Sport in the islands resembles their climate and scenery. To name the distinguishing feature I have once more to employ the well-worn word, variety. Even if we limit the term to the pursuit of game, there is enough of that to enable an idle man to pass his time all the year round. In the autumn there is deer-shooting of the best, and in the early winter the sportsman may turn to wild ducks and swamp-hen. Then wild goats have begun to infest certain high ranges, especially the backbone of the province of Wellington and the mountains in central Otago. In stalking them the hunter may have to exhibit no small share of the coolness of head and stoutness of limb which are brought to play in Europe in the chase of the chamois, ibex, and moufflon. In addition to sureness of foot, the goats have already developed an activity and cunning unknown to their tame ancestors. They will lie or stand motionless and unnoticed among the bewildering rocks, letting the stalker seek for them in vain; and when roused they bound away at a speed [53]that is no mean test of rifle-shooting, particularly when the marksman is hot and panting with fatigue. And when brought to a stand against rocks, or among the roots of mountain beeches, or on the stones of a river-bed, they will show fight and charge dogs and even men. The twisted or wrinkled horns of an old he-goat are not despicable weapons. As the reward of many hours’ hard clambering, varied by wading through ice-cold torrents, and spiced, it may be, with some danger, the goat hunter may secure a long pair of curving horns, or in mid-winter a thick, warm pelt, sometimes, though rarely, pure white. Moreover, he may feel that he is ridding the mountain pastures of an unlicensed competitor of that sacred quadruped, the sheep. Goats are by no means welcome on sheep-runs. Colonel Craddock, it is true, complains that it is not easy to regard them as wild, inasmuch as their coats retain the familiar colours of the domestic animals. He wishes they would change to some distinctive hue. This feeling is perhaps akin to the soldier’s dislike to shooting at men who retain the plain clothes of civilians instead of donning uniform—a repugnance experienced now and then by some of our fighting men in South Africa. Rabbits, of course, as a national scourge, are to be shot at any time, and though on the whole now held in check, are in some districts still only too abundant. Occasionally when elaborate plans are being laid for poisoning a tract of infested country, the owner of the land may wish no interference, and the man with a gun [54]may be warned off as a disturber of a peace intended to lull the rabbit into security. But, speaking generally, any one who wishes to shoot these vermin may find country where he can do so to his heart’s content, and pose the while as a public benefactor.
The largest game in the colony are the wild cattle. These, like the goats and pigs, are descendants of tame and respectable farm animals. On many mountain sheep-runs, annual cattle hunts are organised to thin their numbers, for the young bulls become dangerous to lonely shepherds and musterers, and do great damage to fences. Moreover, the wild herds eat their full share of grass, as their fat condition when shot often shows. Generations of life in the hills, fern, and bush have had their effect on runaway breeds. The pigs especially have put on an almost aristocratic air of lean savagery. Their heads and flanks are thinner, their shoulders higher and more muscular, their tusks have become formidable, and their nimbleness on steep hill-sides almost astonishing. A quick dog, or even an athletic man on foot, may keep pace with a boar on the upward track; but when going headlong downhill the pig leaves everything behind. The ivory tusks of an old boar will protrude three or four inches from his jaw, and woe to the dog or horse that feels their razor-edge and cruel sidelong rip. The hide, too, has become inches thick in places, where it would, I should think, be insensible to a hot branding iron. At any rate, the spear or sheath knife that is to pierce it must be held in clever as well as strong hands. Even a rifle-bullet,[55] if striking obliquely, will glance off from the shield on the shoulder of a tough old boar. Wild pigs are among the sheep-farmer’s enemies. Boars and sows alike prey on his young lambs in spring-time, and every year do thousands of pounds’ worth of mischief in certain out-of-the-way country. So here again the sportsman may plume himself upon making war upon a public nuisance. In bygone days these destructive brutes could be found in numbers prowling over open grassy downs, where riders could chase them spear in hand, and where sheep-dogs could bring them to bay. They were killed without exception or mercy for age or sex; and the spectacle of pigs a few weeks old being speared or knifed along with their mothers was not exhilarating. But they were pests, and contracts were often let for clearing a certain piece of country of them. As evidence of their slaughter the contractors had to bring in their long, tufted tails. These the station manager counted with care, for