Had been keen for a while now to do a good solid walk in from the blade as I have been hunting up there a bit and even live on Whaka Rd. So two mates and I decided to go up for an overnighter. We chose a route which I haven’t personally walked most of before. So we headed up on Wednesday, late morning and got to the blade to find 4 trucks in the car park. A bit worrying but we figured with High-vis and lots of yarning we should be ok! So I lead my mates up the quad track to intersect the Ngamarama Track (Te Tuhi). We had been on the track about an hour when we heard a stag going at it. I roared it in to about 50m then it shut up, and we continued on. We joined the North South Track and continued down to the Ngamuwahine Shelter where we would be staying for the night, and set up for a cold night after brief rain in the late afternoon. The night brought what we think must've been a young hind in the clearing in the late evening (which we thought was strange as it would’ve smelt us!) and brawling possums. The following morning we woke to the sound of a roar from a ridge west of our clearing, and had him going for about 15 minutes. We packed up and had a late start and left at 11am, and continued down south on the North South Track to meet the Leyland O'brien tramway to take us home along the Ngamuwahine River. All in all it was an awesome trip clocking just over 18.5km. Surprisingly we heard no gun shots and saw no one except one hunter walking out 20 minutes in on the first day. Next time those stags are mine!
Even had our own table which was a bit of a luxury! Couldn't work out how to make the photos smaller.
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