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Lewis Pass Overnight Mission
Negotiated a weekend away so decided to check out the tops round the Lewis Pass taking a new hunter who had yet to bail his first animal. Early 5am start up the track got us up to the bush edge around 8am on a bluebird morning. Had a good look around Sylvia tops. Beautiful big basin but no animals and little sign but not knowing the country decided to get camp set up near some tarns and go for a looksee.
Climbed up to the ridge at around 1600m and enjoyed a few hrs glassing into promising basins. Being so close to Chch figured it must get some heavy hunting pressure but surprised about how little sign there was around. Ended up exploring the whole day including and extra couple of hours to check out a very convincing deer rock. 15km later we finally circled back to camp to along the bush edge around 5pm.
Murphy’s law of course kicked in and about 600m from camp spotted a group of three - yearling and two hinds. Bit of an awkward spot around 500m away with wind not in our favour so gave old mate a go at stalking closer but he so wasn’t able to get close enough for a decent shot. Was so getting dark and cold left them be and headed for camp.
Next morning up at 6:30 and headed back towards we saw the animals night before. Found a fair bit of sign out to 50m from the bush and spotted another group of 3-4 at the bush edge who disappeared before we could old mate get set up for a shot. He had twisted a knee a bit in the dark the night before so he opted to head back towards camp checking some nearby guts rather than risk it in the slippery snow grass ahead. I decided to push on a little further and not 50m on popped over a rise to find a yearling staring at me from around 100m. Froze until it went back to grazing and slowly sat down and got the rifle ready across a knee. The old ABolt 308 dropped it in its tracks with a shot to the shoulder and was surprised to see a hind pop up out of the shrubs behind it. The suppressor had done its job and she paused for a few seconds trying to figure out where to go so popped a shot into the lungs at which it jumped downhill out of sight.
Confident of a good hit i back tracked and waved old mate back - dicky knee and all to give me a hand to part them out before the sun and blowies came out. Left him to started butchering the yearling while I went downhill to find the hind about 30m downslope. Good to get a couple of animals down but was already dreading the walk out! In the end was only 3.5 hrs walk out after breaking camp though definitely felt the 30 kg load on the steep stuff.
Neat country, will have to go back to see where all the stags are hiding out, might need to leave the ABolt at home to make sure old mate gets a shot!
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A bit of gentle traversing
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Pick the hind out in the middle of the pic. Lots of tucker round.
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View back down to the highway - so close and yet so far when you have a good load in the pack!
