Im pretty attached to my home town of Kaikoura and its hard to convey the experience of what happened in November, but today I got another little reminder so I thought I'd throw some thoughts out there that might be of interest.
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Aside from slips closing the roads, the earthquake triggered a bunch of slips across the Seaward Kaikouras, the biggest being in the Hapuku North branch where a big chunk of the Surveyor spur above 4000 ft slid down obliterating Barrats Biv and making a small lake. There are rows of slips in various places - front of Mt Fyffe, Kowhai, major other slips following fault lines through the Inland road, Hapuku to the Puhi Puhi and beyond in to the Clarence.
Some of these bigger slips are still unstable with obvious further rockfalls with each rain or hot Nor West.
Pic below taken late December I think, shows another fall from big North branch slip/s, you may notice some coastal uplift in the foreground. Also note the multiple small grey slips- many of these took days and weeks to show post quake.
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Ive always been curious what farm animals do in an earthquake, and I can tell you it varies. A few horses came to grief but surprisingly few. Our own cattle and buffalo were ok - they didnt like it much or the aftershocks but they stayed put. Some people reported the dairy cows being a bit weird before the quake but I take that with a grain of salt (one person insisted the cows were off before the big Japan quake too!)A few cows and sheep died in slips. Deer too (wild ones seen dead under slips or fallen in to valley)
Anyways, what you want to know is what did the wild deer do?
Many people saw them low down and confused immediately after- standing on farm tracks showing less fear of humans than normal. In one case a mob of 16 wild deer was seen in the middle of the day (on private land) from a road.
After a couple of weeks once our power was on I went for an explore in one area. All sign was low down, saw two deer within 1 km of starting walking, nothing up higher. I returned the following week and took the spiker for meat.
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Things have returned to normal in terms of what the deer are up to and they appear to be in their normal small hind groups and but the hills remain unstable. Road access is still restricted to some places.
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Yesterday on a steep face I shot this little girl, she was with one other, no sign of any problem with how she was moving
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Today I was boning out the carcass and I noticed she had a part healed broken leg.
Midshaft transverse femoral fracture to be precise, overidden but stabilised in poor alignment. Not gunshot related as no marks to skin or scarring through muscle, I'd date it as 4-6 months healed as it has knitted but was still reasonably callused and the bone hasn't straightened alignment yet.
Its the sort of break you get from a blow from the side, barring traffic accident at 1000 ft Id say shes been hit by a falling rock.
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I guess the earthquake left a mark on all of us.
