A day of anticipation

We were on a huge buzz.
The previous days hunt on Canada geese was one for the books, and now we were heading from the coastline of Canterbury, to the Canterbury High Country. Along for the trip were Dave and Paul from the previous day, and coming along on his first hunt with me, Dan, and old mate from Rugby.

Heading to the new farm is a journey, in every sense of the word.

Passing through flat fields, before the rolling foot hills, following raging braided rivers, before arriving in the Canterbury High Country - home to Himalayan Tahr, Chamoi, Red Deer and...Game Birds . Today, no rifles were packed in, but we had a trailer loaded with blinds, Goose and Parrie decoys, and a tonne of food - who new how long we were going to be up here! its such a huge place, who knows what you can find? It was time to start looking!

Before we had even arrived at the farm we were to shoot, we passed a field of crops on a neighbouring property that just screamed GEESE. I sat up in my seat a little stranger and asked Paul to stop. I scanned the paddock for birds...nothing. Jumping back in, we were almost passed the last of the crop paddocks when we glanced right and saw a paddock full of geese!

The small mob at the top of the valley

I quickly doubled back to the farm house and found no one home. I left a note, left a message, sent an email, I did everything but dispatch a carrier pigeon to find them, and if I had one I would have. Leaving that hunt to work itself out, we headed further into the hills. Arriving right on time, we did a quick scout,  but after seeing a good number of birds further down the valley, we weren't expecting to see much up here. Sure enough, we did find geese, by but Mr farmer told me they had "dropped in numbers" just the last day or two".

I told him what we had found down the valley, and he agreed to try and track his neighbours down for us while we had a go at what remained on his place. After that, we set the decoys up ready for a morning hunt, then went to our favourite scouting spot, had a cold beer and thought about the mornings hunt, and if we would be lucky enough to gain access to the other farm while we were there.

Possibly the best place to scout birds from...anywhere in the world. Paul, Dan, Myself and Dave enjoying a cold beer after a day on the road, and behind the binoculars and spotting scope