Accurate Hunts, a life outdoors.
Ep. 12: DIY New Zealand public land Red Stags and importing 23kg of antlers from Canada!
Ever found yourself swapping the city skyline for the untamed wilds of New Zealand and Australia? Our latest guest, Gio, did just that. Transitioning from Sydney's sandy beaches to the rugged terrains of public lands, Gio, a first-generation hunter, shares the exhilarating highs and gritty lows of his self-guided hunting adventures. With a narrative that's part practical guidebook and part personal transformation, he regales us with stories that navigate the complexities of international hunting regulations, including a race against the clock to secure a New Zealand firearm permit.
Unpack the essentials of backcountry exploration with us, from the Snowy Mountains' rustic accommodations to the weight of celebration beers on a 10-day backpack mountain goat hunt. Gio's journey is a testament to the power of preparation and the spirit of adventure, offering a treasure trove of tips on gear selection and meal planning. His experiences, dotted with humor, highlight the significance of camaraderie in overcoming the unpredictable nature of wilderness hunting, where even river crossings and fogged-out paths can turn into gripping tales of survival and resourcefulness.
Wrap up the episode with a chuckle as Dodge recounts his Canadian honeymoon, where an antler shopping spree leads to a comical airport encounter, proving that love and hunting can indeed mix. Whether you're a seasoned hunter or an urbanite dreaming of venison-filled freezers, this episode promises a mix of laughter, learning, and a shared passion for the great outdoors. Join us for an episode that's as rich in the humor of minimalist packing as it is in the strategy of stalking stags through binoculars.
For the latest information, news, giveaways and anything mentioned on the show head over to our Facebook, Instagram or website.
If you have a question, comment, topic, gear review suggestion or a guest that you'd like to hear on the show, shoot an email to accuratehunts@gmail.com or via our socials.
Ever found yourself swapping the city skyline for the untamed wilds of New Zealand and Australia? Our latest guest, Gio, did just that. Transitioning from Sydney's sandy beaches to the rugged terrains of public lands, Gio, a first-generation hunter, shares the exhilarating highs and gritty lows of his self-guided hunting adventures. With a narrative that's part practical guidebook and part personal transformation, he regales us with stories that navigate the complexities of international hunting regulations, including a race against the clock to secure a New Zealand firearm permit.
Unpack the essentials of backcountry exploration with us, from the Snowy Mountains' rustic accommodations to the weight of celebration beers on a 10-day backpack mountain goat hunt. Gio's journey is a testament to the power of preparation and the spirit of adventure, offering a treasure trove of tips on gear selection and meal planning. His experiences, dotted with humor, highlight the significance of camaraderie in overcoming the unpredictable nature of wilderness hunting, where even river crossings and fogged-out paths can turn into gripping tales of survival and resourcefulness.
Wrap up the episode with a chuckle as Dodge recounts his Canadian honeymoon, where an antler shopping spree leads to a comical airport encounter, proving that love and hunting can indeed mix. Whether you're a seasoned hunter or an urbanite dreaming of venison-filled freezers, this episode promises a mix of laughter, learning, and a shared passion for the great outdoors. Join us for an episode that's as rich in the humor of minimalist packing as it is in the strategy of stalking stags through binoculars.
For the latest information, news, giveaways and anything mentioned on the show head over to our Facebook, Instagram or website.
If you have a question, comment, topic, gear review suggestion or a guest that you'd like to hear on the show, shoot an email to accuratehunts@gmail.com or via our socials.
They issue you with the NZ Police, issue you with a temporary firearms permit. It's an A4 printout, basically, which is your online application, but it's colour and they sign it with ink and that's what you have to carry with you at all times when you're over there, along with your Aussie licence and passport and other identifying.
Speaker 2:And she goes. Well, it's because it's like a set of antlers, you know it goes down the conveyor belt. We've got to process it like a bag. I was like, oh no, these are just like single ones. She goes oh, don't worry about the fee.
Speaker 1:then so in my head I'm like right, I've got like 30. Yeah, the stag let out one more roar and it looked like he was going to come towards us because he was just standing there staring at us for probably all of felt like ages. It was probably a minute, minute and a half just roaring staring at us trying to figure out what we were.
Speaker 2:Back to Accurate Hunt. So Life Outdoors. I have Gio with us tonight, coming from what I would call the city, but anywhere north of Middigong is the city, as we've just discovered. We've just been talking about something we'll rip and do later and I told him to shut up because he was giving away all the details and I don't like talking about it before we start. But looking forward to tonight, we're going to cover some fun stuff domestically and internationally. Geo's been up to. So welcome to the show, mate. How you been.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much great to be here long time listener. Yes, um yeah, yeah, trying to, trying to get out as much as possible, but, um, yeah, I'm keen to tell the story and keen to describe what adventures I've been on, both here and over in New Zealand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's what we're here to talk about. I've been like you said. You're a keen listener. You've been hanging around. I think that's how we met. I just missed that message. I had another podcast-related topic some time ago and kept in touch. It turns out we've got a few friends in common, and Joel, tristan and Dean as well. We're sure that's right. Yeah, poor old Dean, I ruined his private access. I'll let him deal that story because he's coming on soon to talk about something as well, but it's. You've been doing something recently that I, I want to say, envy. I do do a fair bit in New Zealand, but it's a little bit different. We do a lot of the estate style high fence guided stuff, and you've been over there playing, doing the free range, self-guided stuff, and that's what I got you on here to talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, keen to keen to go through it. It's, it's, it's such an awesome place. So, yeah, it blows my mind every time I go there. So, yeah, I love to talk about it.
Speaker 2:How many times have you?
Speaker 1:been. I've been over there twice this year and last year, and I mean I call myself a pretty new hunter. I've been hunting for about three and a half years.
Speaker 2:Talk about that. Why did that start?
Speaker 1:Well, I've actually owned rifles for I'm 36 now. Pretty much shortly after I turned 18 and applied, got the permit to acquire, went into the store and I sort of said, what do you want to do? And I said I want to shoot some rifles, I want to go target practice but also want to get into hunting. So, long story short, ended up with a Weatherby Vanguard 270. And yeah, I mean I did a bunch of range days and enjoyed that a lot but never actually got into the hunting side of things. Yeah, I mean I did a bunch of range days and enjoyed that a lot but never actually got into the hunting side of things because I just didn't know anyone that hunted. None of my friends hunted. I'm a as I've heard you say before first-generation hunter. You know none of my family hunted, but it's always appealed to me.
Speaker 1:I was actually born in Europe, in Italy, and moved to Australia when I was three. I've grown up and lived in Sydney my whole life, here on the northern beaches. So the beach is something that's a big part of my life, either in under or on the water. That's sort of where I spend most of my time. But the hunting side I just never got into and it wasn't till it was after a crate I've I think COVID had just hit. So plenty of time you know to spend locally.
Speaker 1:And I was with a mate shout out to Jack and he said he was going to, yeah, for a hunt on the weekend and that was kind of it. The rest is history. I said, mate, let's do this, teach me, and sort of how do you do it? I didn't know where to start. I think I actually had an R license back, way back when I was, you know, 18, 19, but let that lapse because I just never used it and so renewed the fee, paid the fee, renewed the R licence and he said this is what you've got to do, book this forest and we'll go down, and the rest is history. So that was relatively new to hunting but done a fair bit of it over the last three and a half years.
Speaker 2:The majority has been. Has all of it been public land?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all been public land hunting.
Speaker 2:Can you just go and check out a private block when we spoke about it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've hunted. That was the first so recently. You're right recently, through a friend, through work, got introduced to a property owner and went over there, but I wouldn't call it hunting, it was more shooting and that was only for a couple of hours. How was it? It was well okay. So we went there.
Speaker 2:I don't know the answer because we spoke about. When I asked you to come on the podcast, you were like going down that afternoon. I was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it were like going down that afternoon. I don't know how it went. Yeah, it went well, it went well. So it just kind of blew my mind. Actually. We get there and I met the property owner and we had dinner and a beer, and then it was already dark by then, because it was only recently. So we went out for a bit of a spotlight and literally the first paddock gate that we opened there was a, like a decent buck just just standing there. Um, we didn't take it, it was. It ultimately gave us a slip, but we, um, we went and bumped into shortly after a mob of six, six does and, yeah, shot one. That was probably within the first half an hour and, yeah, took the meat, chucked it on the back of the ute and that was kind of it. So, yeah, very, very private land spotlighting, yeah. So I haven't hunted it per se, I've, I've shot that one time, but pretty much the last four years have been exclusively state forest hunting, both central, west and down south.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you can keep. I keep blocks like that as meat runs, you know like. If they're that easy and you need some meat, just whip out at night and go and get a few and it gets it done pretty quickly. You don't need to put the full weekend into. But it's not as romantic either.
Speaker 1:I had literally come back from New Zealand and so I didn't have much of a leave pass to go for longer than what I did, so I drove down. I think it was probably 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock. I left here in Sydney, got down it's a couple of hours south of Sydney and probably two and a half hours Got there, had dinner, went out for a spotlight and drove home all in the one night. So, yeah, definitely what I would call a meat run. Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, that's efficiency at its max.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And okay, so you've done a few state forests and things and you've become reasonably confident in New South Wales state forests Successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we've got a. Yeah, absolutely, I think we've got a really good system. You know the R licence system, obviously, compared to some of the other states in the country that don't have public land hunting Queensland, for instance. But yeah so probably try and get out every on average, maybe every couple of months. I'll probably do maybe six or seven hunts a year, All seasons, winter, summer, the rut.
Speaker 2:Do you prefer to target one forest and know it well, or do you sort of touch on a few, depending on seasons? Or do you?
Speaker 1:sort of touch on a few, depending on seasons. I do like the aspect of learning new terrain, learning a new forest, the challenge of being somewhere you haven't been. The challenge I've got is with a two-year-old. The time now is so hard to get, and so I've tended to focus on forests that I know and have sort of scouted and I'm pretty familiar with. So don't get me wrong, I do enjoy different forests, but I've tended to, probably in the last year or so, focus on the same forest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to ask you a question I haven't asked other people this, but I want to make it a bit of a regular question and it's what would you consider a successful hunt? And I'll give you my answer. Like I said, I haven't asked this question before and to me, a successful hunt is killing something. I'm not at the point where a successful hunt is coming home with a smile on my face not seeing anything, and it comes from a private land background, not these guys that spend four or five years trudging through state forest not to shoot anything, so situational yeah, yeah, look, definitely a successful hunt is definitely one that I come home with, um, with some meat.
Speaker 1:That's definitely a success in my books. But at the same time, in the early days of state forest hunting, I was going multiple times, multiple trips with nothing. And for me I mean, yes, I hunt and the main goal is to get meat. But for me I work in the city, you know corporate job, nine to five, monday to Friday. I live in what you'd describe as the city, you know the suburbs of Sydney.
