That Man Deserves a Shandy

That man deserves a shandy

By Harley O’Hagan

3pm on Friday saw Andrea, my afterhours manager, and I pulling up at Rex’s Stokes Vegas estate. We loaded up the big 1994 1.3L Toyota Corolla XL Hatch, aimed north and set off.

We parked at the carpark, and took a leisurely stroll up toward the tops of the Ruahine range. It wasn’t long before we were overtaken by a couple of hunters and a van load of trampers who looked to have had about an average of 60 years’ tramping experience.

The weather on the tops was perfect that evening, with hardly a breath of wind as we sat down to a squashed but delicious dinner of Rex’s lasagne and glassed the opposite faces. We carried on, putting on our headlamps as the darkness rolled in. The trip was taking a little longer than expected. The final stretch involved a sidle along gentle tussock slopes that was relatively simple during daylight, and the pressure was on for Rex as guide. This being Andrea’s first real introduction to hunting, it was vital to my hunting career that she become hooked. Rex carefully picked the steepest, slipperiest route with the most hidden springs and we all finally made it to the camp site exhausted by 11pm.

There was a large tarn by the camp site, known by some as “Two Naked Old Men Tarn” due to a disturbing twilight vista that was unfortunately chanced upon by a hapless hunting buddy. Rex found much safer drinking water from a nearby spring, while Andrea and I put up the tent.

The night was kind and we all woke fairly refreshed to the 5:30 am alarm. A breakfast of porridge and tea soon had us marching up the ridge. At about 7 am, Rex spotted the first deer for the day, a hind, feeding on a rugged spur opposite us. We watched it for a few minutes trying to plan the best way to stalk it, but then suddenly it disappeared. It seemed most likely that the hind had laid down behind a rock, so we decided to have a look down the spur when we got round there.

About an hour later, we reached the spur. Andrea waited up top while Rex and I walked down to where the hind was last seen. Unfortunately, we got no more than a whiff of deer, and a steep climb back up to the ridge.

We carried on along the ridge, glassing as we went. The country was getting a bit steeper and more rugged, and Andrea decided she would sit tight and enjoy the sun while the boys carried on. I pointed out where we planned to go, and said we would be back in about 20 minutes, an innocent lie that was to cause much guilt later.

A few minutes later, Rex spotted two more deer feeding on a large slip about a kilometre away. Pointing them out to me, we watched the deer for about 30 seconds before deciding that we weren’t going to let this opportunity go like with the other hind. We would have to move fast.

We dropped off the other side of the ridge and ran, walked, slipped and rolled as fast as we could in the direction of the top of the slip. I arrived first, delirious with blood loss from the thick leatherwood. Peering over the lip of the slip, I couldn’t believe my luck when I realised I had popped up right above the deer. I could see one yearling browsing about 80 to 100m away on a rock. I watched it for about 30 seconds, waiting for Rex, but when the deer started to move, I decided that a deer in the freezer is worth two in the bush and shot it.

The slip suddenly erupted with loud barking, and I started walking quietly down the slip, thinking I may have only wounded the deer. Rex turned up moments after with a questioning thumbs up. I confirmed with another thumbs up. The barking continued healthily, and we knew it wasn’t a wounded deer – the other one we had seen was still down there.

Rex walked down the slip with his 308 at the ready. Suddenly a yearling hind walked out from behind a rock and started to make off. Rex gave a grunt and she stopped and turned about 15 m from him – bad move.

Rex put her down with one shot, turned to me with a big grin on his face and remarked in classic Arnie oneliner style, “And that’s all she wrote.”

After taking the requisite photos, Rex and I set about skinning and butchering our animals – a yearling stag and a yearling hind. The news of the kill was quickly spread amongst the local blow fly communities, so that visibility was limited to about a foot around the carcasses.

It had now been about 3 ½ hours since we had told Andrea we would be back in 20 minutes, and I was concerned about my hunting future. Especially since I had told her that morning that she wouldn’t need to bring her book.

As Rex and I slowly climbed back up to the ridge carrying our heavy loads, it quickly became apparent that we had run out of water. Or rather that I had run out of water and that Rex’s great patented idea of carrying an empty water bottle and filling it up with whatever you manage to find didn’t really work. It was about this time that our imaginations set to work picturing ourselves sitting by the spring at the camp site, drinking water by the litre. And then talk turned to that most under-rated of cocktails, the shandy. We were going to shamelessly drink lots of shandy, but first we would have to find a way of buying it without being ridiculed. Both Rex and I were still smarting from the vicious taunting of our hunting mates over our recently traded-in ladies’ guns (.243’s), and didn’t know if we could handle people knowing we liked to put lemonade in our beer.

Thinking in the now, I remembered seeing a small grubby tarn up on the ridge, and we fantasised about it all the way up. Somehow we managed to find a deer trail through the leatherwood that took us directly to the tarn. It wasn’t too hard to filter the dragonfly larvae and caddisfly nymphs through our teeth (to date, only minor ambiguous gastric repercussions - author).

An hour later we reached Andrea again. She had actually had a great relax, and had heard the gun shots and the barking and had been able to see us faintly in our blaze gear about a kilometre away. Hunting career saved! But she was wondering why we kept stopping every minute or so on our way back, having never carried a deer before herself.

After a very lazy evening hunt, spotting two more deer at a safe distance, and a whisky and spring water, it was back to the tent. The next day we packed up camp and headed back to the car. Driving back toward home, thoughts turned toward the long awaited shandy. A likely establishment was finally spotted in Palmerston North, and after some hesitation a round of drinks was ordered with lowered voices. The friendly bartender decided that everyone in the bar would like to know what we had ordered, so we quickly grabbed the glasses and retired to a dark corner table for our well-deserved shandy.