We’d originally planned to travel up to the road end early morning and head up to the tops. Past experience told me that unless we left home at 02:00 we wouldn’t be making it to the tops before sunrise and with two young kids, an early night was not on the cards.
We decided to go the night before and camp at the road end and make our way to the tops at 04:00. The carpark was filled with what we thought were “trampers cars”, Prius’ and Corollas and the likes, how wrong we were.
After a surprisingly good sleep in the swag, we were up bright and early and not long after 04:00, were on our way.
I’d fractured my ankle 7 weeks earlier so this was the first decent test since it happened, things felt good, happy days.
We were approaching the tops when we came across a fly camp built across the track with two sleeping bags and Tatonka packs sitting there. No one to be seen, but we both thought they’d be headed to the tops ahead of us. We kept on marching and soon came into view of the top of the range and lower clearer leatherwood and tussock spurs. There was just enough light to start glassing and soon we saw a hind and yearling feeding on a small rocky outcrop and a velvety stag not far away on the next small spur, all in plain sight of the track.
Both of us were expecting to hear gunshots within the next little while, but marched on a little despondent.
We got to top of range and came across a tent and another hunter who we had a quick chat to and then made a beeline round the ridge in hope the animals seen hadn’t moved off. We crept up to the edge of a large, well positioned rocky outcrop and peaked over, sure enough, the hind and fawn were standing there 130 yards away, happily grazing.
With plenty of time, I lined up the hind and bowled her and cousin knocked over the yearling while it stood there confused.
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Luckily for us they weren’t down in the thick shjt and there were some decent game trails to follow down to them. The hind was in poor nick and had started to loose hair from her back bone and had some swelling in the lymph nodes I came across while boning her out, probably should’ve checked her organs but we wanted to get out before the sun came out in full force.
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We headed back up on to the ridge with heavier packs and spied two more lots of hunters, one to the south and one to the north on the range. So much for “trampers cars”, but not surprising on a long weekend and weather window like we had.
After a quick bite to eat and a bit of a glass around, we started a slow meander down, back to the wagon. The knees and ankle were certainly tender when we got back after an 8.5 hour round trip, but nothing a nice cold chilly bin beer wouldn’t fix.
Highly recommend getting up onto that range as there is a shit load of hunting from the main ridge down onto the multitude of spurs and the leatherwood isn’t too bad…..if you pick your animals right.
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