Speaker 1:It's, for me, getting out to the bush is a way to really switch off, unwind, disconnect, and so, you know, being out there is just a success in itself. Having the time to be immersed in nature, that's really a big part of it too. A big part is obviously coming home with meat, because I ended up having to buy a chest freezer at home and that's stocked. We eat venison at know once or twice a week at a minimum, um. So for me, a big part of it is, you know, being um, you know being in a position where you can, you know, feed the family off the things that you catch, be it deer, or, or fish, or you know anything else yeah, and you mentioned earlier that you're a pretty keen fisho.
Speaker 2:Being that close to the beach, do you bow hunt as well. Like you're a spearfisher, so do you bow hunt.
Speaker 1:I haven't made the transition yet. Some of my mates do now that sort of. I've got a decent crew of people that I can hunt with and most of them actually I fish and spearfish with. So some of them have made the transition to bow hunting. I haven't yet, but I can definitely see myself making that transition soon. I think I wouldn't say I've fully mastered, if you like, hunting with a rifle yet. You know there's a lot of things I want to achieve with a rifle first before I up the challenge and move to bow hunting, but I can definitely see myself going there in time.
Speaker 2:Flipping that around a little bit, I found that I wouldn't call myself a bow hunter, by any means. Definitely a bow shooter. Not a bow hunter, but any little bit of bow hunting I do do, or spend time with someone that does do. It makes you a better rifle shooter because it forces you to get closer, it forces you to pay attention to the wind more it the little things that you can kind of let slip a little when you're rifle hunting. But I think yeah, yeah, it improves. It will improve you as a rifle hunter if you did try it.
Speaker 1:Big time, big time it's. As you know, having done a couple of state forest hunts, it's bloody hard. It's bloody hard enough with a rifle, but I can definitely see the way that your skills would just get so much better.
Speaker 2:Leave the go for your private block. That's right, maybe yeah, absolutely when the when the pressure's not on as much. So a couple of years now three and a half years in new south wales state forest, and then you decided how did the new zealand thing come about? Because it's sort of not something most people do early on in their hunting journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day. I think I'd actually probably shout out to Tristan for getting me onto Hunter's Club. So, for anyone that hasn't watched any episodes that those guys do, it's a really, really sleek production, mainly hunting in New Zealand all sorts of species, and they do some free episodes on YouTube. They also have a paid series that you can purchase, or single episodes if you like, but that really just showed me how, like, what hunting is in New Zealand and what it's all about, and that just appealed to me massively.
Speaker 1:So I think you and I spoke, um, when I was doing a bit of research into it and and ultimately I did go the diy route on public land. But, um, it's just, I mean, regardless of whether you go guided or diy, it's. I encourage everyone to look into it and and get over there. It's, it's so close the the scenery's amazing that the hills are just. You know they're challenging, as, as I'll tell you in a little bit, but it's, it's just so good being there and it is just so close, like four and a half hours.
Speaker 2:You know you can get flights for 600 bucks return if you book far enough in advance. I liken it to, or I say that it's usually the first international step for someone. For an Australian hunter, my first international trip, I went to Africa. That's not normal. That's not the normal journey. Most people tip the toe in the water and try New Zealand because, although the hunts may be expensive, from the guided point of view the travel's not, whereas if you go to africa you spend a lot more on the flight but a lot less once you get there. So it's uh yeah, it's dangerously close and some guys are just addicted to it and they do it regularly.
Speaker 1:it seems like that started for you yeah, I mean, if I can do this trip once a year, I'll be, I'll be a happy man. Um, as, yeah, for all the reasons that you mentioned, it's so close. Um, they have a really good public land system. You, you know you literally. Well, you literally just put in, you go into the department of conversation of conservation website in new in New Zealand and it's basically your first name, address, details, email where you're hunting, and you click apply and it spits out a PDF. That's pretty much the permit from a public land perspective. There's obviously other steps as Aussies to get over there which we can get into as well. But yeah, it's pretty open. You just book where you want to go and go.
Speaker 2:How did you pick where you wanted to go?
Speaker 1:That I did have a bit of guidance with. So a friend of mine that lives here is a Kiwi. He has a friend over there that hunts and he actually joined us on that first hunt. So it was myself and him and another guy that didn't hunt but in the lead up to it he had hunted there. He had hunted there a couple of times in winter and sort of in summer. So I knew the conditions and knew sort of the terrain and I was happy to go where he sort of suggested to in that general area. Was he going with you? He ended up coming with us that first year. He didn't this year, but he came that first year but actually met us on the second day. So, um, and we can get into it um later.
Speaker 1:But but the start of the trip's a bit of a river crossing and it had rained. I was actually over there for a wedding the first year I went there. So that was the original purpose of the trip to to the south island and uh, I feel for them, but they must have had 100 mil of rain on their wedding day. You know, in the marquee it was completely sealed. The wedding guests had sort of two inches of water, you know, at their feet.
Speaker 1:And so when we got there to the spot, he sort of marked it, sent me the marks on the app and we app and and, um, we get there and the river, you know, was I mean we did a dry run without our packs. It was up to our chest, um, you know, at the deepest point, and flowing really hard, whereas you know, and freezing, absolutely freezing, whereas you know, he'd said, when he hunted it, he, you know, he said, oh, it's probably probably waist high, so it was running probably a couple of foot, um, higher than it and it would normally. So, um, he ended up sort of meeting us on that second, on that second day, but we, we wasted probably six hours trying to find a safe spot to cross, and that's the whole thing in itself. You know, those, those rivers are, can be pretty, pretty dangerous.
Speaker 2:So not to be underestimated, that's for sure that's a lot of weight that water can push to oh yeah, especially when you're carrying a you know 30 kilo pack on your back with a rifle. Yes, nervous, it's like when you fall over at the pub and you don't want to drop your beer, do anything, you'll fall over, but you won't drop your rifle, that's for sure yeah, did you do it in multiple trips, or you just carried all your stuff over in one go and then got dressed on the other side yeah, so the so the first year we did it.
Speaker 1:Well, we had to find a safe spot to cross, so we actually tried probably three or four times in that sort of five or six-hour block that it took us to cross, and we did a dry run just in our togs and crocs Crocs are an essential bit of gear when river crossing over there and so we finally found a place. It was sort of hard to the river was splitting too, so we had to cross at a point that was safe and then find another spot to cross. That was almost like two crossings in one. We did that without our packs and, um, then we we crossed back and then did it with a fully loaded pack the second time.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it took us two guys yeah, that stuff's pretty fun and scary at the same time. Yeah, yeah, definitely so he met you on the second day. So we'll just start with your first trip on the first year. Was it pretty daunting or were you excited, do you think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, very daunting.
Speaker 2:I mean, you're at the bottom where the river is, but I know what you're looking at, even though I don't know where you were. It's a massive hill in front of you most times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, I know what you're looking at, even though I don't know where you were. It's a massive hill in front of you most times. Yeah, definitely. So there was a sort of um river mouth, if you like. That that um fed into the main river that we had to cross, and so we're staring down the valleys, sort of up the river, and I'm just going how the hell are we going to do this? It's raining, it's windy, it's cold.
Speaker 1:I'm with another mate who he doesn't hunt here in Australia or overseas. He was just there for the hike and the experience and it was his friend that ultimately gave us the pins in the area and where to hunt. But then was meeting us on the second day and it was daunting as hell, you know. We almost gave up. We were at the point where we're like we'll try one more time, but we just, yeah, it's impossible to cross it at this point, so I'm glad we didn't and we crossed it and then, yeah, hiked sort of 10K up the river and got to the hut that we all agreed that we'd meet at.
Speaker 2:Were you on a trail.
Speaker 1:There's a trail that leads to the hut. So the thing about New Zealand is they've got a really good app called NZ Topo and that's kind of what I use for the majority of the planning of the hunt and it marks out where there's tracks, where there's huts, it marks hunting areas, so where you're allowed to hunt, things like that. So you can mark waypoints, you know, leave a snail trail. It measures, you know, your elevation, your distance, you can measure distances. So it's pretty useful. So we got to the hut and we waited there for him and inreached him to let him know that it was a bit of a nightmare to cross. But, yeah, sure enough, by the time he got there in the morning, first thing he managed to cross at the original spot because the water had subsided. It drops pretty quick. It rises and drops pretty quick from from what I've experienced. And, um, yeah, sort of three hours after that he was, he was with us at the hut and we we started the hike up to the, to the tops and when.
Speaker 2:When you say hut for those people that haven't been over there, can you describe like? Do you know much of the history about the huts and why they were set up and where they are?
Speaker 1:I don't know much about the histories. Maybe you can describe.
Speaker 2:Only a little bit and please jump on and correct me if I'm wrong. But the majority of them belonged to fur trappers and things that was along their routes while they were trapping possums and wallabies and whatnot over the years and they were built. But there was an issue and again someone's going to blast me for doing talking about this wrong. There's an issue just recently where I'm going to say doc, went in and demolished a heap of them and yeah, okay they weren't supposed to.
Speaker 2:They sort of knew they'd'd be repercussions but they wanted to get rid of them because they were introduced, type you know. Anyway, that ended up in court or whatever. So please someone correct me and tell me the real story. But yeah, very old. Snowy Mountains style huts have you seen any of those?
Speaker 1:They are, I haven't, no, no, but I have seen some over there and they range in size, they range in quality. Some you can book, some you can't. The main one that we used for that first night was I think it's got one bunk bed and one other mattress in it so it sleeps three. I think you can sleep a fourth on the floor, but it's pretty basic. That's pretty much all that's in there. It's a wooden with a tin roof most of the time tiny shack, and that's pretty much it.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to get out of the bad weather.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, definitely. We used the hut on this year's trip just because we had some weather coming in on the last day and didn't want to be hiking down a mountain in those conditions. So, yeah, we stayed there. But the downside with it was actually when we got there the first night this year it was peak raw and the hut was full and there was probably 10 tents around around the hunt, so they are popular on those tracks atmosphere though yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:It was we actually got in late this year. So, um, um spoke. I only spoke to a couple of people, um that were there. Um, yeah, the first thing that that I saw was a, a nice eight pointer head just resting up against the, against the hut, which was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:It definitely got us all excited, um but yeah, did you use the hut as a base just for the first night or for the whole hunt?
Speaker 1:well, so we flew both times. So the first trip I I flew internal from Queenstown to Christchurch. This year we flew. I just flew from Sydney first thing in the morning. We got to Christchurch probably 2 o'clock and so we used the hut as a base only because by the time we got the car and drove it's a couple of hours from Christchurch. By the time we crossed the river the sun had, like basically the sun had already set, and so it was head torches on and we got there pretty late. So we just pitched a tent near the hut and then hiked the side of the hike the next morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they just kept coming back to there each night.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. So we set up on the tops, so we packed the tents up.
Speaker 2:How far are we talking from the river? Just to visualize From the river to the hut and then from the hut to the top.
