Thread: Kirkliston (Sth Canty) or Oteake (North Otago) blocks

So I headed into the hills on Monday avo, with the intent to camp overnight. . Weather forecast wasn’t great, but I thought I would go for a walk at least and scout out the area. I pulled into the easement carpark and it started raining. A couple of km up the easement the wind really picked up and the rain started going sideways, gusty enough to knock me sideways occasionally. Less than ideal for hunting, but I carried on up hoping that as I entered the valley it would be more sheltered.
Nope. The wind just turned and was heading directly into my face, hard enough to sting. This made it very difficult to scan the land ahead for animals, and left me with no possibility of glassing.

I carried on regardless, with the intent to poke my nose through the massive amounts of scrub in the many gullies. I figured that if there were any deer there they would be seeking shelter too. No luck, though at times I got a strong animal smell, so I suspect they were in there.

The wind and the rain picked up again, and I called it and headed back to the car. Bedraggled and exhausted.

I walked just over 10km in total, but walking into that constant wind and driving rain left me absolutely exhausted!

I did get a good look at the terrain though, and I would love to come back in fairer weather.

There was a crap ton of wallaby sign around, with literally hundreds of tunnels through the matagouri, and shit everywhere. Wouldn’t mind coming back and finding a good overwatch position, to snipe them as they came out of cover.

I only saw one wally, and he was a big one so is obviously feeding well etc. didn’t get a chance to get a shot off though!

There was a reasonably well worn 4wd track from the farm right up into the block, so I imagine the area may be well hunted by locals.

I’m still keen to come back though in fairer weather and give it a good nudge.