SHOOTING AND FISHING.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18084, 11 June 1924, Page 13 (Supplement)

SHOOTING AND FISHING.

IN THE EARLY DAYS,

A SPORTSMAN’S PARADISE,

With many deep sighs of regret sportsmen of to-day who enjoyed fishing and shooting in South Canterbury in the early days, characterise those times as periods of unalloyed pleasure which have gone never to return, but they appear to derive more than a little pleasure from recalling “the good old times” which they had with rod and gun before the country was settled and when its vegetation consisted largely of Tussock, matagauri and flax, and when there was plenty of water and extensive swamps for ducks and pukald, and the native grayling was to be caught in abundance in the rivers and streams.

. A sportsman of those far-off days willingly complied with a request to tell, through the jubilee supplement of the “Herald,” something , of his experiences,, for the benefit of present-day sportsmen. Incidentally :,he admitted that, he would get some satisfaction from the story himself, as living the past over again was now about the best sport that he could get. “It was in 1882,” he said, “that I came to the Dominion from the Old Land, and settled at Ash wick Flat. I had been accumstomed to l all kinds of sport at Home, and I found New '.Zealand very much to my liking; it was in fact, : a sportsman’s paradise. He who wanted -better sport with the gun that we used to have in South Canterbury forty years ago, would be very hard to please. The district was then ..very sparsely settled; the game had been undisturbed and there were ideal breeding grounds for it. The swamps were literally full of wild fowl, chiefly grey duck and pukald, and bags of 100 birds per day were not uncommon. I remember that a friend and I shot 400 one daj r . All the gullies running out of Ashwick were full of blue duck and in all parts of South Canterbury were to be found black swans, grey and paradise duck, black and grey teal, spoonbill duck (or shovellers as we used to call them) and pukaki. “Some pheasants were imported about 1880 by the late Mr George Grey Russell, who then owned the Otipua estate, a few miles south of Timaru, but they did not multiply to any extent. I remember on one occasion when I was invited to the Otipua. estate for a day’s shooting, that I shot seven of those birds before breakfast, and laid them out for inspection on the verandah of the homestead, with great pride. My feelings underwent a decided change, however 1 , when Mr Russell saw them,and-, explained that he would not have had the birds shot for anything. They had cost him £2 each, and he..was doing all he could to preserve them. “The late Mr George Rhodes, of Claremont, also endeavoured to get pheasants to multiply on his estate, and he went to the expense of getting a gamekeeper out from Home for the purpose of looking after his birds, but it was

found impossible to get pheasants to do any good here as their natural enemies, the sparrow hawks and the harriers, were too severe on them. “Quail were fairly plentiful on the Craigmore downs, up the Motukaike, and in other parts of the district where they found suitable feed and cover, but they were easily shot when found in great coveys, and they did not long remain plentiful. “I spent many happy days at Holme Station when it comprised some thousands of acres of land in its native state. There were some 'deal breeding places for ducks there in sequestered spots where they were very seldom disturbed. On what has since been known as ‘the Weaner block there was particularly good shooting. We did not have to feed the birds in those days: nor had we to use anything in the nature of decoys, and we were able to get a bag of eighty

or ninety without any trouble. The various dams were simply alive with ducks. At Lake Vv'ainono too, there was very good shooting, gi ey duck and black swans being there in abundance; and surrounded as the lake wac with plenty of cover for the birds they bred in large numbers every season. The only public shooting places close to Timaru were at Saltwater Creek and Washdyke. At both places, there were a good many birds in the early days, and shooting from mi-mi’s, quite good sport '!’ as^ jo Iyed 1 yed there for many years. Now that the Washdyke lagoon is a sanctuary, however, many sportsmen get more enjoyment from ieok mg at the birds congregated in their haven of safety, than they previously got in shooting them. Cutile Valley, near Fairlie, was a great place for grey duck and teal; with its deep creek between high banks the ducks used to 3y out in twos and threes just as the sportsman wanted them, as he walked along with gun and dog, and there was wonderful shooting there. As for the Mackenzie Country it was always a great place for water fowl and still is. “When I think back of ‘the good old days’ my thoughts come so fast that I hardly am able to keep on one connected line, so please excuse rrm it what I am relating appears somewhat in and out, or up and down. When we used to go out on the hunt for game we tried here one day, and visited an entirely different part of the district another day, finding then, as now, that there’s pleasure in a change.