Speaker 1:River to the hut was about 10K, pretty flat. There's a few smaller river crossings that you have to do, but pretty much it's a narrow track so it's pretty easy going. So that's about 10K and then, yeah, from the hut it's more about the vertical metres that you're ascending because there's no track to where sort of the spot that we were hunting. That's kind of the most challenging part of the. You know, the spot that we were hunting, um, that's, that's kind of the.
Speaker 2:That's the most challenging part of of the whole whole experience and can you liken the terrain and what you were sort of pushing through when there was no track? Can you liken that to anything we have here in australia, like, was it ferns, was it mossy, was it? You know, there's nothing super prickly over there. There's some that really want to eat you.
Speaker 1:No, and yeah, that's a good point. I mean, over there, you know you're walking through, you know tussock and you know long grass and you know nothing over there can really, yeah, compared to Australia, we don't have the snakes. You're wearing gaiters, but purely for grass seeds and moisture protection rather than snake bites. So yeah, look, the non-track ascent, the climb up was. It's thick as anything. It's as you said, it's mossy, it's slippery. Your foot's going through tree roots. You know, carrying a fully loaded pack, you know 30 plus kilos tree roots, you know, carrying a fully loaded pack, you know 30 plus kilos. It's actually pretty dangerous both going up and going down. So you really need to take your time. But the hills are steep. They are very, very steep. We think the ascent was 930 metres from the hut to basically where we set up camp and then you're pretty much on the tops. But you can go another 100 metres if you want to the very top. So yeah, it's a big climb and it's just you've got to go slow.
Speaker 2:There's no other way to do it? And why had you picked that spot, Was it? You're chasing reds, tar chamois.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mainly reds. We'd seen a bunch of reds the first year, I think. So last year we only had a day and a half on the tops, just because of the timing and the way that we'd planned it and a day of the side coming in and out staying at the hut, but we went so, yeah, so we saw probably 40 deer in that day and a half on the tops. I was a bit early for the raw last year so we didn't actually see any stags, but we knew the area had deer and the guy um who we went with had seen deer and any numbers. So we figured that was sort of our best, best bet. And yeah, we didn't. We didn't see anyone else up the tops there, um, no other hunters, um, so and that was the same for this year as well well, that's, that's the other thing.
Speaker 1:You you go somewhere so hard to get to, chances are you're not going to, you're going to cut out most people. We bumped into a couple that were crossing when we were crossing this year and they'd heard a bunch of roaring but they just hunted the river and the flats at the bottom. So some people do do that and and they're there, but I don't know. I like going up the tops, being able to just sit on a on a ridge and just glass and spot and stalk. I really enjoy that.
Speaker 2:You don't get a lot of that state forest hunting here in new south wales, so you don't get the long range visibility that's right yeah there's not a whole lot of use for a spotting scope, but so if you're running a spotting scope, then are you guys sharing loads in your backpacks, or is everyone just looking at their own?
Speaker 1:stuff? That's a really good question. Um, you would have thought I learned last year with, uh, an overly heavy pack. In fact, you know, speaking of Tristan, who's someone who's an absolute gram chaser you know ex-Army or still in the Army, I should say but I'd done a few tours and you know he was telling me how he cuts his toothbrush in half and you squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube and, you know, go full, minimal.
Speaker 1:But I never got that and I never understood why people did that. I just, I don't know, you don't know, until you then are in a position where you've got a pack that's way too heavy for you and you, very quickly, you know, learn from that mistake. And you would have thought that I learned this year. But, um, I probably did cut about five kilos. I managed to, you know, last year I think I had three knives, two power banks, you know, full cookware set up um, my own tent, um, and not even one of those lightweight ones, I think it's three and a half kilo tent, you know. So, two manor, but still pretty heavy. So, yeah, you kind of, you try, and you know, the more times you do it, the better you get at it and the more streamlined your gear setup is. So yeah, I've forgotten if there was a question there that you'd asked.
Speaker 2:No, I said, are you?
Speaker 1:sharing the loads? Oh, sharing loads, yeah, so, to your point, we did to an extent, but not as much as we probably should have. So, you know, you probably only need one jet boil we had, you know, one per person you probably only need. You could probably share a tent. If you wanted to really need um, you could probably share it. Share a tent if you wanted to really um, um, you could share a lot of things. But I think, um, yeah, I think we didn't really do that properly this year and we'll probably, um, probably, you know our packs probably a little bit too heavy, so next year we'll probably be a little bit lighter two of you hunting this year, or just two, you and your yeah, two of us hunting, yeah, so there's four of us all up two guys that were with us for the hike and two of us hunting, so two rifles.
Speaker 2:That's handy. They don't carry a rifle, but they can carry some meat out.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's funny we mentioned Tristan. I mean I talked to him. I don't talk to him that much now, but he put a post up the other day on State Forest page, I think and it was about what's in his backpack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I saw that the responses were pretty interesting because I understand that he's a Graham chaser, but a lot of people don't know that about him and they were questioning things and then the general consensus was no, I just take a four-pack of E's and a pack of Dari's and my dog's not, and a dog yeah.
Speaker 2:There were some funny answers on that. But when you really get into the serious, you know, weight-restricted hiking challenges, it's important, like it matters, and it just it mattered. And I'm definitely well away from my peak fitness but when I was at my peak I was, you know, fit enough that I could carry. I think the worst one I did was like 54 kilo pack out and that was a. It was a 10 day backpack trip and it was a mountain goat hunt and it was just myself and the client. There's some other stories related to that trip about bears and things, but not important. It was a 10-day pack-in and I took everything, because the hunters turn up with backpacks that aren't designed for backpacking. And his was like an ebel stock, which is an american brand. There's heaps of fabric, not a lot storage and it's got these arms that swing out. It opens up and you can put your rifle in there and then pack it in it. It's like a swaddle for it, but anyway it's just wasted fabric and weight. So I had the tent, I had the food for both of us for 10 days, I had my hunting gear, sleeping bag, the cooking gear I packed in. He had a mountain goat tag and a black bear tag. So I packed in four cans of beer. I thought we could celebrate one each. So we got in there.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a massive hike in, I want to say it was. We quad biked for like three hours to as far as we could get to a wilderness zone and then we parked them up and then it was like a seven-hour hike and it wasn't treacherous. It was along a creek bed crossing 3,000 times. But when we got there we actually got in late. It was dark. I'd never been to this place. We were going to a dot on a map that my boss had showed me and I was like no, I've had it. We're setting up camp. It's 10 o'clock and I said what have you got in your backpack? And he pulls it out and it's like gun, chocolate, knife, rain gear and that was it and he had no room for anything else. So we're unpacking and we set up tent and did all that stuff and I got out the beers and I showed him. I was pretty excited. I thought it would be a nice treat, because I don't actually drink. That was a waste of what's that?
Speaker 1:1.2 kilos or something, 50. How heavy did you say it was 50?
Speaker 2:On the way out, I came out because we shot a gun. Oh right, yeah, 50, how heavy did you say it was 50? On the way out, I came out it because we shot. All right, yeah, yeah, yeah, and he couldn't fit any more in his backpack. So, anyway, we'll get to the way out. So I set up the camp.
Speaker 2:We woke up in the morning and the actual designated camp spot was like 300 meters from us but we couldn't see it at night time and it was like a nice smooth sand bed and hot tie-up rails for horses and all sorts of things and we camped on this rocky piece of crap. But it was like 10 o'clock at night and I couldn't be bothered going any further. We hunted and, yeah, he was successful and shot this mountain goat. But we packed out and so I had the mountain goat full body cape because no one half mounts a mountain goat full body cape and some meat. We couldn't take much. We took a fair bit down to camp and then we ate a fair bit for two days and then we packed out. But yeah, 52 kilos it was, and I remember getting back I just had stuff hanging off my backpack everywhere.
Speaker 2:Not much was in it, everything was around it. It was a sky archer 6200 inch bag. It's a Stone Glacier Great backpack, love it. It's just over there, out of sight.
Speaker 2:But we got back to the quad bike and I remember taking my backpack off and it's been a long explanation, but I'll get there. And you know, when you walk down the bottom, you walk down steps and your brain thinks there's one more, but there's not, yeah, and your feet just do it and you're like, oh, you stumble a bit all the same on the top, you think there's one more and you put that big step in but there's nothing there. I took my backpack off and like I went to walk but my body was correcting for a backpack I didn't have on and I did these weird like moon walk. It's like a baby elephant, a baby giraffe sorry, they've just been born legs everywhere and only for, like I reckon, four or five steps. And then my body worked it out. But that was the weirdest feeling. And, uh, I definitely went home and culled a lot of gear and I never took beer again. We went to whiskey because you could take one bottle of whiskey and get a lot more shots out of it that's right.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's insane though and I wasn't comfortable.
Speaker 2:But I was at, yeah, my peakish fitness, which is like 83 kilos and strong and keen and dumb, but I wouldn't want to do it now yeah, no, it's um 30 kilos.
Speaker 1:You reckon yours was oh, it was well with the rifle. Yeah, so the pack I tried to this rifle's probably four, four and a half kilo. All that with, you know, skype and Bipod, and you know yeah, what pack are you? Running. It's a Bushbuck. What do they call them? Destroyers? 90 litre oh a big one. It's big, yeah, yeah. Well, it has the capacity to be big.
Speaker 2:I mean, you can always pack it down.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, so you can. I mean, I use it for short half-day trips here in Australia, but it cinches. The beauty of it is it's not the most lightweight pack. But you know, you can take the Skylid off and that's, I think, 5 litres, and then the sides just really cinch down pretty hard. So you end up with a pretty light pack and it's got a meat shelf, which is good. So it's got that little external frame. It does Not a full external frame, external frame. It does, oh, not the not a full external frame. It kind of, um, the pack kind of just comes apart and you can shove meat in in between the, the pack and the on the shelf. Um, in saying that actually you can take the whole pack off and just have it as a, as a frame, so, yeah, I guess it does. Um, it have that. So that's pretty good. So that carried most of our gear on our trip. So, yeah, so with the rifle pack, water, I think it was about 31, and then, yeah, heavier on the way back.
Speaker 2:Were you concerned about water being up there?
Speaker 1:No, as far as the availability.
Speaker 1:No, so I carry one of those. I bought one of those. I forget what they're called, the life straws, the water filtration systems. So it comes with the one I got came with like a foldable bag with a big kind of sort of twist-top valve. You can kind of scoop the water out of tarns or you know the alpine lakes, they call them tarns.
Speaker 1:So we, and when we set up at the tops, when we were looking at, you know, places to set up camp even when we're rescouting this year for tossing up whether we go somewhere else or not, but typically the flattest, you know, when you're on the tops there's not a lot of flat ground and so when you are looking for an ideal campsite, typically the edges of the tarns are going to be the flattest spots, and so where we were set up for camp was, you know, 20 metres from a tarn and that's all fresh water you could, you could probably drink it. I mean, it's not moving. Um, I think we did last year. Almost the time you're boiling the water anyway, for you know food like if you're using dehydrated meals and stuff. But um, I just ran it through the, you know the filter and it's as good as any water, if not probably the best water you'll drink.
