Talking to a bloke at the lake. He had been through the four wheel drive track to Lake Sumner towing a small tinny behind. He said the fishing was good and the scenery fabulous. The track itself was very rough though he said, and wet weather would make it marginal. Lake Taylor itself looked lovely and I think would warrant a visit in the rig for a few days at a later date.
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| Jocelyn on the beach at Lake Taylor. |
Back at Balmoral we went for a short bike ride along the edge of the Hurunui river then back to the rig for the night. The next morning Catherine called in and dropped Gracie off as she was off to the North Island to a funeral.
After breakfast we packed up and took the Inland road through to Alford Forrest just out of Methven where we parked up at Sean and Michelles place for the night. They were on a dairy farm there and doing very well. They had signed up for another year and were looking forward to their future prospects. Was really good to see them and Troy again. We only stayed the one night as next we were to meet James at Geraldine to get the maimai ready for opening morning of duck shooting.
We parked the rig at Brian and Ingrids house. It was good to catch up with them all again. The news was there were a lot of ducks around and the prospects were looking good for a reasonable shoot opening morning. James and I cut out some of the willows around the front of the maimai and put some manuka bushes in and around it for camouflage . When we first pulled up in the ute and got out there were around 200 ducks flew out of the willows along the edge of the river. So now all we needed was opening day to hurry up and get here.
James headed on back to Kaikoura and next morning Jocelyn, Gracie and I took the road through to the McKenzie Country. The first stop was Fairlie where Brian had told us we had to stop at the famous pie shop. A very busy bakery. The queue was out the door. Then onto Tekapo where we found the NZMCA camp by the lake. A pretty spot amongst the trees with views out to the lake and walking and bicycling tracks passing in front of the camp.
I'm guessing the lake temperature was around 13 degrees but Gracie still wanted to go swimming. I'm sure she is immune to the cold. There is no pussy footing around she just wanders out into the water and dives under. Then pops up and says it's lovely are you coming in? No way I don't need a wash yet and I haven't got my soap with me. We did some walks and some bike rides then after about 3 days we packed up and we were off to another one of our special camp sites on the shores of lake Benmore at the Ohau C camp out of Twizel.
The outlook from this camp is amazing. We are parked about 4 metres from the lake with the autumn colours from the willows around the lake shore. The lake is mirror calm with snow capped mountains all around. You can even see Mt Cook rising above the tussock covered plains in the distance. A very special place. This camp is usually full over the summer months as campers lease their sites for the summer. They set up a semi permanent type of camp with little gardens and fairy lights and pathways, and then come first of May it all has to be packed up and the sites emptied. The next year these campers have first right to the sites they occupied for that summer.
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| Beautiful spot at Ohau C camp. |
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| Nice place to kayak |
Being the school holidays it was a great opportunity to have Grace come camping with us. So it wasn't long and we had the kayaks down and in the water. Over the next few days Grace became quite confident and enjoyed coming out for a paddle. I spent a bit of time out fishing. I was planning to fish the canals and target a salmon or two but it was such a beautiful place where we were and I was having reasonable success here while keeping plenty of fish for the table. I had taken to smoking the trout in the webber and found as long as I kept the temperature low it produced lovely smoked trout.
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| Nice smoked trout. |
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| Nice double figure rainbow. |
Eventually Grace had to leave as school started back on Monday so we met Catherine close to Geraldine and they started the long drive back to Kaikoura. After a few more days at the lake we also had to start heading in that direction. As we came back into Fairly we had the GPS on with Lake Opuha entered. It said to take a road to the left and we would meet up onto a cross road to take us on to the lake. We got further down this road and it narrowed into a line of trees that took us onto a river crossing. Normally this would be fine but towing the rig might be a different story. I got out and went for a look. The crossing was quite deep and about 20 metres wide. Oh well worth a crack I thought. Lets see what the Ranger can do. Jocelyn was not happy about my decision to forge on ahead and she tucked her head into her arm and wouldn't look. I put it into four wheel drive and away we went. It was shallow to start with but then the nose dipped and I had water coming over the front of the bonnet. Just as well we had good clearance on the rig and the ranger didn't hesitate it just kept a steady speed and climbed out onto the far bank without a hitch. Everything got a good wash underneath and eventually Jocelyns nerves settled back to normal as well. We got to the lake and camped in a small reserve there with a lovely outlook over the man made lake Opuha.
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| Pretty lake Opuha |
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| Then there is always some dickhead who wants to park beside you and ruin the view. |
On the Thursday before duck shooting we arrived back at Kaikoura. I spent the day getting gear packed and loaded. Rod had farm chores to do to set the farm up for four days while he was away. Catherine was going to do the milkings, and Jocelyn was looking after Grace.
Around !0 am I left for Christchurch to pick up Dane from his flight from Auckland. He always looks forward to duck shooting but even more so this year as he had saved to purchase a new semi auto shotgun and he was looking forward to finally poking a few rounds through it. I arrived to pick him up and he was looking rather stressed. His bag came through ok from Auckland but it seems Jetstar had misplaced one new semi auto shotgun. No one seemed to know where it was so I got on the phone to Rod to see if he could borrow one from someone in Kaikoura. Luckily one of Rods neighbours was willing to lend an old winchester pump action for the weekend. So we carried on to Geraldine and arrived just on dark.
