As the title suggests, I'd like to discuss hunting. I had my first hunting experience yesterday and I'm still sore from it. And I wasn't even being hunted. Nor was I really doing the hunting as Daniel was sensible enough not to let me have any sort of fire arm (although he did let me have a practice shot with his brother Kevin's gun the day before we went and I don't think I was half bad!).
As I mentioned: Hunting - it's not for everyone. I'm not suggesting I didn't enjoy it because I did, but I can understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea. However, if you like guns, hiking, blood and guts - and there must be a large number of people out there who do like them because of the success of movies such as "Saw" (I believe they are making a
third one now) - then you might just enjoy hunting.
We started out at 5am after getting up at 4.30. Our spot was on the Woodville side of the Ruahines and we had to go through a couple of kilometres of private land before we got to the Ruahine National Park. I was knackered after climbing a huge hill, only to discover that we had only climbed it to get a better view of the bush and descended it almost straight away to end up back where we had initially climbed it.
Almost the first thing we saw when we entered the National Park was a stag. I almost didn't see it. I was too busy walking along in a trance behind Dan and gawking at the untouched landscape around us. Dan had raised his gun a few times to look through the scope, but this time it was different. There was a sense of urgency in the way he did it, and only then did I see the stag on the other side of the river. It hadn't seen us. I'd never seen a deer in the wild before and it was beautiful. It had antlers and a cinnamon coloured coat - much like you would expect a deer to have. The fact was that it was wild and the only wild animals we really see here are possums, rabbits and hares, rats and mice (which hardly count) and the occasional stoat. There are random wild goats up on the east coast (and no doubt other more wild locations around the country) but even then you generally have to go off the main roads to see them.
There was a loud CRACK as Dan took a shot at the stag and then another CRACK as he fired a second time. The startled animal took flight into the bush with Dan sprinting after it, through the river, reloading his gun as he went. I had no choice but to follow, splashing my way in an ungainly manner through the river and soaking myself up to the knees, my boots filling with water.
I'd lost sight of Dan, but a few seconds later her appeared, looking disgruntled but manly and hunter-like in his gaters.
"I think I shot it," he said. "They can run nearly 200 yards purely on adrenaline. It looked like it was moving slowly too. Let's try to find it."
The next half hour was spent looking through the Toitoi (sp?) and some of the native bush which rapidly rose up into a steep hill. As we entered the bush Dan gave a yell. At first I thought he'd found the stag and I braced myself to see the animal lying dead and broken among the ferns. Unfortunately it turned out to be a large bush of some kind of stinging nettle he's walked into headfirst, whacking him on the nose. I discovered this seconds later when I absent-mindedly brushed the plant aside, only to yelp in pain as my hand began to sting.
If any deer were watching they must have been laughing at us, jumping up and down, letting out cries of agony.
Eventually we began to ascend the hill. It became clear very quickly that it was going to be nearly impossible to find the stag as the bush was to dense and the gradient too steep. I waited several minutes for Dan, who went ahead, but he joined me soon after and we decided to cut our losses and continue up the river in search of more deer.
"Up the river" turned out to be a rather long (in my opinion) hike which didn't yield and deer or wild pigs (as I was hoping for!) or even purple gorillas. The river was icy and full of slippery rocks, some of them very large. I can happily say that I was a constant source of amusement for Dan as I was constantly slipping over and landing myself in the water. At one point I managed to completely submerge myself and was certain that Dan hadn't seen. However about 2 minutes later he looked behind him to make sure I was keeping up and burst out laughing at me, dripping wet and limping along.
We never found the stag, or any other deer. Dan did return later that day to the same spot with Kevin, and one of his dogs but to no avail. The stag must have got away unharmed or with minor injuries. And on the bright side, Dan already has a freezer full of venison from his hunt the other week when he got two deer within an hour of hunting.
I know that this post may enrage some of you, but deer are an introduced pest to New Zealand. They are destroying our in native bush and it's an effective way to control them by combining the sport of hunting and the act of feeding oneself. It's not like we're shooting them in their natural habitat for their skins, or anything like that.
Let's face it - right from the ancient ages of many years ago, the guys in the caves were hunting animals for their survival. And we've always had the upperhand, even when we didn't have guns. It's called a superior neo-cortex.