Speaker 2:so um, I don't think there's a whole lot of nervousness around drinking that water. I mean, they don't have beaver giardia type stuff. Um, you know you're quite high. You're not in livestock areas, it's again I. I would probably personally take the risk and drink it and not take a filtration system. But I'd want someone in camp to have it and then I'd carry something in return for them. Just in case you only found muddy puddles.
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah, I mean with, with, with that thing, you can pretty much drink most water that you come across. I think it's designed for know, muddy puddles and things like that, but you know, the water that we were drinking was, I mean, it's crystal clear, right. It's feeding from a waterfall, sort of at the top of the bowl where we would camp, so it gets replenished with a lot of the rainwater and topped up. Is there any fish in there? Not in the tarns, I mean, we didn't. Certainly in the streams, yeah, big time. There's plenty of big, big trout that we saw. You could just see them. You're just walking along the river and you just look over and oh, there's a, there's a massive trout right there. A couple of boys, um, brought some, some rods and had a few casts, but no luck, um, but they're definitely there that's why it took you six hours to find a crossing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, definitely it's something that, yeah, next time you'd come better prepared. You know, more lures and more flies.
Speaker 2:And you said your rifle, your rifle. Your rifle weighs four and a half kilos. Is it something you would consider lightening up and, you know, buying a specific mountain rifle that might kick your ass when you shoot one because it's so light, just to save some more weight?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd definitely consider it. I just run the. I just have the one main hunting rifle, the 270. I don't have sort of I've got a 22, but obviously deer hunting it's the one rifle that's been my go-to and I find it's a pretty good all-rounder. It's definitely as 270s do. They've got a bit of kick, but I like the way they shoot and it's always shot pretty well and pretty accurately. So I would. But what would you be? You'd be saying about a kilo for a lightweight rifle Maybe get a 10-inch free now I reckon you'd say yeah, you'd say of a kilo.
Speaker 1:So I mean there'd probably be other things in my pack I'd ditch first.
Speaker 2:You know, definitely share the load a bit more next time. How did you go? Let's get into the food stuff, because food really interests me. But what did you pack? And you mentioned dehydrated, so I'm assuming you went down that route.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did, we did. That's kind of the easiest thing in the backcountry is just a bunch of dehydrated meals. You can get them anywhere Over there, you can buy them in supermarkets and you know there's a hunting and fishing store pretty much, um, you know, on every corner almost, or so it seems nice or hunting related store, uh, so yeah, you can pick those up anywhere they're. They're not cheap. They're probably range between sort of 12 and 15 bucks depending on where you buy them and what size they are, but that was sort of our main, and $15 depending on where you buy them and what size they are, but that was sort of our main staple over there. You know, breakfast, lunch, dinner, so breakfast they do a cooked brekkie or they do a, you know, like an oats type thing, granola and oats and things. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:What brand did you go with? We went with Downhouse.
Speaker 1:No, we went with backcountry cuisine and actually so on that it was Easter Sunday when we landed, and so it occurred to me that luckily it did, but nothing would be open when we land, and so things that we were planning on getting over there, like things like you know, gas, um, buying all the meals when we landed, all that stuff we couldn't do. So we ended up taking the meals with us, but and ended up through for another friend of a friend getting getting some gas bought for us ahead of time. So so that was handy. A little tip for travellers you can't fly with gas canisters, that's right. That's right. So, but you know, christchurch Airport's got a Bunnings literally next door to it. So that's what we did last time. And unless we fly on Good Friday or Easter Sunday, yeah, which this year happened to be sort of peak raw, you probably won't have the same issues, but yeah, so backcountry cuisine. So the point of all of that was, when we landed, we obviously had to take it over there with us because we couldn't buy it, because we were starting our hunting trip pretty much the moment we landed Out of customs like that.
Speaker 1:Well, so they actually made a mate of mine who mixed things up. He thought he'd sort of mix things up with a different brand and they let the, because Backcountry Cuisine is a Kiwi brand. They had no problem with that. You declare that we had meat and you can go on their website. And I rang in advance and they said there should be no issues with freeze-dried foods. But they the customs officer that my mate got actually took the non-Kiwi brand meal off him. So I don't know whether he just wanted to try it or what, but, um, one of his meals got got got taken. So, uh, I don't know whether that's um actual rule or what, but yeah, did you find that you packed too much food?
Speaker 1:We did, yeah, yeah, we did. So we ended up with a bit left over only because we were successful this year and I shot a stag, so we ended up eating that for most of our meals. So we had a bit left over, but essentially we only took breakfast, lunch and dinner for um the days that we were there.
Speaker 2:So if we not shot something, probably you want to shave some weight. I drop like, uh, like usually one breakfast and one dinner. I always find that there'll be like at least one night you come home and just react like no, just not eating, just going to bed. And I've never come home and gone. Oh jeez, like I've ran out or I always still have something left. But yeah, you've got to be careful. But I carry. I've got one backcountry style meal in my emergency bag at all times and it's probably well out of date. This is from New Zealand days.
Speaker 1:They last four years.
Speaker 2:They're well out of date because they didn't air longer than that. But I found a Clif Bar that no longer resembled a Clif Bar, I don't know, it was all crumbled up. Did you have any snacks? Did you take anything?
Speaker 1:So hot choccies, definitely a welcome drink, um, when you're up there and it's cold and wet and windy, uh, like it was for us. So, and they weigh nothing, that's right. Sachets of that um cup of soup I found was was another good sort of snack, um, any sort of in between meals or if you just don't feel like a full meal. That that's kind of a good lightweight. Obviously, coffee um, we didn't really take too many snacks, or I didn't anyway. A couple of boys took some chocolate and and some um snakes, which got devoured pretty much the first day, um, but no, we didn't really take too many snacks apart from that and another thing to consider is you're rubbish because you've got to take things out with you so often.
Speaker 2:I consider the packaging on things and I try not to take cans, because it's hard to pack down on your way out and you're still way a fair bit. One of my favorite meals is two minute noodles and tuna sachet and you sort of you know, cook your-minute noodles and then throw your tuna in at the end and heats it up and just mix a bit of protein with your crappy MSG two-minute noodles. But yeah, we do the sachets, because you can actually pack them down quite small.
Speaker 1:I mean that's the thing on the MSG side. I don't know what they've got in them, but definitely after a few of them, after a few days of eating the backcountry meals, you know they all start to taste the same. So it's good having a bit of a variety.
Speaker 2:What about energy, though? Do you think they gave you what you needed while you were up there? I find they're really high in sodium, and you've got to be careful that you don't get a bit too salty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, lots of salt, lots of other stuff obviously. But yeah, I mean, we weren't hungry. I would say I think, you know, between all the snacks that we had, I mean, most of the time we were, you know, walking around and hunting and doing stuff. So you don't really think you kind of just eat because you need to, and sometimes we'd, you know, have a late lunch and then no dinner type thing. So we'd have a big brekkie because you wouldn't eat before the morning hunt. You'd come back around 10, coffee brekkie and you probably wouldn't eat lunch until 3 or 4 before you go out for the, for the afternoon session and, um, as you said, you come back and you're like no, straight to bed so it's better.
Speaker 2:Anyway, enough about the food, unfortunately, we better get into some hunting stuff. So you've already given away the ending. You shot a stag. How many deer did you see this year? If you saw, you know, 30 or so last year. Yeah, a lot more, 30 or so last year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot more stags. So last year we went about just over a week earlier than this year. So I think last year the trip started on the 23rd, which should be sort of I mean, I'm no expert, but that should be sort of. The roar should be in motion. We didn't hear any roaring last year. I heard a very faint roar on the 26th on the way down. This year was next level up. We crossed the river and every side of the mountain, every sort of valley we walked past, had a stag in there roaring its head off. It was like we were there for the peak of it and it was awesome. But, yeah, no stags. Last year probably 40 hinds in a short period of time. So there's definitely deer there and some of the locals are saying that actually the choppers aren't allowed in there, which is why the populations are a bit higher in that area. This year we probably saw 15 in the sort of two and a bit days on the tops that we had, but definitely more stags. I think we saw three stags.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep.
Speaker 2:And one obviously met your demise. Do you want to tell us how that happened?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was. Actually we had just gotten to the top. So the climb, as I sort of alluded to before, was the most brutal thing I've ever done in my life. Six hours later we get to the top and set up camp, exhausted, had a meal and there was about half an hour left of well, half an hour before sunset, and we said, all right, well, we don't have long, but let's go have a look.
Speaker 1:Near camp, it was probably 400 metres to a vantage point that overlooked pretty much the whole side of the mountain. And so we went over there and you know, as they're running out of light, set up the tripod, put the binos up, sat down, put my eyes to the binos and I reckon it was all of maybe 15 seconds, and I was like, guys, there's a deer, there's a deer, and I couldn't really see because it was, it was probably 700 meters. I ended up ranging it um, so it's pretty far, but I just somehow my binos landed on it and and there it was, um and it's not that easy to spot in the tussock country until you get your eye in for it yeah, yeah, no, and.
Speaker 1:And so I guess I was lucky or I don't know, but spotted him pretty much straight away. I couldn't tell whether it was because it was so far away and we didn't have a spotting scope. I just had my 10 times binos and he had a better look and I was like, yeah, no, because he was facing away. He was probably 100 metres from the tree line and just sitting there, he just sat down and he was roaring and he got up and then I could tell he turned his head and I was like, oh yeah, it's a stag. I wasn't sure on how big he was, but you know, before that trip never shot a stag, never shot a buck. So I shot a heap of does, a buck. So I've shot a heap of heap of does, a couple of spikers here and there actually shot a buck with no antlers. Um, as my fourth deer, I think probably shot about 25 now. But, um, you know, it's like I've had buck or stag repellent on every time I hunt because, um, yeah, I've had had a few opportunities but never shot one. And so, you know, when I saw him I was like, guys, I'm going, I'm going, and I didn't really care if it was a massive trophy or not. I just it was. You know, it was a stag and it looked like an okay one. So I thought, yep, I'll go after it. And with the fading light I just said, yep, I've got to go now.
Speaker 1:And so I pretty much ran. There was a series of guts and kind of the approach was mostly hidden for at least the first 300 metres. And I got to a point where and I had to roll the dice in terms of if there was other deer and hinds that saw me than saw deer, but the wind was swirling, it wasn't really consistent. It was kind of up my ass and so I had to really just act quickly. And so I got to about I think I ranged him at 350 or 340. And I had a good ledge I could get a rest on and he'd sort of moved. Since I saw him, since I spotted him, probably 10 minutes had passed since that initial sighting and I thought he's moving, he's starting to walk, he probably senses something's up. I know he hasn't seen me, but he's probably caught my wind and knows something is not right. Yeah, got a whiff and he's up and he was stretching and he was off for a walk.
