Thread: Not Snee Road

On Friday afternoon I hauled myself into the Ruahines for the night. The 3.5 hrs was a bit of a haul with a pack on, but I had at least kept the weight down to 11kg all loaded, complete with water. A far cry from the huge loads I've hauled into there in the past - this light modern gear is great. It was windy but fine and the forecast looked ok for Saturday. I set up camp out of the wind and wandered off for a hunt, but all I saw was a velvet stag right on dark.

I was up at 5am the next morning and was hunting by 5.45am. Tilly and I soon spotted a couple of deer, a hind and yearling but they were way down in a steep gully that I didn't fancy climbing down into and back up out of so early in the day, so we carried on.

So I headed for a favourite spot called 'fruit cake gully", and Tilly soon winded a hind which I took some pics of. Skirting back from the hind, she winded into a patch of leatherwood, and then froze up. I couldn't for the life of me see what she was onto, so changed my position by a few hundred yards for a different view. I was sitting looking through my binos when I heard Tilly move, and glanced at her and she was staring out to the right. It was a yearling hind that must have winded us through having moved our position. It was bolting through the tussock headed for the bush and I was lucky enough to get a shot into her at about 150 yards. It came out of where Tilly had been winding. Yummy tender venison.

I was now about 5 hours from my truck and it was 10am so I trudged back to camp with the meat and had a brew and then packed up camp. It had turned out sunny and hot, so I was pretty much buggered by the time I got to the car park. Happy though.

The pics are a bit mixed up I'm sorry. Camp was at the top of the big face in the pics. I call that .223 face, because the first time I was there 45 years ago I shot a deer on the big slip with my .223. I hauled it out for the chiller...good grief, what a way to make a living.