KEY POINTS:
The invitation relayed from Clyde Nicholls is intriguing. "He says if you're a good bloke who likes a yarn and drinks Appleton rum, he'll guarantee you'll shoot a deer."
The offer of a visit becomes even more attractive when I look up Maungataniwha Lodge's website and discover that as well as deer hunting there is trout fishing.
Could he guarantee a trout? Not a problem. I don't like to mention pig hunting and birdwatching, which the lodge also offers, but clearly Clyde would have had no trouble guaranteeing success there, too. As its name implies - it's the Maori equivalent of dragon mountain - the lodge is in the middle of tiger country, high up in the mysterious Ureweras, a place of razor-backed ridges, bush-filled gullies and dark legends, where black boars with deadly tusks, proud stags with massive antlers, cunning old rainbow trout and rare native birds are able to thrive far from the bustle of human activity.
Go fly fishing on the Waihou River, which runs through the deep gorge below the lodge, for instance, and you know that not only are you likely to be the sole fisherman for at least 25km, but also that chances are no one has fished that stretch of river for several days. Most of Clyde's clients reach this wilderness retreat by helicopter but that seemed a bit pricey.
So by promising that he could shoot my deer, I managed to persuade old mate Tony Rasmussen - better known as Ras - to drive us from Gisborne, and in many ways that's a better way to get there. The journey inland from the coast, over rugged hills and through steep chasms, through spectacular scenery and appalling erosion, serves to emphasise that you're heading into the middle of nowhere, to Maungataniwha Station, a 1600ha sheep and cattle farm, bordering the untouched forests of Te Urewera National Park, one of the last areas to succumb to colonisation.
Outside it may be the 21st century but this still feels like pioneering country. Even the luxurious lodge where visitors stay in modern comfort was built in good backwoods fashion by Clyde and his sons, using rimu, kahikatea, tawa and macrocarpa timber milled on the property, over a three-year period. It's the sort of place where you'd need to know how to live off the land.
Luckily it's also a place where there is plenty to hunt. Hop into Clive's red Toyota Hilux and climb the track into the hills and deer and pigs seem to be everywhere. "There's a camel," he says, without seeming to be looking. And, sure enough, with the aid of the binoculars I pick up a young male deer grazing on the edge of the bush. "They'll be all round here watching us," Clive adds.
"When the sun gets a bit lower they should start coming out. They rest in the bush during the day and come out to graze at night. Dusk and dawn is the best time to see them." As we bounce further into the station more deer and pigs come into sight. One deer is close enough for Ras to get out of the Hilux with his rifle but then Clyde sees something that makes him call a halt.
"See that patch of bush just next to her," he says. "She's got a fawn in there. I saw its ears flick." At one point we spy a stag with an impressive set of antlers but Clyde doesn't want Ras to take that one. "That's my trophy stag. Don't shoot him." Obviously the stag is being kept for a paying customer.
Further on we come across an enormous boar, which Clyde estimates to weigh 80-90kg. "Look at those tusks. They'd do a bit of damage to the dogs. "No," he adds, as I start to get out of the vehicle to get a better photo. "Stay in the truck. We don't want to annoy him. If he has a go at us he could shred the tyres."
Do his clients shoot boars? "No, no, you don't shoot pigs. If you want a pig you've got to chase it with the dogs and stick it. That's the only way." Watching the monster wander off, completely unafraid, Clyde raises a grim smile.
"I've got a couple of Aussies who want to try pig hunting," he says. "I might point them at that old fellow and see what they make of it. Could be fun." Then he breaks off in mid-yarn. "There's a donkey," - He's got quite a few nicknames for deer - "There's two of them. No, three. At the top of that fenceline along the ridge." It's no surprise that Clyde is so good at spotting deer because he has quite literally been hunting all his life. Sipping on his glass of rum that evening he recalls, "My father was a government deer culler and he took me on a hunt with him in a wheelbarrow when I was 3 years old.