Speaker 1:So I thought I've got to arrange him and I'd done a little bit of longer range practice ahead of it, ahead of the trip, and so I was semi-confident that I could get the shot off with the bipod and a proper rest. And so I thought, yep, I'll have a crack, I'm pretty certain I can do it. And he'd sort of paused. I waited for him to turn broadside, so I set up and lay prone and I was steady, I focused on my breathing and which was, yeah, the adrenaline at that point in time was crazy. But got a rest, focused on my breathing, sort of bottom of my breath, just slowly pulled the trigger, squeezed it on and heard the thud, the delay.
Speaker 1:On that distance that's probably the longest, it's easily the longest range shot I've done on a deer and the thud, heard the thud and instantly sort of got the wobbles and I was like, okay, that must be a pretty good shot. And yeah, it didn't go far. I think he went maybe all of 10 meters and dropped it. And that was it the feeling. I mean, it was just I can't describe it the range of emotions. I just looked back at the boys and they're waving and I started just running towards him, like once I'd seen his drops, and try to get there before dark and get him, because by that stage, you know, sunset had happened and it was sort of nearing on last light. So, yes, I got there and it was expired. The shot ended up being pretty much straight through the heart, so it was actually a little bit low, but it worked out well, just behind the shoulder and yeah, so I was kind of yeah very happy with that and just enough time for a few photos.
Speaker 1:The boys, um came down with um, you know, with a few spare hands, and um we, uh, yeah, we, we took, we took a bunch of meat and um got a bunch of photos and walked back under head torch a long way back. Yeah, we've um, because he was down probably. I was probably 100 metres lower from where we were, maybe even more. Yeah, it was a pretty big pack out back to the tents, but a very happy one at that.
Speaker 2:I bet your legs were weary after that day's walking.
Speaker 1:Oh, definitely, definitely, yeah. I mean I don't say that lightly that climb is by far the hardest thing I've ever done. You know it's um, it's not easy. So, yeah, the legs were definitely jelly. But got back to camp and I said, you know dinner, just straight to bed and um, yeah, stoked, yeah, stoked.
Speaker 2:He's on the wall behind you, isn't he?
Speaker 1:He is. Yeah, Turn the camera.
Speaker 2:For those that are watching you can see it.
Speaker 1:So he's a nine-pointer, so he's got. So he was five by four. Yeah, five by four. So he's probably not the best.
Speaker 2:There we go, that's a better angle For those that are listening and not watching.
Speaker 1:I apologize, but we'll put a photo up um, yeah, so end up being five by four and and mate, to me that's as a first um, it's an absolute trophy. And uh yeah, hanging proudly on on the fireplace did you keep hunting the rest of the trip?
Speaker 1:We did. Yeah, we definitely did. So that was day two. We had a couple more days. Unfortunately we got fogged out.
Speaker 1:The next day we woke up, you know, the alarm went off pretty early, an hour before at least an hour before first light, I think it was and looked outside and it was such a still night. On a bed it was. There was not a breath of wind, it felt like there was two stags roaring literally either side of our tents. It was. I've never heard anything like it. It was, yeah, just an experience. But we woke up, unfortunately just completely fogged in and that lasted till most of the early afternoon, so I think it was about 2 o'clock, so our visibility was very limited. They were roaring, but we just made things very difficult, virtually impossible, so had a hunt. We saw, we got eyes on one. Actually that afternoon the fog had lifted and actually it was.
Speaker 1:The boys were most of the boys were in the tents just having a snooze and I was fleshing out the head and one of my mates had just come out of his tent and he goes JA, ja, come over here. I was like what he's like? Ja, just come over here. So I crept over because where he was sitting was probably about 10 metres away. He was sitting on a rock next to the tents and I was kind of my vision was obscured by the side of the mountain that we were camping next to. And I went over there and I look up and on the ridge there's just an awesome stack, just like out of a movie, like something out of Hunter's Club, just perfectly skylined, just roaring his head off. And I just said don't move, just stay very still. And I kind of just really slowly crept around the side of my tent, got the binos, got the rangefinder ranged him, got the rangefinder, ranged him he was 400 metres, got the rifle and set it up and then actually one of the other guys unzipped his tent and I was like don't move, don't move. He was the one that was going to take the shot. I go, just use my rifle. You know it's all set up.
Speaker 1:And unfortunately actually by the time he came over, um, yeah, the stag, let out one more roar. And and, uh, it looked like he was going to come towards us because he was just standing there staring at us for probably all of felt like ages it was probably a minute, minute and a half just roaring, staring at us trying to figure out what we were, and he ended up giving us a slip. So he went over the ridge and we chased him. We went up and got into position and tried to look for him but he was long gone. He was down in the bush roaring back at us. But yeah, he gave us a slip.
Speaker 1:So that was the second day, probably the highlight of the sorry the third day, most of which was fogged out. And then saw some others on the next day, but it was like gale force winds and they were pretty far. We just couldn't get close and that's when the weather started to come in that afternoon. So we went back, packed up and headed to the bottom, did a bit of fishing and did a bit of hunting. Down the bottom there was plenty of sign, sign like I've never seen, but just it's different, it's much harder in thick bush. So, yeah, we just didn't get an opportunity in that hunt.
Speaker 2:You sent me a video of you guys crossing the river. Was that on the way out?
Speaker 1:I should have sent you one on the way over actually, because, whilst it was running pretty low, both of the guys that went before us, my mates there's four of us, two of the guys that didn't hunt decided to go first and and despite it only being waist high, I ended up in the tree, so completely drenched head to toe. But, um, yeah, definitely the way back was was scary. Um, I'd actually taken a I learned my lesson from last year and um thought what I'll do because I saw, saw them doing on on hunters's Club was pack raft and I ended up just getting this. It's a two-man sort of, just a cheap kind of like Kmart inflatable raft. So I bought that. I think it's about even $40. And I thought this will be the backup plan if we do get weather, because you have to expect.
Speaker 2:Did you pack up the whole trip with you or just took it across?
Speaker 1:No, no. So we left it in the car. So we left it in the car on the other side of the river, knowing that we could, if it was bad, swim across, get it, bring it back and just do trips with the packs in the raft. And as it turned out, yeah, we got a bunch of rain the second last day and the crossing on the way back was pretty bad. It was a bit of an adventure, to be honest. We ended up having to go get the raft, so one of the guys swam across, inflated it, and we thought we'd do it because by this stage the river was just flowing Like it was going quick and it's deceptively. You know. You sit there and you go, it's not that bad. And then you look at it again and you go, yeah, or you know you'll throw a rock in there or something, or you see a stick floating past and you actually see how quick the water's flying. You go, okay, and deep too. So, yeah, long story short, we ended up getting the raft, my mate, we had some ropes. I took 60 meters of paracord as well, which was in the car, and with the idea that we'd do like a pulley system and ferry the gear across and then just swim across at the end, but very quickly realised that that was proving to be more challenging. You couldn't script it. We were trying to get the rope across, I think we taped it to a rock and then threw it, but it was too wide to actually be able to throw a rock that far, and so we got a smaller rock, and this is. You know, time was passing, it was sort of, and it was almost getting to sunset again on that last day and we got the rod and we got a pebble and we tied fishing line to the pebble, taped it and cast the rod across to a mate who was on the other side so that he could tie the pebble paracord to the rock which was attached to the fishing line, wound that back and got it. So, you know, we eventually got there.
Speaker 1:And then yeah, I think it was the first trip the raft just filled up with water, like it was. There was proper rapids and, um, you know the weight distribution. It just filled up with water, almost ripped it out of our hands and we almost lost the whole thing there and then, without even attempting a crossing. So we had to think a bit differently. What we ended up doing was the first two guys put their packs. So the raft.
Speaker 1:My mate came across the raft and we were all there with his pack and all of our packs. He ended up loading the raft with two packs and two guys swam next to the raft and basically just kicked and within it must have been two seconds. They were like 50 metres down the river, like it was quick and approaching like another set of rapids, so they had to keep kicking. They did make it and so we're all cheering. You know that was half the problem solved.
Speaker 1:Two of the guys packs across and, you know, two people across. But we had to get the raft back and so my mate ended up getting in the raft and paddling it back, and so we basically just did trips where he'd put, for the rest of the gear, a pack in with himself sitting on top of it and I would just push him out into the middle and he'd just paddle like hell and you'd end up over 100 metres downstream. But you know that's what we did. We did that for both the packs and then a separate trip with rifles and the head. So yeah, probably six trips all up.
Speaker 2:The oars on those 40 dollar aren't great?
Speaker 1:no, they're not, especially when you're trying to paddle a, you know 40 kilos, plus yourself probably 120 kilos, and antlers are in the way and rifles.
Speaker 2:You're paranoid about losing over the side just need the antler to pop the side once and you bug it.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right. So I don't know what we do next time. I don't know how we do it differently, but that's the challenge of you know, hunting public land You've got no interest in choppering up. I was going to say I did look into it. It's not the cheapest. I mean it's you know.
Speaker 2:Split between four of you, though you get up in one trip.
Speaker 1:You would, you would, but I think it still worked out to be. I did bring a chopper company the local one there, and I think it worked out to be something like three grand for the four of us. So you can definitely do it.
Speaker 2:I'd definitely consider it. Yeah, for next time. I know some people listening probably think, oh, that that'd be cheating, choppering it in. But you're only over there for how long was your trip?
Speaker 1:yeah, so that's the thing you you save. Our trip was five days. You save two days. You save two days, but also you can go deeper. You um, it's not like you're not walking. You're still doing a lot of walking when you're on the tops, and so you're really just saving. You're not buggered when you start either. You're not buggered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. So you could do a day in. Like, if we somehow, you know, started the hike after the river crossing, you could do the whole thing in one day to the top, and you'd get there for an afternoon hunt, 10k up. That took us probably three hours, and then, depending on your fitness level, some of the guys can do it in four. I think it took us like five and a half. So, yeah, that's pretty much a full day worth of hiking, but you're still losing a day. That's the point. And so you chopper in, you're there, you're fresh, you can do a lot more walking on the tops.
Speaker 2:The other benefit to choppers that people don't think about is on the flight in I mean in Alaska and things you're not allowed to shoot on the day that you fly in. But you actually get just a quick glimpse of the terrain around where you camped, especially if it's your first time in. You might have e-scouted it, but just to physically lay eyes on the surrounding three kilometres from where your camp is, just quickly from above. You might want to film it before you land. And then when you're in camp you're like, oh geez, that spot looked good, looked better than it did, or that spot looked worse in person than it does on a map just gives you a quick little advantage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely definitely. Um, even just you know, being on the tops looking back down the valley, you notice, you notice little clearings and you go, that looks really good. Um, you know from elevation, so from a chopper it'd be even better. So, yeah, definitely, the time saved is a big thing. But yeah, the e-scouting side of things I mean I think I mentioned before the NZ Topo is great because it shows you you can toggle between satellite and topo. So that's pretty good.