“I have a vivid recollection of shooting wild duck in Stafford Street, Timaru. There used to be a swamp in front of the section on which the Bank of New Zealand now stands, and I have shot many a duck there, and also in the gully at the back of Priest and Holdgate’s shop. Another favourite rendezvous for wild fowl was in what used to be known as Perry’s pond, which is now filled in and forms the section at the junction of Beverley road and Evans street,. In the early days one could always depend on getting half a dozen ducks there before breakfast.

“More than 30 years ago an Acclimatisation Society was formed in Geraldine, and a start was made io introduce game birds. Some fancv

ducks were imported, but it was found that they did not do well in confinement, and it was not until the South Canterbury Acclimatisation Society, with headquarters at Temuka, introduced the mallard duck, that success was achieved with imported birds. The mallard did very well, and the Society liberated some hundreds of them, but unfortunately they stopped, on the advice of Mr Edgar Stead, who said that the mallard crossed with the grey duck. What if they did? the cross was a better bird than either the pure mallard or the pure grey, and it was a more prolific breeder than the latter, rearing two and often three broods in a season. If the Society had continued to breed and liberate mallard ducks we might have seen a return to the memorable days of duck shooting in the Dominion. Domesticated geese have also been liberated in the Mackenzie Country, and up the Godley Valley, at the head of Lake Tekapo, at Lake Alexandria and the Cass river these birds are very plentiful. " The Canadian geese are also doing well at Lake Alexandria and on the smaller lagoons in that vicinity. Some fine geese weighing 20 to nearly SOlbs. are shot in the

season. They do not come down country. The domesticated geese which have been turned out are now quite wild, and are not easily shot. Pukaki are almost a bird of the past, oply a few here and there being found to-day. They are destructive birds so far as grain crops are concerned and have been poisoned to a considerable extent by poison which has been laid for rabbits.

“As for fish the brown trout had been intro duced before I came to New Zealand, am'

the time of my arrival the various streams w

beginning to be fairly well stocked. The; was very good fishing at Winchester, Temuka and in the Opihi river. Five years later practically every stretch of water in South Canterbury was stocked with brown trout. Fishing was at its zenith thirty years ago. For the past fifteen years the fish have decreased both in size and numbers, owing to the fact that when the rivers became overstocked the natural feed supply was not there in' sufficient quantity. In

the earl;/ ’ays o~e could go to the Pareora river and get fish up to eight and ten pounds, and an average of two-and-a-half to three pounds. Occasionally, when fishing at night wc used to get fish up to twenty pounds. The two staffed trout in the Acclimatisation Society’s room at Temuka weigh eighteen and nineteen-and-a-half pounds respectively, and were caught by the late Sir W. Mendelson, in the Temuka river when day fishing with a 3-x cast and a No. 0 fly. The Rangitata river was in the heydey of its fishing prosperity at that time when it was not uncommon for one rod to land 1501 b weight of fish in one night.

“The rainbow trout were introduced about 24 years ago, the first being liberated in the Pareora river. They did well for a couple of years, but gradually dwindled away. The rainbow has a habit of dropping down stream and finally disappearing in the sea. It is not a suitable fish for rivers, but has done well at Lake Alexandrina where it is landlocked. At certain times it gives excellent sport, but it is not to be relied upon in this respect. If it had a suitable spawning ground there, Lake Alexandria would become a second Taupo. The native grayling which we used to catch weighed from one to one-and-a-half pounds and were very good eating, but the trout ousted them, and they have entirely disappeared. “Now I must stop writing of the days that are no more, and get to bed perchance to dream that in a new country I have been rejuvenated by Professor Voronoff and am able once again to take part in the pleasures of the hunt which I and others enjoyed to the full in the glorious days which are no more.”