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An epic couple of weeks with some ups and downs..
Don't manage to get off farm very often so had been really looking forward to the wapiti ballot this year as my sister and I had drawn Narrows Creek for the first period. Cassie turned up the day before we were due to leave and she must have been pumped also as she even helped the wife and I milk the cows so we could get home early and ready to head off the next morning. Got up at 3.30am the day of the breifing and got the cows milked again then we were on the road by 8am, next stop fiordland!
We got to the briefing and decided to head into the block the next morning so headed over to the Marina to sleep on our boat for the night.
There wasn't really anywhere to moor the boat at our block so our plan was to take the inflatable over to the block from Te Anau Downs. We picked up @Rock river arms hunter bright and early from his place as he was going to take my truck back to his place while we were in our block to save leaving it at Te Anau downs the entire time. We got unloaded and got the inflatable setup and the 30hp on the back ready to go then the bloody thing decided to be temperamental and kept stopping on us which didn't give us much faith in taking it across the main lake body so we eventually decided to flag the idea and got the water taxi over to our block. Day one was a cracker day and since we were a bit late into the block we decided to camp by the lake for the first night, we fell asleep to a chorus of reds and wapiti roaring and bugling all around us so excitement levels were high for an early start the next day. We headed up through the bush into Long Gully the next day as we had the south/east part of the block while the other party took the main valley. The stags were roaring in the bush as we made our way higher and it probably took us a good 7 to 8 hours by the time we broke the bush line. Camped at the bottom of the gully with a steady breeze in our face which was ideal and we spotted a few red type hinds and yearlings getting about on the tops but no big stags. The next day we pushed further up and onto the rifle on top of the gully to peer into the next basin which only turned up a scrubby young 4 point red and a spiker and a few hinds again. There was still a few animals making noise down in the bushline below us and the weather was closing in for the next two days so we decided to head back to the lake edge and hunker down and possibly hunt the bush while the weather was crap and hoped that we could head back up to the tops after a couple of days to make a good effort at pushing further along the main ridge into some new country as the lack of animals on the tops so far was a bit disappointed. We ended up going up and down three separate ridges and we're completely buggered by the time we got back down to the lake edge as we kept getting bluffed out on the edge of massive 200ft drops, we figured the ridge we came up was the only ridge that actually headed right back down to the bottom and in the bush it was really difficult to determine exactly where we had come up, we tried following our track on my sister's 67i as she had tracking on but due to the lack of accuracy in the dense bush even that was setting us wrong. It's fair to say we were very relieved when we finally cracked it and made it back down as darkness rolled in and the rain started. We got camp setup and slept really well that night! Next morning it was still drizzling and the tops were clagged in, the stags had shut up but I decided to go for a bush stalk anyhow so headed off for a bit, at one point I stepped into a hole where a tree had the earth from around it's roots washed away and went sideways with all my weight against my already dodgy knee, no problem I thought, hurt a bit but it would come right so I limped back to camp and made some dinner while I licked my wounds and cursed myself for being careless. Pain wasn't crazy bad but I knew something wasn't right when I had been sitting for a while and noticed my leg getting progressively more and more swollen and lots of bruising developing behind my knee. Eventually my whole leg had swollen up and filled with fluid, was kind of hard case that my sock seemed to stem the swelling from heading any further down my leg, maybe I just need longer socks!
We decided the next day that even though my knee wasn't hurting too bad and the swelling had subsided it would probably be a silly idea to attempt to head to the tops again so made the decision to pull pin. Not many photos from fiordland as I also manged to lose my camera which I had Jerry rigged onto my pack in it's case, bugger! Was a bit gutted as it was the second time fiordland had managed to chew me up and spit me out with a wrecked knee.
@Rock river arms hunter was a champion and came to pick us up and we headed off to Queenstown where I went to the after hours clinic and got fed up on drugs and cortisone and sent on my way. We drove through the night back to Cassies place at Twizel and decided since I had organized to be away from the farm for another 5 days we should try make use of the time so sent a few texts and the next morning we were off up through Godley Peaks station to the doc land at the head of the valley. The old Colorado bounced its way up towards the main divide and we only manged to get it stuck once when we took a wrong turn and followed an old part of the track and ended up with it bellied on some big ruts in a swampy bit, an old bush trick got us on our way again and we eventually made camp at the old Rankin hut site. There was plenty of Tahr about and a few deer but we decided to concentrate on putting a dent in the tahr numbers as we already had a plan for some deer later on. Awesome country up there and I got around ok with my fragile knee just taking it easy and not carrying too much weight (I did knock over a young bull from camp that had a broken off horn that I couldn't say no to and manged to backpack him the short distance from where he fell back to camp) we took a few nannies that didn't have young ones and I even managed to sneak right up on a tahr just along from our camp which was hard case. Slept under a tarp and the sky up there is something else at night, even spotted a few tahr from my sleeping bag on the second morning. Got a good look around and will definitely try get up there again for a bull in winter. We bounced back out of the valley on Thursday and wasted no time heading to a station at Hakataramea to have a look around for a deer. Dad happened to be working up there night shooting so he gave my sister the lay of the land and asdured us the track was easy peasy and away we went to our part of the block. Cassie navigated while I drove and we eventually came across a part of the track that was super steep and long down a big ridge into the valley we wanted to hunt, it was starting to rain and there was no way in hell even in dry conditions I was going to attempt to drive down it despite her protests of "you'll be right ya wuss" so we set up a camp on top of the ridge and went for a quick hunt before it got dark. Spotted a few fallow below in the valley so I got more "you should have just driven down there, I'd drive down there in my subaru" etc.
We went to bed and around 2am I was woken by the sound of a side by side getting around and could see lights flashing about the place. I woke Cassie up and asked her why dad would be in our part of the block and she just mumbled to go back to sleep so I lay there listening to the side by side getting progressively closer. Eventually I could tell it was coming up the track towards where we were but our camp was just over the ridge so he wouldn't see us, I heard it stop when it was probably a couple hundred yards away... Boom! a shot, then it moved on and stopped again, Boom! another shot. Now I was shitting myself and wondering if I looked like a wallaby or a pig through a thermal in my tent so was doing my best rabbit impression hugging the ground and furiously texting dad on my Inreach. He came up the ridge and stopped right beside our camp before turning off the bike and exclaiming "what the bloody hell are you two doing way over here?!" To which I told him I didn't really want to drive down his "easy track" and he told us shit no you wouldn't drive down that in a truck, it's fine weather and bikes and horses only and even then you've got to pucker up and hope for the best, it's called the devils nose for a reason! "Think your bloody navigator has sent you crook" He told us he had actually spotted us through the thermal from a few ridges over earlier in the night so he knew we were there and was wondering what was going on.
Next morning we got up and headed off back to where we were supposed to be and the track was much less exciting. Picked off a few fallow during the day and manged to get a red to reply to a roar a couple of times but he was sitting tight and never showed himself. Got home last night loaded up with plenty of meat, tired but content after a great couple of weeks away from the farm. Photos might be a bit of a jumble but you get the idea. Big day drying stuff out etc. Off to milk the cows in the morning :)
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