Speaker 1:You can zoom right in and you can just flick between the two. All sorts of overlays. But the other thing we used was just Google Earth. You know, ahead of the trip I don't know how many hours I spent just 3D and it's all really good picture quality. You know, you can zoom right in. You can almost do like a little, almost like a fake sort of chopper, you know, with the 3D imagery so you can really scout and, to your point, around water, looking at different spots. You can find where those tarns are. You can find where you know different bits that you want to different areas that look appealing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the chopper's a. It's a viable option and people might freak out because they you know price, usually by the hour, say three grand by the hour or something, for a five seater. So you guys plus the pilot. But it's a 10-minute flight each way, or 15 minutes from most of these hangars up to where you want to hunt. And the other thing, if you get a good chopper pilot and you slip him a couple of hundy, they drop you into the better spots. Most of these guys are hunters or they just transfer hunters all season. They know where the choppers have been, they know where the hunters have been and if you can use that to your advantage, it helps Definitely definitely so.
Speaker 1:It's something I would encourage people to do. I mean, I saw your stories when you went. What was it? Two years ago? Now you know the footage that you took out of Queenstown. It's just yeah, it's unreal, so good. So yeah, I would definitely consider it, just for all the reasons that we mentioned. You can go deeper. You know, going over there you cut out the time you get to see the terrain much, much better. So, yeah, time you get to see the terrain, much, much better.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's also handy just to have as a backup for the exit. Uh, you know, if weather turns you need to get out fast.
Speaker 1:It doesn't hurt to let them know that you're going to be up there and say hey guys, I might give you a ring on anytime this week and that's right I know where you are now.
Speaker 2:I know you've written some notes for tonight and we haven't looked at them yet, and they're about how to was it how to book or how to fly over with a firearm yeah, both, both um. So I have to remind myself the questions that I get asked regularly with the the new zealand stuff is how do you get a firearm over there? And it has changed in the last four or five years. When old mate had his little car see you, do love in the city that was a hot rod driver could you hear that?
Speaker 1:yeah, I'm, I'm on a, I'm on a main road, so I'm actually just going to get my charger, so uh it doesn't die on me, that's right.
Speaker 2:But uh yeah, the importation of travellers with firearms changed. I don't know who it was, but old mate did his little shoot-up over there and wherever he did it, and they changed the rules. So you've been through it recently and I thought we'd break into it and just wait for you to finish doing some reno's on your house.
Speaker 1:Probably should have. It would have been smart to actually have the charging cable next to where I was set up. So, apologies, I will get that sorted.
Speaker 2:And if you are listening, what you're missing out on here is in the background we can see Geo's chest freezer.
Speaker 1:I can give you a tour if you like. It's pretty well stocked. 'll just get a little chess freezer tip for people.
Speaker 2:I don't do it only because I haven't done it yet. But um, one thing I used to do on our other one was we had a whiteboard next to it and I had a full list on the whiteboard as to what was actually in the chess freezer. And then when you pulled something out you had to rub it off, because I just keep putting things on top and I forget what's at the bottom. The problem with chest freezes is everything's at the bottom, everything's always at the bottom that's.
Speaker 1:That's definitely true. I've ended up having to just sort it into bags, really um sausages, um mints, backstraps, fish that's kind of how I sort it and just pull out a whole bag. There's no other way to get to stuff in the bottom. It's just too difficult and you can't even.
Speaker 2:You actually can just write on the chest freezer because they're that whiteboard material anyway you could, because they're tin. You can white on right on them with a whiteboard marker and then rub it off as you go, so you just keep it on the lid, so you know what's left in there. The other thing is we spoke about it last week or whenever it was, with someone else, but I I'm guilty of this all the time. You put hot meat in the freezer and it, by the time it freezes, it all locks into the bags underneath it and then you can never get it out. And if you get it out, it will never go back in the same spot that's true.
Speaker 2:It's like a game of tetris almost sometimes right, yeah, what have you got written for us? How did it? What was the process? Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So I had to remind myself because ahead of the podcast, I thought, geez, I, you know, even this year I was telling you before we started recording that that's why I told you to shut up, yeah, yeah, like I almost missed a step this year in terms of the, the form, one of the critical forms that I needed to do, that I just completely forgot about.
Speaker 1:So, um, you heard of the podcast, I was jotting down some notes, but essentially, if you're going to do it yourself and and do public land DIY, you want to have your permit in at least four months. So you want to get your gear, you know, and everything kind of sorted, your plan roughly four months before, because you do need to. One of the key inputs into the application on the New Zealand visitors firearm application is your flight details, and there's just no way to do the application without those details. So that's kind of the hard thing. There's many hard steps, but that's one of them, and so you probably need to plan well in advance. Probably you know more than half a year and have a rough idea of the dates that you're going to go and then, closer to roughly four months out, book your flights and, um, and start the application process.
Speaker 2:Sorry Is that when tickets open for flights four months?
Speaker 1:I think it's a year. I think it might be up to a year, I'm not actually sure.
Speaker 2:I've never booked that far in advance. You could book six months out and start the process.
Speaker 1:You could. You could, yeah, so you could book your flights whenever and then, as long as you're leaving, four months time lead time. That's the critical thing. Four months is the minimum. Four months is the minimum. I did it three and a half months the first year and it got through. I was going over there anyway, so it wouldn't have been a massive deal. But yeah, so you can. They do recommend at least four months. The thing is you kind of have to have nerves of steel because that part of the process the New Zealand visitor's firearm license and I'll go through the steps that you have to do to get it you don't get it until pretty much a couple of days before you travel. So that's the bit that's nerve-wracking, do you?
Speaker 2:think that's on purpose. I don't know, but like they look at it and go, oh he's not turning up.
Speaker 1:Until then, we'll just issue it now yeah, I have thought that and I did ask them this year, because this year I got it two days before my trip. The last year I got it nine days, so I went back and when it got to about a week out I properly started freaking out. And the downside with this DIY public land hunt is that you can't contact the team. So you can submit your application but you ring the firearms registry over there and they can't help you. They just say it's a team that you know you can't ring. You can email and I've emailed before. Say it's a team that you know you can't ring. You can email, and I've emailed before and it sort of takes a month for them to come back to you, type thing. So they're definitely not responsive and there's no way to contact them. I think the first year I even rang some of the local police stations just to see if there was anything they could do and they just pretty much said no, you have to, what you're doing is correct and you just got to wait, wait your turn. So, yeah, wait your turn. But what I would say is, if you're two weeks out and you haven't got anything, definitely what helped this year was the registry actually emailed on my behalf and CC'd me in, and I think, yeah, they must have emailed one of the managers there. But yeah, they pretty much came back to me the next day and said your application looks good. Apologies for the delay, everything looks fine. You should be good to get your permit before your trip, so don't worry, but we'll process it basically in a couple of days.
Speaker 1:So that bit of it is the first thing that you need to think about really in this whole process. So leave yourself plenty of time and apply. But to do that, there's a thing over there called RealMe, which is their login portal, and it's through that that you apply for the visitor's permit. What you need is very, very detailed notes of your trip. They're going to want to know pretty much to the hour what you're doing. So full itinerary. This is when I'm landing. This is, in fact they ask for the rental car company that you're going to use, obviously all your flight details, where you're going to stay, and so what else do they need? They need copies of your firearms license, your passport. So really, for this whole process, both on the Border Force side here in Australia and the New Zealand side, there's the key documents that you're going to need is your passport, your firearms license, your rego papers for your firearms and your driver's license. They're sort of the key four details that you need through pretty much every step.
Speaker 1:So back to the New Zealand side, the real me. You set up an account, you log in, you apply for the New Zealand visitor's permit license, you put in all your trip details, you upload all your photos, your passport, your ID and everything, and then you do a test. So it's a multiple choice kind of test, but it's basically you have to pass that to be eligible to apply and then you apply. One thing that they do ask for as well and this depends on your itinerary is where you're going to store the rifles. So you have to be very specific with you know your details around that, and last year I was at a wedding so I wasn't hunting start to finish like I was this year, where I just said I'm literally getting in the car and we're driving to the spot. Storage will be in my tent Storage. I will not basically leave the rifle side for the duration of my time in New Zealand.
Speaker 1:Last year I had to because they need proof that you can have safe storage. So I was like oh, what do I do here? I rang a couple of the firearm stores what do I do here? I rang a couple of the firearm stores. They were a bit reluctant to. You know, they're just so busy and timing they just kind of have to be there when you want to pick them up and whatnot. So it was just a bit too difficult. And he just said I'd like to help you but I can't. I was like okay, back to the drawing board. I don't know anyone in Queenstown that can you know. Keep them for me.
Speaker 1:I ended up finding a guy who I just rang him. He runs a precision shooting type course. And I rang him and I said mate, you don't know me, but I'm an Aussie and coming over to do a self-guided hunt. I just need. I was hoping that you might be able to store my rifles while I'm at a wedding in Queenstown and then I'll be flying to Christchurch and doing a hunt from there.
Speaker 1:And I said you know, happy to pay or whatever you like, but this is the kind of problem I'm trying to solve for and he was really good about it. He goes yeah, mate, that's fine. So he ended all for and he was really good about it. He goes yeah, mate, that's fine. Um, so he's ended up sending me because you need full name, their address and their um permit details, their, their license number and as part of the application. So, um, yeah, a couple emails back and forth and sent those across and I was able to finalize the application. But yeah, they want to know you know if you're traveling in your itinerary, if there's periods where you might be staying at a hotel before or after your hunt, that they're safely stored. And so the challenge is, if you don't know anyone, you kind of have to just ring around and try your luck.
Speaker 2:Can you just put down a hotel, or does the hotel need to have safe storage?
Speaker 1:The hotel needs to have safe storage.
Speaker 2:My understanding is that most hotels any ones that I've traveled through, especially south africa actually had most hotels have a safe, and be it for firearms or for cash or gold or whatever. Um, have you? Did you look into that?
Speaker 1:I did. Yeah, I definitely did the. The places, um, the hotel was saying it didn't, which basically ruled out that, but I ended up just getting lucky. So I think it was the third person. I rang and he said, yep, it's fine, so I didn't bother exploring that further. But yeah, so it helps if you know someone that's a local that you can store your firearms at, or if you get on someone that's willing to help you out.
Speaker 2:Yep, righto, so you got it over there, or you got that part of the permit.
Speaker 1:So that part of it. Yeah, so I was going to say so, the Aussie side of it, and I mentioned before the dock hunting permit, similar to our licence system here. But essentially you know you're just filling in details. So that's the other document. That is an instant spit out of a PDF that you keep and it's valid for I think several months, maybe three months, and as a fee I think it's $25. So that's the New Zealand side. On the Aussie side it's a little bit quicker.
