On sunday morning I had the pleasure of joining the forum legend Vietnamcam for a hunt in one of his local areas to show me what real kiwi-hunting is all about and it turned out great.
I have to say it seemed a little bit strange starting of in the middle of the night but at 02:00 I got picked up in front of my hostel and we went out of the city and towards the spot where we hopefully would be able to find some red deer or maybe one of those goats that seem to be pretty much everywhere. We arrived to the parkingspot at around 3 a clock and started the walk uphill with the clear sky and full moon shining down on us which made the headlamps that we equipped us with earlier rather unnecessary. As we begun to make our way up the mountain we got an incredible view of the landscape since the clouds where still low and lied like a big white carpet covering all the lower land. Sadly our cameras weren't able to capture this moment but I know that at least I will remember it the rest of my life, it was breathtaking.
After a while of walking we spotted a possum sitting in a tree only a couple of meters in front of us and even though I guess Cam has seen his share of possums in his life I thought is was pretty cool to see it up-front like that and not only flatted alongside the road. Seem to be extremly stupid animals though, not much survival instinct at all...
A well, we went on and when I thought we had got quite a bit on our way Cam pointed on the top where we were heading and at once my backpack felt a little bit heavier. It was still dark but with the moon shining one could see that we had a fair bit of walking left and there was a big valley that needed to be crossed but knowing what hopefully was waiting on us at the top the we kept on going and with one foot in front of the other we slowly made our way up the hill. We finally reached the top and the area that we where supposed to hunt only to realize that the sun hadn't even begun to rise so we had a good 20 minutes to get some breakfast as we watched the horizon turn orange.
Beautiful views everywhere but that's not why we walked 7 km up a mountain so as soon as is began to brighten we started move forward at a slow pace. Soon we found some tracks and deershit which proved that they had been on this side of the mountain during the night so we began searching the hills beneath us towards the bush and suddenly Cam stopped. He had spotted two deer, one bigger and one smaller, just 100 meters below us but the problem was that they had seen us too so we had to move fast before they would run down to cover in the bush. Leaving our backpacks behind we crawled down towards a small bump that hopefully would give us a good view of the deer. We got there but when I looked over the tussocks I could't find the deer that I just seconds ago had my eyes on. Fortunately Cam had it in his crosshairs and with me not really sure about the shot and with time running out he made the right decision of pulling the trigger. The first deer went down with the bang and as the smaller one appeared another shot was fired that but it didn't seem to affect the deer at all. Now the fawn knew that something wasn't quite right so it started jumping away from us but it didn't get far before Cam let another bullet go that sent it rolling down the hill.
Although I wasn't the one to pull the trigger it was a great moment and my first real New Zealand hunt was a success. After making sure the animals were dead the real work started and I was a bit uncertain how we would be able to get these two good size animals back two the car when I remembered how steep and filled with rolling rocks the track had been. But of course you do it a little bit different here compared to back home where the longest distance I have to drag an animal probably is less then 250 meters...
So Cam showed me that the best way to get the meat home if your on top of a mountain is simply to get the best parts and leave the rest. We took the backlegs and backsteaks which actually made quite a bit of meat and filled up the backpack and then slowly started the walk back to the car. When it came to the carrying of course Cam remembered that he wasn't able to walk downhill with a heavy pack like that because of his knees ;)
In Sweden we do it by the rule that you should wear out one generation at the time! Haha
We got down to the car a couple of hours later and although it was a tough walk it was all worth it when I remembered what an amazing morning it had been. Everything from the hunt to the incredible view from the top did this to one of my best days in New Zealand so far.
I would like to thank Cam for giving me this opportunity to see real kiwi-hunting and for an experience I will never forget.
Martin Wallin
Attachment 20597Attachment 20598Attachment 20599Attachment 20600Attachment 20601
