opening morning with us.
There are so many of us in our family that hunt and it is really a way of life to us. I have no idea why I am a hunter but there is no denying it. There is a special feeling to be able to supply so much game or seafood to friends and family and whatever happens you are capable of supplementing the larder with great food.
Thursday I headed to CHCH to pick up Dane from the airport and we spent the afternoon and the next day getting equipment ready. We headed to Hilton which is a bit inland from Temuka on the Friday before opening. Opening morning is always on Brian and Ingrids farm. Quite a few years ago Rod used to work for them and he and Catherine are still good friends with them. We sleep on the lounge floor and the sofas and are always high on anticipation for the action that is to start early the next morning.
Daybreak found us settling into our maimai. This year the team also included Gracie with her camo gear and facepaint on. We had set all our decoys out the night before so we just had to turn on the three electronic ones and wait for the first mallards to drop in for a look. This didn't take long and soon we had a steady stream of ducks dropping in. There was quite a bit of gunfire around the area as the south island is always more involved with shooting than the north. Gracie enjoyed it but found the quiet times a bit boring. But she was kept quite busy keeping our cartridge belts loaded to the max.There is nothing worse than running out of ammo.
In the early afternoon it went a bit quiet so we called it quits. Gracie counted the ducks and we had 61 so we were very pleased with that. We packed up and headed back to Oamaru.
Next morning we were up early and heading for flag swamp down towards Dunedin. We had the layout blinds and a huge number of decoys and gear. We arrived about an hour before light as we had to ferry our gear out to our hunting spot on our backs and then get it set up. We had done really well at this spot the year before with a lot of parries coming in but we found initially it was a bit slow this time. Although early on a mob of canada geese came through and we managed to get six of those.
After a while we realised there were a lot of ducks landing up in a lucerne paddock up on a hill about 400 metres away. So we decided Dane and James would head up there with their blinds and a few silhouettes and set up. After that Rod and I just became spectators as Dane and James had mob after mob dropping in and they had a great time. At the end of the day we ended up with close to 70 ducks and the 6 geese.mix of parries and mallards.
Next day was processing day. Rod was busy and James was at school so Dane and I set too and breasted all the birds. It turned out a great success as we ended up with 51 kgs of lovely salamis made by campbell butchery at Oamaru.
Over the next few days we had a few short hunts and collected some more ducks and then we went for a wallaby hunt up the Hakataramea Valley. It was a really good walk and tough going in places and I was lucky enough to come across a group of pigs. They came up out of a gully and the first few I saw were quite small so I let them pass by. Then a bigger one came up but it was facing bum on so I let it go and then another larger one came up and I shot that one. There was still about 5 other smaller ones hiding in the tussock about 5 metres away.So that was a bit of a bonus to have a bit of wild pork for the freezer.
The wallabies were quite plentiful and proved as elusive as ever but we did quite well by the end of the day and hopefully our success makes the farmer happy to have a few less mouths eating his grass.
Saturday we took Dane back to the airport and said goodbye again then we carried on to kaikoura with another load of gear for Rod. We stayed the night then headed straight back to Oamaru. I did another trip 2 days later towing the jet boat and a heap of gear leaving at 4.30 am and arriving back at Oamaru at about 5pm. The next few days we spent helping at the farm and house.We ended up a helping with the dry cow therapy at the cowshed which brought back a few memories from days gone by. Then we packed up and said our goodbyes as we were heading north to be there when our daughter Heidi has her baby. The plan was to spend a couple of days on the beach at Kaikoura and get a few paua to take north with us.
We had a lovely time at the beach and were successful with the Paua then we took the 5th wheeler up to the farm and parked it up until we get back in a month. The crossing of the straight was good and we are now at Papamoa waiting in anticipation of saying hello to our new grandchild.
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