Thread: Christmas Hunt

My wife and kids went away at Christmas for a few weeks , so I thought I better take advantage of it and go hunting and spearfishing .
Headed up the top of the corromandel for a week first , but unfortunately the diving was pretty average , with no decent snapper around ,and winter like dive conditions. Had an exciting experience of an Orca swimming over my head in 8m of water while I was lying on the bottom waiting for a kingi to come back for a shot ! ended up getting a couple of kingis, but not a lot going on really.
Next , me and a couple of mates jumped on the ferry and headed down the west coast , and walked into the wilderness area for a hunt . There is nothing better than getting off the tracks and just heading up a river using your own route finding, especially in south westland.
We spent a week in there ,shot a few thar and chamois with my mate getting a nice 9” chamois but with a forecast of 50mm of rain and crap after that we bailed out and headed over to tekapo area for a week in the dry open tussock country and a nice hut . What a massive contrast to the first week of drizzle, sandflys and daily clag . Feeling nice and fit now ,we did some large days and had a great time seeing around 150 to 200 thar for the week. Not much in the way of mature bulls in our river for some reason , but still had a great time and shot a few meat animals .
It was great to come back from christmas holidays feeling fit and healthy rather than the usual excessive amounts of eating and drinking .