the contract money was at the rate of so much a tail. I have known ninepence to be the reigning price. Nowadays, however, the pigs are chiefly to be found in remote forests, dense manuka scrub, or tall bracken, and if caught in the open it is when they have stolen out by moonlight on a raid upon lambs. The thick fern not only affords them cover but food: “the wild boar out of the wood doth root it up,” and finds in it a clean, sweet diet. Many a combat at close quarters takes place every year in the North Island, in fern from three to six feet high, when some avenging farmer makes an [56]end of the ravager of his flocks. Numbers of the pigs are shot; but shooting, though a practical way of ridding a countryside of them, lacks, of course, the excitement and spice of danger that belong to the chase on foot with heavy knife or straight short sword. Here the hunter trusts both for success and safety to his dogs, who, when cunning and well-trained, will catch a boar by the ears and hold him till he has been stabbed. Ordinary sheep-dogs will not often do this; a cattle-dog, or a strong mongrel with a dash of mastiff or bulldog, is less likely to be shaken off. Good collies, moreover, are valuable animals. Not that sheep-dogs fail in eagerness for the chase; they will often stray off to track pigs on their own account. And any one who has seen and heard them when the boar, brought to bay against some tree trunk, rock, or high bank, makes short mad rushes at his tormentors, will understand how fully the average dog shares the hunter’s zest.
 
CATHEDRAL PEAKS
Another though much rarer plague to the flock-owner are the wild dogs. These also prey by night and lie close by day, and if they were numerous the lot of farmers near rough, unoccupied stretches of country would be anxious indeed; for the wild dogs not only kill enough for a meal, but go on worrying and tearing sheep, either for their blood, or for the excitement and pleasure of killing. When three or four of them form a small pack and hunt together, the damage they can do in a few nights is such that the persecuted farmer counts the cost in ten-pound notes. They are often too fast and savage to be stopped by a shepherd’s dogs, and [57]accurate rifle-shooting by moonlight—to say nothing of moonless nights—is not the easiest of accomplishments. Failing a lucky shot, poison is perhaps the most efficacious remedy. Happily these dogs—which are not sprung from the fat, harmless little native curs which the Maori once used to fondle and eat—are almost confined to a few remote tracts. Any notorious pack soon gets short shrift, so there need be no fear of any distinct race of wild hounds establishing itself in the wilderness.
Another hostis humani generis, against which every man’s hand or gun may be turned at any season, is the kea. A wild parrot, known to science as Nestor notabilis, the kea nevertheless shows how fierce and hawk-like a parrot can become. His sharp, curving beak, and dark-green plumage, brightened by patches of red under the wings, are parrot-like enough. But see him in his home among the High Alps of the South Island, and he resembles anything rather than the grey African domestic who talks in cages. Nor does he suggest the white cockatoos that may be watched passing in flights above rivers and forest glades in the Australian bush. Unlike his cousin the kaka, who is a forest bird, the kea nests on steep rocky faces or lofty cliffs, between two and five thousand feet above sea-level. If he descends thence to visit the trees of the mountain valleys, it is usually in search of food; though Thomas Potts, the naturalist, says that keas will fly from the western flanks of the Alps to the bluffs on the sea-coast and rest there. One envies them that flight, for it must give them in mid-air [58]an unequalled bird’s-eye view of some of the noblest scenery in the island. Before the coming of the settlers these bold mountaineers supported a harmless life on honey, seeds, insects, and such apologies for fruits as our sub-alpine forests afford. But as sheep spread into the higher pastures of the backbone ranges, the kea discovered the attractions of flesh, and especially of mutton fat. Beginning, probably, by picking up scraps of meat in the station slaughter-yards, he learned to prey on dead sheep, and, finally, to attack living animals. His favourite titbit being kidney fat, he perches on the unhappy sheep and thrusts his merciless beak through the wool into their backs. Strangely enough, it seems to take more than one assault of the kind to kill a sheep; but though forty years have passed since the kea began to practise his trick, the victims do not yet seem to have learned to roll over on their backs and thereby rid themselves of their persecutors. Even the light active sheep of the mountains are, it would seem, more stupid than birds of prey. Ingenious persons have suggested that the kea was led to peck at the sheep’s fleecy backs through their likeness to those odd grey masses of mossy vegetation, called “vegetable sheep,” which dot so many New Zealand mountain slopes, and which birds investigate in search of insects.
