LONELY LIFE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 120, 14 February 1935, Page 8

LONELY LIFE

Shooting Out Deer In Back Country DESOLATE RANGES Scattered throughout the desolate mountain ranges of the South Island are a lew enterprising men who lead as hard, as lonely and as adventurous a life as any pioneers in the wildest outposts of civilisation. They are professional deer-hunters. Pitching their solitary tents under the very glaciers of the main range, their only contact with the world is when they ride in to the baekblock stations to renew their stores, or when they share a mountain hut with a party of Blusterers, deerstalkers, or mountaineers. One of these men, engaged in shooting out the red deer, which have played such havoc with native bush in the Mount Algidus-Manuka Point district at the head of the Rakaia River, North Canterbury, described his isolated life to a representative of “The Dominion," then encamped at the Morraine Hut on the Mathias. Although by nature a taciturn man, as would be expected of one used to his own company, he nevertheless unbent over a dinner of grilled venison steak and billy tea, and described some of the hazards and discomforts of his arduous calling. “I shoot only for the skins,” he explained. “The station-owners pay me nothing, but from the Government 1 obtain a price varying from a couple of shillings to four-and-six for the cured skins. It’s not mpch when you consider that I have to pay for my food, my ammunition and my gear, and that to earn it I must stalk and skin the deer, carry the wet hide down the mountain on my back, cure it and dry it, pack it on horse-back to the station, and have it transported thence to the city. You can guess that I make no more than a bare living. Up at the Crack of Dawn. “But I like the life. I am up at the crack of dawn, and usually get half-a dozen deer along the edge of the bush, whence the skins are easily brought in to the camp. By the time I have dealt with these the deer will have settled for the day on the sunny slopes. So I usually manage a, stalk during the afternoon, and get the skins to camp ■before dusk. I seldom fire at single deer; having been shot at a great deal the beasts are very wild, and a single report will send every deer for miles into the dense bush. So unless I can knock over five or six it’s not worth while. Besides, when one has to pack the skins down the mountainside on one’s shoulders, it's best to have them' handy together, instead of one here and one there, all over the countryside. Each skin weighs from twelve to twenty pounds, and I have carried as many as twelve skins over rough country. It's pretty hard work, but this is no job for a weakling. It takes a lit man to carry even his own weight over these hills all day." He looked fit, this weather-beaten, six-foot mountaineer. He was known to be a crack shot, never letting a deer escape wounded. He obviously knew how to be comfortable in camp, for a portable gramophone was playing and the hut was filled with the odour of freshly-baked bread. Dangers of the Occupation. Asked whether he was not afraid of illness, living alone beyond the reach of assistance, he said that his worst danger was of a fall or mishap on the hillsides. “A man with a broken leg would be as good as dead, alone in these hills,” he said. “I had a real scare the other day. which has made me very careful. I was crossing a steep shingle-slip, with a ledge of rock above, when a noise made me glance uphill. There had evidently been a couple of hinds asleep above the ledge. They had heard me or winded me, and in dashing away dislodged a boulder twice the size of a man’s head. When I looked up this rock was actually in mid-aii - , hurtling straight toward me. I .had just time to fling myself sideways, dropping my rifle, which went rattling fifty yards downhill, luckily without exploding. It was a narrow escape. “But accidents are very rare. Igo right up above the vegetation, on to the glaciers and the frozen snow. The only time I was hurt was when I feil out of a tree, fixing my wireless aerial, The life hag its compensations. One is in touch with Nature, if not with men. The mountains have an attraction all their own.”