Dr. James Kroll examines whitetail forages in a mountain meadow above Glenorchy. There are numerous clovers and other broadleaf plants in these grassy areas, and deer utilize them for much of the year. Photo by Gordon Whittington.

Our final day in Glenorchy found us visiting with Iris Scott and her daughter, Kay, whose family owns a large station in the nearby Rees River Valley. (The Rees and Dart valleys flow on either side of imposing Mount Earnslaw, a towering peak the Maoris called "Pikirakatahi." I'm pretty sure that means "altitude sickness" in their native tongue.)

The Scott family came to the Rees Valley at the same time the whitetails did, just after the turn of the 20th century. The Scotts don't allow hunting on their property, but people still have a great impact on whitetails in the valley. There's no legal way for a landowner to keep helicopters out of the mountains, because as noted, those highlands are crown land. And with a public road winding for miles through the Scott property, it's even a challenge to keep trespassers out of the privately owned valley.

"We've thought about building a high fence," Iris told us, "but it would take quite a lot of it, and that's a very expensive option. We certainly would like to be able to manage the deer more effectively."

The Scotts and Veints are hard-working people of the land, and they appreciate the whitetail's presence in their amazing corner of the world. But in a place where there are far more regulations protecting the woods than the deer living in them, intensive North American-style management is hard to imagine. It wouldn't be impossible, but it will take real commitment, perhaps without any guarantee of an economic return for the landowners' trouble.

Leaving Glenorchy that evening, James and I pondered what we had seen and learned in our short time at Lake Wakatipu. We found a population of deer that had carved out a niche for themselves in habitat nothing like the one in which they had evolved. While they haven't exactly taken over -- by James' estimation, this herd has grown at the very low rate of only around 5 percent annually for the past century -- the deer we saw appeared healthy. That doe and her fawns might not have excited some hunters, but for two guys who'd traveled so far in search of the world's most isolated whitetails, just seeing them was a thrill.

Now it was time to get serious. We were heading even farther south, to observe and hunt whitetails on wild Stewart Island. What the next few days would hold, we obviously didn't know . . . but based on what we'd seen and heard so far, we knew it had a chance to be the most interesting deer hunt of our lives.

Turns out we were anything but disappointed!

AUTHOR'S NOTE
For more on deer hunting and management in New Zealand, visit the DOC's Web site, www.doc.govt.nz, and run a search for "white-tailed deer." To purchase South Coast Productions' unique videos on many aspects of New Zealand's natural history and wildlife management, log onto: www.videosouth.com. To learn more about the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association, visit: www.deerstalkers.org.nz.

As pristine as the Glenorchy area is, Stewart Island has perhaps been altered even less by man. Going there is truly like stepping back in time. In Part 2 of this special report, join James and me as we hunt the world's only place in which that "whitetail" you hear rustling in the ferns could turn out to be a penguin instead!

page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6