Speaker 1:What you have to do is there's a couple of actual different ways, but there's nothing online, actually I found. So last year there was nothing online. This year I found an article written by Mansfield Hunting and Fishing, dan and Vic. They did a little write-up of it. So for anyone listening that wants to have a look at that, that's a pretty good write-up. That helped a lot this year, just to refresh my memory.
Speaker 1:But the way I did it is this is the step one regardless of how you do it is register with Border Force In there what's called integrated cargo system, so you get a login Depending on how many firearms you're taking. And I remember ringing the Department of Defence and they said you've got two options you can use a restricted goods permit, which is a form, or you can register through the Department of Defence and you get what's called a permit for export of goods and essentially you can export more than five rifles if you want to. So you go down the track If it's easier. It might be a little bit more time-consuming at the start but you can do it through us and that way, if you're carrying multiple rifles or whatever, you're always going to be in the system. So I ended up going that route through the Department of Defence and so I registered.
Speaker 1:So what you do is you register as a user of the Defence Export Controls website and basically they issue it's called a CCID. You then use that to register as a client of Defence Export Controls and what they issue you is a DCRN and then basically you complete an application to export or supply controlled goods and technology. So that application you pretty much put in your rifle details, your license details, your rego, your Department of Conservation NZ permit, because you know people go over there for shooting comps and so they ask for your invitation for the competition. So in this case it was a hunting permit and a screenshot of the application that I'd submitted for the visitor's licence for New Zealand. Once you've done that, yeah, as I said, you receive the permit for exported goods, and that's that's the first part.
Speaker 1:The second part of the Aussie side is through border force and that's a b957 export declaration, and that's just a one pager. They do have a key on the back for some of the definitions that they're asking for, so it's, you know, you just refer to the back of the page, but that's a one-pager. And once you fill that in again with very, very similar details, you end up getting an EDN, which is Export Declaration Advice.
Speaker 2:So two forms on the Aussie side.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, the two forms really the key ones on the Aussie side it's the permit to export goods and the export declaration advice and with those two things, along with your firearm rego at the airport, you pretty much go straight to the Border Force counter, which is in Sydney. It's down near where you go get your GST refund, your tourist refund scheme, and they just check your serial number.
Speaker 2:That's before you check into your flight.
Speaker 1:Before you check in? Yeah, absolutely. So you get to the airport, first thing you do is you go down to the counter there. They check it, they open it up, check the serial number and then they escort you back to the checking counter and they stand there while you check into your flight and then they escort you to the oversized goods where they watch the rifle get put on the belt and scanned and off they go. So definitely allow time, enough time before your flight to do that. The first year I went over there, we ended up missing our flight by two minutes. The first year I went over there, we ended up missing our flight by two minutes. So, safe to say, the missus was not too happy with me. No, I bet. Yeah, rerouted via Auckland.
Speaker 2:Did they handle your rifle?
Speaker 1:They handled my rifle in so much as they checked the serial number. So you open it up. Obviously, you've got a hard lock case. You pop it open, they look at it and check the serial number. So you open it up. Obviously, you've got a hard lock case. You pop it open, they look at it, they check the serial number, put it back and you lock it all back up.
Speaker 2:I think to know is they're not allowed to unless they have a firearms license.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Because you're not allowed to unless you have a firearms license.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it may have just been they tilt it, so they look at it. So I'm not yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not an argument I want to have with them either. While you're in that, position?
Speaker 1:No, definitely not. Yeah, the other thing to note is your ammo. So you put it's quite specific, you put how many rounds. If you've got a removal magazine, you've got to list that as a separate item. The number of rounds that you're taking, they've got to list that as a separate item. Um, you know the number of rounds that you're taking, they've got to be packed in their original factory case, um, so there's a bit to it and it's got to be separate, obviously in your check-in bag so that can go with your regular suitcase. That doesn't have to go into oversize um.
Speaker 1:So, oh, and the other thing, um, which I didn't have noted down here, is you have to let your airline know. Most, depending on the airline, you have to either ring them or there's a specific form that you have to fill in within at least a week, uh, weeks notice, so, um. So last year, um in new zealand, pretty easy, just rang them, said yep, yep, no problems noted this year, emirates and I left it until about four days before and it got to the day before and I rang them. I said I still haven't got my because they say you don't go to the airport unless you have a confirmation from us saying that we've checked your application and that you're okay to travel with a firearm and so, on top of the New Zealand permit, I'm going. Oh my gosh, I haven't heard from the airline. So I rang them and they were pretty good. They escalated it and pretty quickly got an email saying, yep, no problems. But yeah, that's a critical step too to let the airline know.
Speaker 2:I know what's next. Well, that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. So I've covered kind of all the forms that you need to do.
Speaker 2:What about coming back?
Speaker 1:then, yeah, sorry. So I should mention, when you get to New Zealand, you get your bags and you go to a special counter. You tell them that you're waiting on a rifle and they bring it. You go to a room and they check it. They issue you with the NZ Police, issue you with the temporary firearms permit it's an A4 printout, basically, which is your online application, but it's colour and they sign it with ink and that's what you have to carry with you at all times when you're over there, along with your Aussie licence and passport and other identifying details. So, yeah, they check the rifle and you're pretty much good to go, so straight to get the rental car, or you get picked up and off you go.
Speaker 1:But I can't stress enough in that application, just, you can never have too much detail. Detail, like you, you know around safety specifically. Um, so you know things. Like you know, my rifle will be securely locked at all times when not in use. Um, you know, I even put I brought a bike chain and it's going to be chained to the inside of the boot in the car. Um, that sort of level of detail will all help that process, because the last thing you want, as they did. They had to clarify some details. Last year they came back and if you don't check your emails or you miss it, then you run the risk of actually then it being on you in terms of the reason why they don't end up processing your, your application. So, as much detail as you can, that's the most important thing.
Speaker 1:But then after your trip, same thing. You go to the airport. Yeah, they check it, they. You know it's a lot easier going back, they pretty much just go yep, no worries, tear up the license and you go to the counter and give it to the airline and they bought it for you. You get to Australia and they then recheck everything. So you go through the declare line, they open up everything. You'd be declaring stuff anyway because you've been in a wilderness area. So, your boots, they want to check, your tent, they want to check. You know we had some leftover freeze-ddried food, so I'm literally ticking yes to everything. On the way back, um, you know animal parts, yes, uh. So, um, yeah, you come back and and they check whether you go through everything and, um, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:So nothing we haven't covered. You just touched on it then, but was the head itself, so you boiled it out while you were over there.
Speaker 1:It's got to be boiled, yeah, so you can't bring. I think on one of your other reps you mentioned Green skins. Green skins yeah, so you can't bring those back in. But with the heads yeah, I had to boil it at a friend of a friend's place this year and do all of that. So I had to allow time on the last day to do that before our flight. So we were a bit rushed again. Probably next time allow a little bit more time. But I ended up just boiling it all out, Actually went through the car wash to gurney it off there and bubble wrapped the hell out of it there and bubble wrapped the hell out of it. So bag, bubble wrap all over the antlers and over the skull and pretty much that's good to go. It just checks in.
Speaker 2:It goes through it's checked luggage. One thing I have had them be pretty firm on is the points. They weren't worried about it being a deer, but the points had to be covered so they wouldn't stab anyone. And yeah, so we do that by a garden hose.
Speaker 1:So you just yeah garden hose and a lighter and you sort of heat it up a bit and then you push it over the point and then duct tape it on yeah, yeah, I saw a couple of guys last year that um had come from a safari or guided tour and they had racks for days on their trolleys and yeah, they had garden hoses on the ends, so that was pretty cool. I ended up just doing double bubble wrap kind of thing, just ultra padded on all the points, and just ended up looking like this funny kind of bubble wrapped, kind of bubble-wrapped kind of head. But yeah, it did the trick and they were happy with it. And I sort of did it at the counter, to be honest, because we were so rushed. I got there and I go is this good enough? They go. Yeah, that's fine, that's fine, checked it in and off, we went.
Speaker 2:That's it. And then did customers check it over pretty thoroughly.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so the other. There's so many things to it. So the other thing is I don't know, maybe you know, but bringing it back. I ended up. This is ahead of time. I looked up what the requirements were to bring back ahead if I was to be successful and the only things I could find on Border Force website was that it had to be clean, free of flesh and fully boiled. But I did notice that the Ministry of Primary Industries in New Zealand are able to issue you with a certificate which has a unique reference number basically describing what it is that you're carrying. So I figure some countries want that. I'm not clear on whether Australia needed it, but I showed it to the customs person and she looked at it and that was yeah. She said that's fine. So I don't know whether I'd yeah do you know.
Speaker 2:Again, I agree that it's probably a nice thing to have. I haven't. I've had people use it in the past and not use it. It's essentially a vet certificate. So when sometimes you're travelling internationally and they request a vet certificate to say what the actual animal is that we're dealing with and that it was killed legally kind of thing, and my reference to that is, you know, ibex and things coming out of spain and whatnot and that's actually quite hard to get over there sometimes because they might want to take a two-week processing on that and you're like, no, I'm out of the mountains now and I'll fly home tomorrow.
Speaker 2:So they actually in those situations they actually usually pre-issue them illegally, but it's pre-issued so that by the time you're shot at you've already got your vet certificate and then you can fly out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the sense I got from speaking to them last year was that they could do that and I would just need to let them know and basically it would be pre-issued this year. The person I was speaking to there because you basically go on the website Ministry of Primary Industries, new Zealand, you put in what you're chasing, you know, red deer or chamois or whatever it is the rough kind of weight and everything and that application basically sits there. You pay a fee of $50 NZ dollars and, should you need a certificate to be issued, they issue it and they keep the fee, or otherwise, if you don't use it, they just refund you the $50. So you know you're not losing out if you don't get anything.
Speaker 2:I think, like you said earlier, it's not a bad thing to have too much information.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right. And so this year she said oh well, you have to let us know at least two days before the trip and I go oh, I'll be at a reception. You know how am I going to call you? I can't call you. I can't, I can't call you. She goes oh, you can send an email. So I ended up sending an email from the tops, from the inreach, just saying um, yep, can you please issue? Um, it's tagged out. Can you please issue to this email address as per application in the system? And yeah, got to the bottom and checked. Once we got into reception and the permit was scanned in um, they actually scanned the physical document that had the original ink stamp and everything. And she said I could pick up the physical permit, but we ran out of time and I didn't end up needing it anyway. So something to think about. If you do want to just dot every I and cross every T, if you are planning on doing that, it's a good thing to have, just in case.
Speaker 2:Did you look at bringing any meat home?
Speaker 1:I yeah, I didn't think you could, but it's possible is it?
