From the past 2 weeks

A few more pictures from the past two weeks. The top one is on the West Coast. Very big surf over there and just wild country. The pancake rocks that you see are another iconic New Zealand place. Photo 2 and 3 are of a French village called Akaroa. Out on the Banks Peninsula about an hour from Christchurch. Very quaint, quiet place. Photos 4 and 5 are from my hike up at Lake Heron. If you can click on the panorama and make it bigger you'll get a sense of how the mountains tower over you there. One of those places pictures just can't do justice to, but nonetheless. Enjoy!!

48 Hours

Sorry it's been awhile. These past two weeks have been a whirlwind so to speak. Sadly I've only got less than 48 hours as I type this left in NZ. I fly back to the good old USA on Saturday. Looking forward to that and seeing all my family and friends but I'm sure going to miss New Zealand.

I finished with work up at Lake Heron two weeks ago and since have been traveling the northern part of the South Island. Went right up to the very top and Abel Tasman National Park where I done a very nice 3 day hike along beautiful beaches and bush. And just got back from up at Lake Heron where i done a 3 day hike on the station and I stayed in some of the huts up there. The weather was amazing and I had a really great time. Never uttered a single word for over 48 hours. Nice! Was perfect to really reflect on my adventure here in NZ. And what I might do next!! I have a few ideas but nothing dead set in my mind. So you'll have to stay tuned. I will post more photos of here in NZ over the next week or so. So stay with me. It's really hard for me to fathom that I have been here for 10 months!! It seems like yesterday I was getting on the plane to fly off to the bottom of the world with absolutely no idea what I was doing!! And one only has to read back through this blog to get to see all the things I've been so lucky to get to do here in New Zealand. I never imagined so much!! So 48 hours be damned! Stay tuned. The journeys far from over:-)

New Zealand Hunting Trifecta Complete!!

Today I completed my NZ hunting trifecta. With the collection of a Chamois. Red Deer, Himalayan Tahr, and Chamois make up the 3 big game species to hunt here. For the past month or so I've been up on the mountain at every available opportunity trying to bag one. I've come close a few times but today succeeded. I took a different approach today than I've taken the past few times really getting high up on the mountain first trying to get above them. And it worked. They live up in the really high cliffy, really rough terrain. You can kinda tell in the first photo what it's like. I got snuck up on four and picked the buck out of the group. And with one lone shot I had my Chamois!! They're just such a beautiful animal. One thing I found really interesting is that their fur is really soft. Unlike a deer, it's much more silky. And the meat appears to be good eating. That we'll soon know. I've been asked how it compares hunting here compared to Montana Elk hunting as far as the terrain goes. Here it usually is a bit more straight up, and the vegetation is not very easy to walk through. On the plus side you're not worried about running onto a Grizzly!! The only thing that can kill you here is the weather and the terrain!! Another excellent day on the mountain for sure. Reflecting back I've been privileged to bag 2 Tahr, 2 Red Deer, 1 Wild Boar, and now 1 Chamois. Wow!! I never imagined I'd get to do so much.

Signs of Spring

Slowly but surely we are transitioning into Spring here. We've had quite a bit of rain off and on the past couple of weeks. The grass is really green which is good. We started calving last week so babies are on the ground. No lambs yet, two more weeks for them. The parrot is a Kia, and I seen him Sunday while I was out for a afternoon hunt. They're a really inquisitive bird and he kept coming up to check me out. I managed to get an arms length from touching him!! A really neat bird.