No words needed

Here 'Tis!

Up on the ridge! Now you can all understand how it can be a little difficult to firstly spot the deer and secondly get to them to take a clean safe shot. This one was particularly clever - he spotted us in one direction and once we'd gone through the valley a bit further and turned back to look he'd come over the ridge to watch us go. The second we turned around he scampered back over the ridge and down into an inaccessible gully. They're not stupid!

Hunting Trip

We've just got back from a couple of days hunting in an undisclosed location (not wanting to give away our secrets to internet surfers!) and had quite a bit of fun. We saw deer, Chamois, Tahr and LOADS of wild goats. These are not your average North Island Goat, with some of them getting up to 200 lbs with horns a foot long. From our experience the smell increases with weight and size of horns too! They can get quite aggressive and aren't scared of rushing you (if they see you) in an attempt to make you miss your shot. Definitely not for the faint hearted! It was our first "successful" hunting trip together (Greg's shot things by himself or with mates) - all up we shot 6 goats, and Andrea even shot one of them (after stalking it for about 20 mins and creeping over ridges in the long grass). Perfect head shot, not that she's gloating. Not bad for the second ever round she's fired though!

The walk in was quite spectacular, with about half the "track" being a stream. River crossings were more numerous than sections with dry feet. Typically of this area, it's an old gold mining area with relics littered around all over the place. We both kept our eyes down on the river crossings in the hope of finding a nugget but no such luck.

We came across this dam, which had a pipe coming off the side of it to an old shed with a wheel and generator still inside the shed. The gear was all made in Thames (Coromandel) in the 1800s which was quite interesting, due to the fact it weighed literally tonnes, being solid steel and copper. We've got no idea how they got it in there, in the middle of nowhere, with no helicopters or even roads in those days! The poor horses must have been exhausted.

We've decided Greg probably needs to get a camo pack.... you'll see why from the photo below. Deer might be colour blind but we're not so sure about everything else.

And lastly, here's why we're finding it a bit more difficult to get onto the deer. They are still very much up on the tops and haven't started coming down into the valleys yet. This is due to the snow melting and there being a lot of new growth up on the tops. Because the valleys are so steep-sided, the sun isn't getting down into the bottom as much yet so there's actually more fresh grass up high than down low. And in most of the areas we hunt in, getting up to the tops is virtually impossible (due to sheer cliffs) - even if we could shoot one from the valley we'd never find a way up to retrieve the body.

There's a deer in this photo. Good luck to you all in finding it! We'll post a zoomed in photo showing it's location in a couple of days.......

Thyme to stop and smell the flowers

(Andrea will try and restrain herself from further puns. Sorry)

Andrea spent the past 2 days in Dunedin for work. We took heaps of photos last year of the lupins around Queenstown, but through in Central Otago they don't seem to grow as much. The predominant wild flower over there is wild thyme. The Alexandra wild thyme festival starts this coming weekend (it's all about alternative art etc from what we can tell, having never attended) and the fields and hills both sides of Alexandra, through as far as Roxburgh in the south and Gibbston Valley in the northwest are all covered in light purple. It sort of looks like the rocks are slightly tinted with pinky-purple, it's only when you get up close that you realise that it's actually millions of tiny flowers. The hills will be at their best in a week, but here are the photos from today:

This first photo was taken looking across Lake Dunstan just above the Clyde Dam. All of the light greyish shading on the hills is actually wild thyme.

Looking across one of the fields further through the gorge towards Cromwell

And last but not least with some other wild flowers mixed in just before Cromwell - that's the back of the Pisa range (the other side from the Cardrona Valley) with tiny amounts of snow on it in the background, and again Lake Dunstan.

And yes, Andrea dug up a little bit and brought it home to plant in our herb garden. Now we just have to hope that it didn't die over the last hour of the drive home... and that it doesn't take over our whole garden! You should see our Rosemary tree.....