This should have been Ben's story
I arrived home on Sunday arvo to find a couple of guys with long faces parked outside my gate. They had been into the Kauritatahi hut for an overnighter and after playing around in the low cloud for the morning made their way out via Thompsons Track on the Waikato side. They had used a 4 wheel drive ute to take their gear up to the top of the track where it meets the North-South track [7 kms] and then one of them had brought the ute back down and parked at my neighbours for safe keeping and then shot back up on a motor bike to join his mate, and on the Sunday had reversed the process to retrieve their gear.
On meeting his mate with the ute he removed his rifle [tikka .243] from his pack, put it in the gun bag, placed gun bag on ground, put pack on ute and they drove off. Some time later on arriving at his mates place he discovers his rifle missing and they shot back to where they had loaded the ute, it wasn't there so made their way to where the track starts and questioned all who came out if they had found it or seen anyone with it or if anyone had mentioned it. All to no avail...but when I rang him the next evening he told me that someone in a 4x4 had handed it in to the local police...how lucky is that?
While yapping to him I told him that if it was not handed in then I would mention what happened on this forum in case anyone had heard anything...when I spoke to him the next evening he told me that he had had a nosy at the forum and had worked out my user name and that is why I have given him a bit of ribbing about telling his story.
