More than meats the eye

Daniel shook his head in disbelief. “You’d hunt all year for maybe three deer?” I was discussing with my son what it was like for me hunting in the 1970s and 1980s. It was the height of the commercial venison recovery industry in New Zealand and red deer had all but disappeared from the rural landscape. Swarms of helicopters – mainly the ubiquitous Hughes 500 – buzzed the mountains and bush clearings, first shooting and later capturing deer. They were ruthlessly efficient.

Unfazed, mates and I regularly hunted alpine basins, foothills and forests across the breadth of the upper South Island, getting excited if we saw fresh deer prints. We were young, fit and adventurous but only averaged three deer each for our efforts – in a good year. Chamois were plentiful, so we’d target them often, but tahr were in low numbers.

Daniel was incredulous because he was hunting in a much different era. On