Thread: Fiordland Advice

Morning team,

I am spending the first week of April in Fiordland on a liveaboard charter. The trip is a bucket-list one for my dad (73 and ageing quickly), and the aim is to get a big cray and shoot a deer as well as enjoy the scenery. The cray part should look after itself, it's the deer I need some help with. As it is a charter with 6 other blokes (who are all on the same mission) I don't know exactly where we'll be but am after some advice on the best type of country to look in.

We will be living on the boat so will only do day hunts from the shoreline. My dad is old and unfit (I am young and unfit) so climbing to the tops and glassing is a no-go given we will be limited to day hunting. I am thinking of two options that will likely provide the best results.
Option 1 - Climb a little bit (say 100m elevation) and find a terrace or flatish spur and roar, sidling into the wind. This will only work in areas that are not near-vertical (I'm not sure how much of this ground there is)
Option 2 - Find a good lookout and glass slips, possibly roar a stag out into the open.

I'm not planning on shooting a trophy, just want a cool experience with my old man before he's too old. Anyone done this and have some advice on how to approach it?

Cheers,
Adam

I am confident you'll have an outstanding trip however I think you're over-thinking it a little bit @Dorkus. Truth is we can sit here and give you all the advice in the world but you're going to arrive in Fiordland, take one look at the shear walls of the mountains falling from 6,000 feet into the sea and say - "oh, shit... I never thought it was going to look like THIS!"

Reality is you will probably be confined to walking around the only small flat areas that exist within whichever Sound you spend your time in. Typically these areas are small and forested. If you're really lucky and end up in an area with significant flat areas these too are likely to be heavily forested and often very swampy. There is no escaping "wet" in Fiordland.

On the plus side, there are deer around in sufficient numbers that you will likely hear them roaring from the boat and you should be able to mount a mission based on the fact you know they are there before you even set out. If you can hear him roaring he's almost certainly within 500 metres of you.

Do you know which Sound you'll be based in?

Here is a prime example of what you could face:

Just shoot em from the boat bro.

With your luck you'll shoot a big farken monster with some flukie up the bum shot & it will roll down the slip and land straight on the deck of the boat.

Originally Posted by Philipo

Just shoot em from the boat bro.

With your luck you'll shoot a big farken monster with some flukie up the bum shot & it will roll down the slip and land straight on the deck of the boat.

I think that skipper was going to drag you up that hill come hell or high water to find yours

Originally Posted by Barefoot

I think that skipper was going to drag you up that hill come hell or high water to find yours

Hahahahal yeah I think he thought I was a pussy aye, truth was my legs were to short I couldn't climb up the bluff & they young fulla didn't want to lol, but at least we got it.


Old Nigel sure did like trying to shoot everyone else's Deer though with that rusty old 270 though aye

270 owner, that really says it all. He thought most of us were useless, signs of a split personality there, but a nice boat.
Company was pretty bloody good though!

Since it’s a "bucket list" project
What about enquiring about a day stint onto the Tops with one of the Helicopter operators.
I imagine that would be governed by Ballot blocks and where/what Sound you moor in.
I presume the Charter Vessel will have communication out of there in some form or another

Be another K on top - but from what you have indicated Re father - it could be worth every cent
Or just take me and I will show you what not to do :-(

If you find a nice spot to get off with some flats head straight in to the steep stuff and stalk along the flat/steep zone just up a bit over the swampy tight shit, the bush opens in this zone and the animals use it to travel between slips. If you find that huntable zone between too steep to stalk quietly and too swampy and thick there is plenty of animals.

Awesome cheers guys. Hopefully I can get into something... If dad can shoot one from the boat then even better. He can have a cup of tea while i go get it.

Originally Posted by Sarvo

Since it’s a "bucket list" project
What about enquiring about a day stint onto the Tops with one of the Helicopter operators.

:-(

This has merit, some of the coastal scrub can be short and scrubby, not something you can easily stalk through.

The rule it is vertical, boulders or swamp is fairly true. Deer don't like any of those things. It is definitely not all like that. Every Fiord has plenty of streams day lighting into it. These will have a delta, some small and some huge and these will have deer. Where deer are the bush is open enough to stalk through for even average hunters and there is the odd clearing. If the bush is extremely dense the deer won't be in there anyway.

You use the Deers track system in Fiordland or you are going nowhere. The streams and rivers will have a good solid deer track up one or both sides. Every now and then, if there are good numbers, the track will open out into well trampled bush. This is a feeding area. The deer move from feeding area to feeding area. When you get to these, move ultra slow and the odd deer will just stand there and look at you in some places, they don't see many people in the more remote fiords.

As it is the roar, you will find very steep deer tracks you can clamber up. The stags will hold hinds on little knobs and terraces like little defensive castles.

The best place to find and shoot deer is on slips and as stated, you will have plenty of opportunity to shoot from the boat. Just put someone with a clue on the top deck. When I did a similar trip we took an older guy who was an epic shit talker and Army Rambo. He spend the whole week on the roof glassing and we assumed he had it covered. The skipper spotted a deer out the galley window while making scones and one of the guys shot it. Rambo had buck fever. He got taken to within 20m of 15 deer on a beach in the dinghy at night by the skipper and he could not see them.

There are beaches and the deer come out to run around and stretch their legs.

Don't do what we did when I first went down there and just clamber through virgin bush for half a day. Deer are not this dumb.

Originally Posted by Sarvo

Since it’s a "bucket list" project
What about enquiring about a day stint onto the Tops with one of the Helicopter operators.
I imagine that would be governed by Ballot blocks and where/what Sound you moor in.

Day on the tops would be awkward because you need dropped off and picked up. Worth finding out if there will be choppers in the area picking up crayfish or other hunters but you would need to be lucky to have them there twice either side of a daytrip. Otherwise it is a long flight to get to you. Maybe there is a charter in the area with a helicopter on board?

If you are not that fit I would stick to poking around plenty of deltas and slips. There are not usually huge numbers on the tops unless they have stopped WARO. Hunting the tops and getting something out of it, even if you are working the bush edge, will really test your fitness.

They will pop up anywhere, we had just been for a free dive and got some crays, standing on the beach and looked across the sound to see some deer at beach level on other side so took the dingy over and shot the stag... easy as that



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Just stay they hell outta the Pyke River. Its mine

We spent a week in a boggy Valley and saw nothing. Spoke to a couple of guys going around in a runabout and staying on the mother boat at night. They were going around roaring and shooting from the boat or if possible jump on the hill and stalk them. Good buggers came back later that day and gave us a backsteak. Another boat gave us 3 cray