Dane and I had all the decoys on board so we went down to the river and set them up in front of the maimai. I had been giving decoy layout a fair bit of thought lately and had come up with a new layout plan. So hopefully in the morning we would find out whether it worked or not.
Dane was on the phone to Jetstar again and eventually found out his shotgun had been sent to Queenstown. There was no chance of getting it back for opening morning. I'm sure Dane felt like throwing a tantrum but he took it well and just got on with it. A bit later James arrived from Timaru and Rod turned up as well with the replacement shotgun. After a few beers and a good roast dinner cooked by Brian and Ingrid we made a bit of lunch for tomorrow then climbed into the sleeping bags.
The alarms went off at 5.30 and after a bit of breakfast we were into the utes and off to the maimais. Daylight arrived and with that came the ducks. And they just kept coming. Even though the weather was fine with no wind they were determined to come in to our waterway. The new decoy set up had them decoying in perfectly right out in front. In the relatively quiet spells Rod was out with Gem retreiving. I don't know if it was the setup that was helping but we all seemed to be shooting well this morning too.
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| Looking out from the maimai |
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| Early morning anticipation. |
Eric and his mate Hayse called in to see how we were going around lunch time and said they had got 54 ducks for the morning. At that point we had no idea how many we had collected. A bit later on we were to get together for a river walk and jump shoot the hotspots. So we started packing up and collecting the ducks together for a count. At the end of the count we had 140 ducks in the pile. We collected another 10 on the river walk so had 150 for the day. The limit for the central region is 50 ducks per person so between the four of us we had shot 3 limits. This was the best opening day from our spot so far and we were all pretty stoked with the day. That night Dane drove back to Christchurch and picked up his shotgun from the airport. He was a happy man.
The next morning we shot another 38 and then pulled in all the gear. The afternoon was spent processing all the ducks. We plucked quite a few of the best and fattest ones and the rest were breasted and the meat will be taken to the butcher to be made into tasty salamies. Between the two groups of shooters 280 ducks were shot for the weekend off the farm.
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| Hayes , Eric and James with some of the ducks ready for processing. |
The next day we were off to the Waimate area to hunt the high country tussock for wallabies. These wallabies have become a major problem for the farmers down this way as the numbers are always increasing but not only that they are spreading into new territory all the time. James was back at polytech so it was Rod, Brian, Hayse, Dane and myself. After leaving the truck we were straight into it. Well Rod was anyway. He had only walked a few hundred metres and he had emptied his belt full of 25 cartridges. The strike rate wasn't great though with only 3 wallabies down.
We hunted through a few areas that didn't seem to hold much but then we would find a patch of them again and the gunfire would increase and be echoing through the gullies. We stopped back at the utes and cooked up a feed of sausages and bacon between a slice of bread and that got the energy levels up again and we were back into it. The hunting picked up again and we finished the day with a fair few in the bag and pretty tired legs as well. We took a bit of meat off a couple of them as well. So wallaby casserole was going to be on the menu.
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| Rod with target species. |
By this time darkness had arrived. Dane, Hayse and I were going further south to Oamaru, Rod and Brian back to Geraldine and then Rod back to Kaikoura to TB test the cows. We pulled up in Oamaru at about 7.30pm at good friends of the Lamb family Brent and Stellas place. This is where James is boarding while he goes to polytech. Stella was out when we arrived but Brent had been busy in the kitchen cooking us a lovely dinner. James was put out as Brent had made him wait to eat until we had arrived. He was convinced he was hardly going to survive the lack of food for so long. After dinner Stella arrived and we were made to feel very welcome, a bunch of rough hunters moving in and taking over their house.
We were in for another early start as we were off for a shoot on the estuary at flag swamp. About an hours driving and then carting layout blinds and decoys out onto the mudflats. It didn't help when I got the ranger stuck in a bog either. Lucky Hayse had his toyota there to pull me out or we would have been in serious trouble. The shooting started with a hiss and a roar but then tailed off quite quickly. The birds were mostly Parries and I think we ended up with about 18 for the morning. We found setting up in the dark a bit of a drawback as when we packed up and headed out with the gear we found by the sign on the ground where we should have set up. Never mind. We said our goodbyes to Hayse as he was heading down to Queenstown for a few days and Dane and I were back on the road to Kaikoura.
Over the next few days we all got caught up in the farm work. Rod had heifers leaving the run off to go out to grazing and the new season calves had to be trucked up to the Puhi block, then walked up the road and onto the block. The cows were dried off and on the last milking Dane and I found ourselves in the shed helping administer dry cow therapy into each teat. I found everything reminiscent of old times but it was reasonably new to Dane. Especially working in the cowshed. Not for him he reckoned this dairy farming with piss and shit everywhere, although he looked to be taking it in his stride even though he struck a couple that gave him a good boot in the hand.
We also got time for another short parrie shoot and a quick look for a deer. We got very close too as we had a hind pass by at about 12 metres but when she stopped she stopped in a place we couldn't get a shot. Never mind it was a good hunt. We had plans to hunt Rods neighbours station but unfortunately the weather turned and stuffed up that plan. Saturday morning came around and it was time to get Dane back to Christchurch airport.
Jocelyn and I are looking after Gracie for a few weeks now as Catherine is off overseas with her parents and Monique. We also have a special trip planned and Gracie is counting down the days so I will tell you about that on my next story.
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| Oh Gracie what are you doing. Haha |
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| I just love photos of pretty fish. |
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