One Heck Of A Ride

200 The South Pacific New Zealand For Sika Deer, Chamois And Tahr The final leg of my three-country Down- Under adventure was New Zealand, where I hunted with Terry Pierson, one of the pioneers in that country’s hunting industry. Because of bad weather, my flight to Auckland on the North Island was the roughest, bumpiest flight I’ve ever experienced. At the peak of the turbulence, the stewardess announced that we should throw our food and drinks onto the floor. It was a good thing we had our seat belts fastened. It was so rough someone could have been tossed across the cabin and seriously injured. The charter flight to the estate where I shot a sika deer with Terry was much smoother, and as we were landing I looked down on where we would be hunting and saw deer. The hunt itself Author with a good Sika Deer wasn’t much of a challenge. We walked out of the lodge where we were staying and twenty minutes later I shot a stag that Terry selected. After that, we traveled to the South Island and drove to where a helicopter flew us and our food and supplies to one of the many huts the government maintains for hunters in the Southern Alps. I had wanted a challenging hunt, and this was it. We hunted on foot and climbed up and down some of the world’s steepest (and most scenic) mountains for five days. I shot a chamois at about 3:00 PM the second day, and when it was starting to get dark at 5:00 PM, I told Terry we needed to Author pictured with dinner, a Chamois find a place to hang out for the night. He felt we needed to keep going, so we did. Author taking in the mountains we are trekking on The terrain was so rough and steep it wasn’t easy to get off the mountain. We were jumping