A 70-year-old pig hunter was knocked unconscious after tumbling 10m down a waterfall in the upper Buller Gorge yesterday while in hot pursuit of his prey.
The Nelson man was apparently hunting with his two brothers when he broke a leg and suffered abrasions to his head in the fall, about 1pm, in the Ariki Falls area near the Buller swingbridge.
NZCC Rescue Helicopter pilot Angus Taylor said the group's dogs were on the trail of a pig when it disappeared through a mass of thick scrub. The hunters were trying to keep up when the man fell over "a bit of a bluff".
"They were trying to get through it and he dropped eight to 10m to the bottom," Mr Taylor said.
While it was a long fall, it was not a steep, vertical drop.
