A new year and a new place

[misanthropic_curmudgeon]

A New Place

The New Year was here, and the newest baby was sleeping through: I was
off into the hills!

In conjunction with The New Year and The New Baby, it seemed somewhat
fitting that we check out A New Place, and so a couple of us piled
into the 4x4 and drove down early with a cunning plan of checking out
an area that looked quite promising on the map. If things looked
good, we’d camp there and hunt it for the weekend, and if not we’d
bail out at meet up with a third guy who was coming down later.

This new area showed real promise on the map, with rivers and gullies
well positioned for the sun. We’d been eyeing it for awhile, and
discussing a plan of attack for about eighteen months before finally
getting on and having a darn good sniff. The plan was to take a
bearing to creek, camp where it joined a river, and hunt each side of
it.

What can I say, but it seemed like somebody had transplanted Stewart
Island up north. This was the nastiest, thickest, wettest, scrappiest
piece of scrubby scrappy mongrelised bush I have ever encountered in
the North Island. It was disgusting. We could not take two strides
without stepping over, under, or around something that either trying
to scratch your face your jab you in your soft bits. And no deer
sign.

Where the topo maps showed a gentle contour, it was all 10 meter high
guts and collapsed canopy. Four about three hours we fought through
this, always expecting to pop through it: “its got to open up soon” we
consoled ourselves with, and “if it is this hard to get through, then
other hunters won’t be here” which then extrapolates to “and there’ll
be heaps of dear on the other side!”.

We found our creek, and we attempted to follow it to the river, but
the creek just made matters worse. Whereas before we could not take
two steps before endangering a disembowelling, this time it was half-a-
step and a ducking. And there was still no sign or deer.

And so we gave up. We took a compass bearing back to the car, and
bailed. That river might well have a heap of dear in it, but we’ll
have to find another way in: there is no way we could carry a deer out
through that. My hands and legs were a mess, shredded by bushlawyer
and cutty-grass, and I've got a monster-bruise on my left-bicep where
I fell and was stopped by a sharp stick. Our packs were battered and
we were tired.

It got dark was we bush-bashed our way out, and drove to the meeting
point to see our third companion had already headed in. I re-donned
my pack, while the other guy opted to stay the night at the car. We
agreed on a plan for the next day, and I headed along a nice,
blissfull, track, for the hour-long walk ahead which seemed positively
simple and easy after the nightmare of a few hours beforehand, and met
up with the third guy at our pre-arranged campsite.

The next day was pretty much like the first but for the terrain: still
no fresh sign of any deer, but at least it was not a slog to get
anywhere, and that night I sat at camp somewhat dejected after two
days of my forts hunt in months and not even a sighting or fresh deer
sign to show for my efforts. Its times like these that hunting humbles
you: you get slapped and miss out when you try it on a new place, and
when you return to an old faithful it lets you down, as if to spurn
you for looking at another.

The last day, Sunday, the day we normally congregate at the deer-in-
the-tree of whoever has been successful, just rubs in our collective
failure. Rather than all venturing to a fallen deer for a collective
butchering, we mooch off for a quick sniff, hopeful and optimistic
that things might change in the last few hours.

But no such luck. Fate has indeed slapped us for being unfaithful by
looking elsewhere, and so we return to camp, pack up, and trudge out.
Last time we were all here we all knocked over animals (albeit goats)
but this time the tables are completely reversed, and we all go home
without even a sighting.

That’s hunting, I suppose.