"The first time I went shooting myself I would have been rising 9 years of age. I went with my cousin, who was a little bit older than me, and my uncle gave me his old .303 to play with and I shot a deer. Well, I say shot, but the two of us weighed it down with lead really because we were having difficulty shooting it. And from then on we were chasing deer all the time." It was through meat-hunting that he earned the money that got him into farming, as a sharemilker, and allowed him to work his way up to owning Maungataniwha Station.
As you'd expect, Clyde is a great talker, with forthright political views, thought-provoking ideas on health and wonderful yarns about hunting and fishing. One is about a wealthy Frenchman who was so excited at finding himself face-to-face with a majestic stag that his whole body shook and Clyde had to hold his shoulders so he could fire a shot. Afterwards the Frenchman broke off a piece of manuka and put it into the stag's mouth, explaining, "the stag has honoured us by letting us take his life, so now we honour him".
Another also features a Frenchman who caught a huge old trout, 6kg in weight, its tail black with age, and celebrated by taking his clothes off (unfortunately there were photos to prove it). Then there were two Americans, Bob and Cecil, who went pig hunting for the first time, caught a pig, asked for it to be let go... and everyone then had to run for their lives.
"'Cecil,' old Bob says to his mate, 'Cecil, you'll be able to tell your goddamned friends about that for the rest of your life'." But hang on, I hear you asking, these yarns are all very well, but what about Clyde's promise of a deer? And a trout? Well, he is as good as his word. To get the deer we rise at 5.30am - me with my camera, Ras with his gun - and drive into the hills until Clyde spots a small herd moving down a ridge. "Find yourself a spot in the trees there," he says, pointing at a clump of bush below a clearing. "I'll walk up the track and send them down this way."
We wait silently, and before long the deer appear, silhouetted against the rising sun, on the hill above us. They pause, looking down suspiciously at where we are hiding, Ras fires and scores a clean kill. I may not have fired a shot but I happily bought some of the meat home because, I don't mind telling you, the venison we had at Maungataniwha Lodge was the tenderest and tastiest I've ever eaten.
After breakfast we make our way down to the river below the lodge, Clyde offers instruction in fly fishing - I've caught lots of trout by spinning but never with a fly - and sets me loose. "See that dark shape at the top of that pool," he whispers. "That's a trout and a good-sized one. Try and land the fly just above him so the current brings it down." I do see the trout, and another one just below it, and another one further down the pool, and another one nearby ... in fact I've never seen so many trout.
As we walk up the river, tuis and bellbirds are singing in the bush on either bank, the river is sparkling in the sunlight and every pool seems to be full of fine, fat fish. It is a magical scene. Ras catches a nice trout and lets it go - Clyde has a catch-and-release policy - and another, and another. By the time we finish he must have landed at least half-a-dozen. I hook one but it gets off when I lose concentration - through shouting excitedly to my wife - and let the tension ease. Next time I get a strike Clyde appears alongside to make sure there are no more mistakes.
"Keep the tip up. Keep the tension on. Okay, wind it in now. Let it run a bit. Wind it in. Keep the tip up. That's a good-sized fish. Keep the tip up... Well done." The result is a magnificent trout, its rainbow colours gleaming brilliantly in the sun, weighing in at about 2kg. I hold it briefly in the water, stroking its sides until it recovers, then let it go. Fantastic.
As that demonstrates, you don't need to be a hardened hunter-gatherer to enjoy Maungataniwha. After a bit of coaching from Clyde on handling his rifle I feel confident I could have shot a deer myself if it wasn't for worries about the effect of the impact on my recent heart surgery. "Oh, yes," he says, "we've had a few people who've never shot before. I had a young woman here the other day, we showed her how to use the gun, took her out and she got a deer.
Now she wants to come back. "We've also had people who've never flyfished before and we've always got them a trout, never missed, though some of them are hard work, I can tell you." "I know," I say, "I know. I saw. I was there."
Diary
Maungataniwha Lodge www.maungataniwha.co.nz.
Air New Zealand has services to Gisborne, Napier, Taupo and Rotorua from all of which you can get to Maungataniwha Lodge.
See www.airnewzealand.co.nz.
* Jim Eagles caught his trout with help from Air New Zealand and Maungataniwha Lodge.
