With great anticipation my mate Reuben and I shouldered our packs for the long grind up the Apiti track for three nights away. With trusty dog Finn in tow complete with his own pack, off we went into new country for us.
The track was not my favourite place to walk up, but 5 hrs later we stood atop the range in heavy winds. Another hour later and we were in the Pohangina.
It wasn’t long before we spied the first deer of the trip at the bottom of a big slip in the valley which Reuben was happy with so we wasted no time in shooting him as he was alert and moving.
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And around a few more bends in the river an hour or so later, another hungry velvety made its way down a slip at close range after a perfect indication from the dog. I had to reward him for his work.
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Camp felt pretty good that night with pressure off and four legs and steaks hanging up.
We got up bright and early and off up the river in a good Ruahine blow. A couple of hours later on a large regrowth face a scruffy looking hind ghosted through the head high scrub feeding her heart out. She wasn’t close enough for us so a slow creep along took us to within 300 yards of her.
One fine shot by Reuben and she tumbled down the face, requiring some sketchy climbing and scrub burrowing to retrieve her and retreat back to the valley floor.
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We were over the moon at this point with three deer aboard and we decided to cut back to camp, spying a couple of trout in the river on the way which was brilliant. We also saw two whio in the same pool and it was bloody nice to see that a couple of birds have survived into this year after the trials of the cyclone.
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We figured we needed one more to carry two deer each to fill the freezers and I was up. We attempted hunting the evening but it began raining and we were soon soaked through. Assuming no deer would be present anywhere open in the wintry conditions we decided to shuck the wet clothes off and hit the sack.
It rained hard all night and blew a gale with camp shaking a bit. We were wiped out so decided to spend the morning drying out gear in the sunny spells before a push upriver.
There was one more side creek under the main range worth looking at before pushing into a large gorge system which looked much more interesting.
The promised side creek was a bugger to get into but once we climbed up multiple log jams it opened out well enough. I was thinking it looked quite quiet when a hinds head and neck appeared from above some cutty grass at about fifty yards. She made a quick exit and her gruff bark poisoned the catchment.
With a bit of daylight left yet we hatched a plan to carry on upriver until dark. We meandered along, looking at endless steep faces with the odd slip thrown in.
We rounded one more bend before a tight gorge when a fat stag leapt from the waters edge and up a toitoi covered slip. Why he chose to run up hill I will never know but up went our rifles and down went the deer at our feet. Unbelievable!
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With a ratio of three stags to one hind we hadn’t exactly shot a good ratio for population control in the area. So it was decided if we saw another hind we would shoot it as well.
As luck would have it, after lugging the 4th set of legs and steaks down toward camp, a hind and yearling happened to be on a handy clearing on last light.. I looked at Reuben. Reuben looked at me. We wordlessly got set up and after evaluating them to see they were definitely hinds , two shots rolled them both. 6 deer….and some population control achieved. It was two very tired hunters crawling into bed that night, toasting our success with a small whiskey.
8 hours of walking out later with as much meat as we could carry we were both essentially hobbled by the time we reached the car but the difficulty made the reward all the sweeter!