Speaker 2:yeah it's a great it's a gray area and I won't get into it too much, because someone showed me how to do it, but it was. It's along the lines of you do what you do up on the mountain, then take it down the bottom, go to the butcher, and they will, if they're nice enough which most of them are hunters anyway so they will wrap it in their paper and then put their stamp on it which just says product of new zealand, and then you can fly home with it. It's got to be frozen, but you're allowed like 15 kilos or something like it's.
Speaker 1:You're not going to feel 32 kilos, but it's a good way to get some backstraps home yeah, definitely I'll have to look into that for for next time, because I mean, that's the thing you know. Obviously, um, we didn't end up eating, um, you know the whole thing. Um, when we're up there, we definitely got through a fair bit, but um, that's kind of on your mind, you know you don't want to kind of leave things there and if we could have brought it back.
Speaker 2:we definitely would have, so that's good to know. As an avid listener of the podcast, I'm going to say have I told you the story of when I was on my honeymoon and all the antlers I brought back? Have I mentioned that story?
Speaker 1:No, I can't recall. Yeah, not to me directly.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll retell it and it's a similar situation and similar issues, but with a lot less paperwork and preparation. And it happened so randomly. We were in what's called the country music capital of Canada and I can't remember the town, but it was a dive and it was not what it looked like. It was going to be on the maps Wrong season or whatever, I don't know, but it was terrible. But we went to the local hunting store, because that's what you do when you're on your honeymoon, and we were in a massive, massive care for van. We pulled up at the front of this thing and there was, you know, just homeless people everywhere and sad sort of looking town. But inside the hunting shop there was all these on the wall mule deer white towel, mule deer white towel, mule deer white towel, just skull caps all the way around and it just made like the whole circle of the shop little square was.
Speaker 2:And I just spoke to the guy and he's like, oh, my brother and I shot pretty much most of those, some of my uncles and some of my dads. He's like, are any of them for sale? He said, well, you want to buy some? Like he'd never been asked that. He said maybe. I said how much? He said 15 bucks, 10 bucks. I said how many do you want to sell? Sell, like I didn't even question it. How many do you want to sell? And anyway, so we, he said, we'll pick which ones you want.
Speaker 2:So I went around and I picked, you know, 10 nice sets. I said, right, 150 bucks. He goes, I'll make it 100, that's fine. Us or canadian I'd say, but um, he goes. Do you want more? I was like, okay, why he goes? Look, okay, come with me. Anyway.
Speaker 2:He walks out the stop, turns the close sign around, locks the door behind us. He said follow me to my house. So we get to his house and he's literally got this pile of death that's eight foot high and it's just antlers stacked on top of antlers and they've just skull capped them with a recipro saw and stuck them on the pile. So they've still got fur on them, but from five years old through to last month, sort of thing. And anyway we went through the pile and I picked some really nice ones and and the same thing is 10 bucks, 10 bucks a set, and I mean like a set on a skull cap, but some of them were still on the skulls and the skulls were rotten and that he said we better cut that skull off.
Speaker 2:He gets out a Husqvarna chainsaw with a blade on it that's wider than my screen. I can't even get it in the screen. It was a huge, massive saw and I'm in flip-flops and it's raining and I'm standing on the skull and he's got this huge sore and we're trying to cut the skull right next to my toes and my wife's. Like man, this is gonna end poorly, you know. We got him off and, uh, we, we filled up. There was a bath inside this camper van because the thing was huge, and we filled up the bath with these things and we're like, right now, what's the next step? We went to the local walmart. We got, uh, domestos like bleach, scrubbing brushes, knives, black plastic bags, duct tape, um, another duffel bag because we had no duffel bag for these things and detergent and a pot, a boiling pot, and it wasn't until I was ringing it up across the thing.
Speaker 1:I'm like this is a kill kit. This is a kill kit. Would have loved to have seen the checkout person.
Speaker 2:That's my kill kit in my backpack. Now that's different. You know that's got knives and things in it, but this was like a proper. We've murdered 20 people and we're going to dissolve their bones inside our little bus and for that next 24 hours. That little, poor little camper van just stunk of boiling out rotten heads.
Speaker 1:Why were they so cheap?
Speaker 2:They meant nothing to him. Like he just had that many, he was stoked to make $250.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Like they just meant nothing to him. It's like someone who lives on a, on a farm that just has fallow on it, I suppose, like they just pick up antlers and it's just nothing. Yeah and uh anyway, but the kicker was.
Speaker 2:So when we went to take them home I filled a duffel bag and we were flying. It was qantas, I'd say, and 23 kilos. So I I measured this duffel bag out, it was probably like 22.9 kilos of antlers all jangled together. There was skullcap we'd like extra cut off with hand saws just to get the grams down. And we got the bag really compressively filled and we got to the counter and she said, oh, what are you checking in? And on the thing, there was an option for antlers and I'm like antlers and she goes in there, and I'm like antlers and she goes in there. I was like, yeah. She said, well, there's usually an extra fee for antlers and I was like, oh, okay, well, how much is it? She goes 150 dollars, how many do you?
Speaker 2:have. And I was like, what's the fee for? And she goes well, it's because it's like a set of antlers, you know, it goes down the conveyor belt. We've got to process it like a bag. I was like, oh no, these are just like single ones. She goes, oh, don't worry about the fee. Then so in my head I'm like, right, I've got like 30 sets of antlers and $150 a set. That part was fine. And then we got through to Sydney.
Speaker 2:Customs and they pull them to go through them all and they were clean and he's like separating them into species, like in muleys on this side and white tail on this side, and he's like we don't know what these are. I said, well, they're antlers of deer and he said what type of deer? I told him he goes, but are they endangered? Yeah and this is where the vet certificate thing comes in. I had none of that, so he's like we might have to send these to canberra to get identified.
Speaker 1:I said I can identify and I said I can show you a photo of every single american that's right, get your phone. Here's a he's jim shocky with ten of them like um, anyway the concept.
Speaker 2:It was an awkward conversation for like maybe only two or three minutes and my wife's next to me, like I was like I've just married this guy's, what's he doing? Getting all this crap across the border? And he said the guy said I'm gonna let you go this time. But and then he started going on again and I was into him like trying to teach him a little bit in an angry and my wife's like he said he's, and my wife's like he said he's going to let you go this time. He said he's going to let you go this time.
Speaker 1:Just get out of here.
Speaker 2:Anyway, walked out with a 23 kilo duffel bag of white tail and leather.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:I've still got just on the other side of this wall. I've still got a fair few of them. I might give them out as gifts, or the wife makes chandeliers or something.
Speaker 1:I was going to say, yeah, have you done a chandelier?
Speaker 2:Not a chandelier, sorry, she did a lamp, so to say A timber base, with this white-tailed antlers coming around it and a pole going up the middle with a lampshade on top. I'll leave the chandeliers to old mate Rapid Effects. He does really nice chandeliers and I don't want to touch them. I've seen them actually. Yeah, they're really good. We did you talk. I'm going to make some noise here when I get one of the lamps that we started making.
Speaker 1:I was going to say. There is one thing I have seen, amongst the hundreds of forms that you fill out, is on the NZ side there's sites declaration, which has a list of species that aren't endangered, and um, that's something that I just always keep um in in my uh, in my pack. Wow.
Speaker 2:Holy smokes, hello antler, on a nice bit of spotted gum that's waiting for it was. We've got a match set, so it's like a bookend.
Speaker 1:Oh, you do, You've got the other one. Yeah, great, look at that. Um that's a nice Look at that. That's a moose.
Speaker 2:Headside table. Put your watch and phone on there, or something. Yeah, and it was too nice to sell, so I kept that one for the office.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Sites, sites. Yeah, they don't look after those things.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I don't know whether that helps or not or whether that would help in a scenario like you had, where you just whip it out and it says you know, whatever deer like red deer is not endangered. It doesn't help the identifying side of things, but it sort of. If they can identify it, then pretty quickly you can see that it's not. So I don't know, I just kept it in my pack of forms.
Speaker 2:I just pressed a button on my microphone and, instead of muting me, it turned me on. Have you been able to hear me fine?
Speaker 1:I've been able to hear you.
Speaker 2:yeah, I was a bit worried there. I had no audio for the last 25 minutes.
Speaker 2:If you can't hear me if you can't hear me, you would have known, but uh, well, that's uh sort of all the things I wanted to cover tonight, jay, is there anything you want to add? I think we were talking about a topic for tonight and what I wanted to look at was the difference between the new zealand you know, our licensing public land model versus the australian one, and just just your final thoughts on how accessible New Zealand is for Aussies.
Speaker 1:Very. I mean, if you can get past the form bit and just the nerves of steel to, you know, get your permit two days before you fly, type thing. If you can get past that, then it's awesome. Definitely do it. As you said, it's so close, it's a three-hour flight, you know whether you go to Queenstown or Christchurch or wherever North Island even but certainly it's so accessible, it's so easy.
Speaker 1:The culture over there is. The thing that struck me was just the hunting and fishing culture that they have over there. Like I'm there boiling this head on the side of the road and guys are walking past going ah, that's a great head, oh, is that PB and chat for half an hour just because they love it, and so it's a great spot to go. It's. You know, there's no real nasties, so you know you don't have to worry about spiders or snakes and yeah, I mean the abundance of beauty there is just so good. So if you can do it, you know, once you do it I guarantee you'll do it again and again, and again, and so, whether it's DIY or through a guide, I mean you can't really go wrong.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for that. Thanks for the detailed, detailed breakdown. I hope that helps those that are listening and watching, and we'll want to cut that down into a separate little video so then you can share that video around. And then there is information online about the things that you just had to work out yourself, and for a small fee of 259. Geo doesn't know this yet, but he's going to process paperwork for everyone.
Speaker 1:So send him all your information and get him to do it for you.
Speaker 2:Now he knows how to do it.
Speaker 1:Hey, as long as I can come on the trip as well.
Speaker 2:It's his new sideline business, he'll do it in his name and then you can take it off him when you get on the other side.
Speaker 1:That's right. But hopefully I didn't confuse people listening too much, but hopefully I didn't confuse people listening too much. As I said, there's a good write-up through that Mansfield website, so have a look at that if you want a summary.
Speaker 2:They travel to New. Zealand. Mel, she was just in New Zealand two weeks ago, or something shooting, oh did they.
Speaker 1:Okay, I don't know them, but that's the only thing I could find that was recent from I think June last year, which was awesome, so well done to them. But yeah, find that was recent from I think June last year, which was awesome, so well done to them. But yeah, so hopefully that's given you confidence. It's really easy to do once you've got your head around what you need to do, and definitely do it if you can get the chance.
Speaker 2:I hope this has helped a few people. It's definitely helped me and I'll get that link for that article and we'll get it shared when the episode comes out. Thanks for your time tonight, Gio. It's been great chatting and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 1:It's been great to be here. Thanks for having me See you guys.