He’s friendly though, and a chat confirms there are plenty of goats in the area, and that the Eight Mile track down the road is just as good a bet. Back in the van and in a few minutes, we’re digging through the chaos and getting organised. 6.30 saw us heading up the track slow and steady, and sorting out the ‘looking at your feet to looking around and through the bush ratio’.
We’d only gone 4-500m and were moving through some windfall when the lad stops walking, eyes wide, starts pointing over the stream and mouthing the words “goats, there are goats!”.
He’s right, there are at least two goats browsing through a jumble of boulders and windfall about 30-40m away. After sneaking off the track to the edge of the stream, and lots of faffing around while the lad tried to get a good rest, assuring me he could shoot sitting with an elbow on a knee (yeah right), he managed to find a log sticking up in the air where he could get steady.
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Then we had the comedy interlude. The black and white kid he was lining up on was standing on top a big, mossy boulder, and promptly slipped and fell off! It fell a couple of metres, hit the ground like a sack of spuds, and didn’t move!
It was as if someone else had shot it with a silent rifle.
Eventually is got up, shook itself and started to wander slowly though the smashed forest still oblivious to us - amazingly.
The lad lined it up, there was a boomf, the goat staggered a few metres and fell over. With the adrenaline pumping the lad yahooed and high-fived me. He’d done it, and with his own rifle!
We found a few big trees that had fallen over the stream (it looked like this area had been hammered in one of the big storms a few years back), shimmied across, and set about looking for the kid in the giant pick-up-sticks game of bowled tree trunks.
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The goat was shot just below the nearly horizontal tree trunk in the middle of this photo.
Having fallen in a hole we were lucky to find him quickly and hauled him to a tiny river flat (with a sign proclaiming it to be ‘Standish’s Beach’ to harvest some meat. It wasn’t a perfect shot, but it did the job and he’s learning.
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With me showing the lad how to do it, but using his birthday knife, we soon had the back legs in my pack, and the back steaks and tail in his, though he has since decided he wants to keep the tail rather than lose it to enter the competition. 😊 We hauled the carcass up away from the stream and were done and dusted by 7.30am.
I hung the legs off the end of a log in a pillowcase, and we decided to keep heading up the track to the lake. The lad was in full sneak and peek mode now, but we didn’t see anything else the rest of the way. We found the end of the track at a cleared spot near the head of the lake and settled down for a late first breakfast.
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We sat and watched a plump of geese (yes that’s the right word, I looked it up) gliding across the surface of the lake, all one astern the other, and marvelled at the Tui doing improbable aerobatics over the lake as they chased insects and each other.
With the lure of the sun on the opposite hill, we decided to carry on round the head of the lake and down the other side. Bogs, thick flax, streams and bush lawyer made the going tough, but there were plenty of goat and deer prints, and the odd hunter’s footprint too. I got well fed up with the bush lawyer pulling my hat off my head but didn’t want to think about what it’d do to my bald head if I wasn’t wearing a hat. Intent listening was occasionally interrupted by the cacophony of the Geese on the lake honking at each other.
After we got out of the swamp and started following game trails down the other side, we found a good sunny flat spot in the Beech for second breakfast. We heard a Kaka as it flew way up above us on its way to the opposite hilltop, and not long after I’d pointed out to the lad that we couldn’t hear any man-made sounds, a helicopter came thundering over the hills. We couldn’t see it, but it sounded like a big one, and it was nice to have the sounds of nature settle around us again as it faded into the distance.
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A real bush gun!
We followed the game trails back to the bottom of the lake, clambered across the stream and started back down the track. The closer we got to where the lad shot the goat, the slower he went and more looking he did, but we didn’t see anything else. To be honest, the most promising areas for goats there are closest to the road, where the bush has some bluffs and small cliffs, and is bordered by cleared forestry up on the ridge to the south. We grabbed the meat, and 15 mins later we were bac at the van, tired, but very happy.
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After some celebratory chocolate (kids huh?), we hit the road, had a quick look at the Six Mile power station on our way past, and were on our way home.
The lad insisted we drive home via St. Arnaud. The high mountains seem to call to him. I’m not sure my ankles will see me back in that country much as I get older (other than spots where you can drive to a descent altitude), but they are definitely somewhere that will play a part in his future.
We got home later that day and had a much-needed rest, before I nipped over to see @tararuaphil to buy some reloading gear for the Grendel. I need to say a massive thank you to Phil for all his advice, support and encouragement in getting the lad out there doing it. He’s one of the truly nice guys that seem to be common on this forum.
By the evening lad was already planning next weekend’s mission, and it involves boats AND goats!
