Sleepless nights after grisly body find

A hunter who found a decomposing body inside a sleeping bag in a remote Fiordland river valley says he lost sleep thinking about the gruesome discovery.

Mystery still surrounds the identity of the dead man, and how he came to be in the wilderness where there were no marked tracks or huts.

Robin Severinsen, of Te Kuiti, said he and a hunting companion discovered the body - which was flown out of the bush this week - at the start of a 12-day hunting trip in a back-country wapiti deer block, on March 24.

They had been walking up McDonald Creek from Bligh Sound, 40km south of Milford Sound, for about seven hours when they came across the body of a man inside a sleeping bag, he told the Otago Daily Times.

But with no way of notifying authorities, they marked the location on a GPS device and continued hunting.

They had to wait until a helicopter came to pick them up to take them to Te Anau on Monday before they could tell police about their grisly find.

Mr Severinsen, 68, an experienced hunter, said the body was "quite badly" decomposed, but he thought the man might have been middle-aged and possibly part-Maori.

The discovery had led to some sleepless nights, he said.

"Oh, we lay there at night thinking about it."

It was not clear what the man had been doing in the area.

"A pack was nearby, but no tent or other equipment, and no guns," Mr Severinsen said.

"I'd definitely say he was under prepared. It's pretty remote in there."

An autopsy has been carried out on the body at Southland Hospital.

- NZPA