8 Attachment(s)
Hunting the tops - What went wrong?
The summer of 2019 was going to be my summer of hunting! I had managed to save up enough leave to do a couple of trips, with the aim of trying to target a respectable red stag! Below are a couple of stories of those trips.
Trip 1 – Hunter Valley
Anticipation and excitement was high. It was the second week of March and a friend, and I had been driving nonstop from the lower north Island to Hawea where we were to spend the night at a friend’s house before the three of up headed up the Hunter valley for 7 days. We had planned to head about half way up the valley and push onto the tops to hunt a general area that looked pretty appealing on the map, however we had been given the ‘good word’ that most of the good deer came from the head of the valley. So that was the plan, we had a 4WD and understood that we could drive a most of the way up.
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1) Camp day 3, 2) Camp day 4, 3) lookout day, 4) big messy wallow
Day 1- The trip up the valley was pretty scenic, what a cool part of the country. We ended up parking a bit before Fergusson hut, and found a cast antler with 6 points on it – that must bode well! We had time for a quick poke around before dark. About 5 minutes after leaving the hut it started to pour, and continued all night and into the next morning.
Day 2 - was a bit of a bugger. We walked, waited a fair while for the river to become crossable and walked some more, getting to the east/west branch junction on dark. There was a fair bit of helicopter activity up high on both sides of the valley, this didn’t bode well. The highlight was seeing a couple of hinds on the flats just on daybreak but once there was decent light to see they were back into the trees.
Day 3 - following the track up the west branch we started to get pretty excited again as things started to open up and we could see well up towards the head of the valley. We got into a position up reasonable high in the early afternoon where we planned to spend the night and started glassing. One stag was seen running for the bush early on (we must have walked within 100m of it but it didn’t break until an hour or more had passed…), a little chamois above us and a lone bull tahr down by the river were spotted.
Day 4 saw us sidle around to camp 2 where we essentially set up and started glassing. There was a bluffy spur (site 3) from which we could gain a commanding view up to the head of the valley and then back down over all of the country from the previous day. We also could see a recently used wallow. This was going to be good! …….Glassed until dark with nothing seen.
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Looking down the valley from point 3
Day 5. This was our last session before having to start backtracking to the car so we gave it another decent glassing session in the morning. The scenery up there was absolutely awesome but primarily we were after deer and it was a bit of a tough pill to swallow when again 3 sets of eyes failed to spot anything. We made our way back to the camp and missed a nice chamois that was up near the Wilson pass.
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Looking up the rest of the valley from point 3
Day 6/7 where fairly uneventful as we made our way back to Hawea.
Immediate thoughts
• We spent too much time walking
• Probably not cautious enough in our approach up the west branch (I cant remember if we had the wind up our arses but don’t remember being too carful)
• The area had quite possibly been worked by WARO within the last week or two
Trip 2 – Mariners Peak
I was going solo this time. After dropping my mate at the airport, I headed for the west coast. It has always been an area I enjoy and rightly or wrongly I felt that the “rougher” country kept the crowds away and therefore reward those who were willing to put in a bit of effort (lets see). I didn’t have much criteria for a spot – somewhere to leave the car and easy walking access to the tops (after watching tv shows with big stags shot on the tops, that’s where I wanted to be!).
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1) swampy wallow, 2) main camp, 3) other fellas
Day 1 – Metvuw reckoned the weather wasn’t going to that flash for a couple of days from that night, so I had a choice. Head straight up to the tops and make myself as comfortable as possible or wait around for a couple of days in a hut. I figured either way I would have nothing to do when it was raining so I might as well be waiting in a position to take advantage of possibly a bit more activity immediately after it cleared. So, I walked up a spur – wasn’t too bad! Close to the bush line I came across a clearing with a swampy wallow in the middle of it. The place screamed out BIG stag (at least to me) and I though that could be a feature to remember. I didn’t linger long and made my way up to find a camp site. I was somewhat disappointed to find 3 or 4 pretty recent buck shot cases on the way, guessing that that meant there were a few less deer in the area than there had been in the recent past. Once set up I went back down to a vantage point about 200m from the wallow and watched it until dark. Nothing seen.
Day 2&3 – It pissed down. Remember the rain that washed out the Franz bridge. Though the rain at times was very heavy it actually wasn’t much of an issue being on the top of a hill. When there was a bit of a break I would stretch my legs and have a peak around - but mainly I tried to hibernate.
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Camp site for the rain
Day 4 – The weather had passed, and it was shaping up to be a pretty reasonable day. I scrambled to get my gear together and position myself in a good spot to watch some bush edges for the morning. Nothing stood out to me immediately but as I settled down I noticed movement in the tussock way off in the distance. I though there might be 4 or 5 hinds down there and my pulse quickened with the knowledge that it was very nearly the roar, though something didn’t look quite right – oh - they were tahr. That afternoon I moved a bit further along the ridge to expose some more country and set up a camp but nothing was seen.
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Tahr – I would have thought a wee way from home
Day 5 – I pushed onto the 1436 peak and again no animals seen for the day, though I did see a tent and group of hunter set up under Mt Kinnaird, which probably correlated with the chopper id seen flying in that direction the previous day. Of note was the length of the tussock in some areas - up to my armpits which made walking a bit tough – was this the natural height or a result of very little grazing?.
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Looking towards Mt Kinnaird
Day 6 - I didn’t spend to long looking in the direction of Mt Kinnaird given the other guys were set up over there and started making my way back to where I spent the first few nights, with the simple plan of just watching the wallow. Alas nothing seen.
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looking back towards where I had started.
Day 7 – It was time to head back to the car. About halfway down the spur I got the strong smell of a deer. Though I hadn’t heard a single roar on the entire trip I decided I make one. I sat down and within seconds heard some movement, about 5 minutes later a very tentative spiker came into sight, nose flaring trying to suss me out. I was mostly obscured and the deer very cautiously crept to within a few metres of me before deciding it was time to go. It was quite a neat encounter!
During the long drive back to the ferry (I had to go back through Wanaka) and since, I wondered what should have been done differently to increase the number of encounters. Was it us, was it the locations or a combination?
A couple of questions for those wiser than myself;
1. How much does waro play a part in the success of a trip (on the tops and slip/river flats)? Is there anywhere on the west coast that doesn’t get waro pressure?
2. Was the strategy wrong up the Hunter Valley?
3. What are the factors people use to select a new spot?