 
THE REES VALLEY AND RICHARDSON RANGE
Shepherds and station hands wage war on the kea, sometimes encouraged thereto by a bounty; for there are run-holders and local councils who will give one, two, or three shillings for each bird killed. Let a pair of [59]keas be seen near a shepherd’s hut, and the master runs for his gun, while his wife will imitate the bird’s long whining note to attract them downwards; for, venturesome and rapacious as the kea is, he is just as confiding and sociable as the gentler kaka, and can be lured by the same devices. Stoats and weasels, too, harass him on their own account. Thus the bird’s numbers are kept down, and the damage they do to flocks is not on the whole as great as of yore. Indeed, some sceptics doubt the whole story, while other flippant persons suggest that the kea’s ravages are chiefly in evidence when the Government is about to re-assess the rents of the Alpine runs. Against these sneers, however, may be quoted a large, indeed overwhelming, mass of testimony from the pastoral people of the back-country. This evidence seems to show that most keas do not molest sheep. The evil work is done by a few reprobate birds—two or three pairs out of a large flock, perhaps—which the shepherds nickname “butchers.” Only this year I was told of a flock of hoggets which, when penned up in a sheep-yard, were attacked by a couple of beaked marauders, who in a single night killed or wounded scores of them as they stood packed together and helpless. No laws, therefore, protect the kea, nor does any public opinion shield him from the gun in any month. His only defences are inaccessible mountain cliffs and the wild weather of winter and spring-time in the Southern Alps.
Acclimatisation has made some woeful mistakes in New Zealand, for is it not responsible for the rabbit [60]and the house-sparrow, the stoat and the weasel? On the other hand, it has many striking successes to boast of in the shape of birds, beasts, and fishes, which commerce and industry would never have brought to the islands in the regular way of business. Of these, one may select the deer among beasts, the trout among fishes, and the pheasant, quail, and starling among birds. Many colonists, it is true, would include skylarks, blackbirds, and thrushes among the good works for which acclimatising societies have to be thanked; but of late years these songsters have been compassed about with a great cloud of hostile witnesses who bear vehement testimony against them as pestilent thieves. No such complaints, however, are made against the red-deer, the handsomest wild animals yet introduced into New Zealand. Indeed, several provinces compete for the honour of having been their first New Zealand home. As a matter of fact, it would appear that as long ago as 1861 a stag and two hinds, the gift of Lord Petre, were turned out on the Nelson hills. Next year another small shipment reached Wellington safely, and were liberated in the Wairarapa. These came from the Royal Park at Windsor, and were secured by the courtesy of the Prince Consort.
In 1871 some Scottish red-deer were turned loose in the Otago mountains near Lakes Wanaka and Hawea. In all these districts the deer have spread and thriven mightily, and it is possible that the herds of the colony now number altogether as many as ten thousand. Otago sportsmen boast of the unadulterated Scottish blood of [61]their stags, whose fine heads are certainly worthy of any ancestry. In the Wairarapa the remarkable size of the deer is attributed to the strain of German blood in the animals imported from the Royal Park. As yet, however, the finest head secured in the colony was not carried by a deer belonging to any of the three largest and best-known shooting-grounds of the islands. It was obtained in 1907 from a stag shot by Mr. George Gerard in the Rakaia Gorge in Canterbury. The Rakaia Gorge herd only dates from 1897, and is still small, but astonishing stories are told of some of its heads. At any rate the antlers of Mr. Gerard’s stag have been repeatedly measured. One of them is forty-seven inches long, the other forty-two inches and a half.
Deer-stalking in New Zealand can scarcely be recommended as an easy diversion for rich and elderly London gentlemen. It is not sport for the fat and scant-of-breath who may be suffering from sedentary living and a plethora of public banquets. New Zealand hills are steep, new Zealand forests and scrubs are dense or matted. Even the open country of the mountains requires lungs of leather and sinews of wire. The hunter when unlucky cannot solace his evenings with gay human society or with the best cookery to be found in a luxurious, civilised country. If he be an old bush-hand, skilful at camping-out, he may make himself fairly comfortable in a rough way, but that is all. Nor are such things as big drives, or slaughter on a large scale, to be had at any price. Shooting licences are cheap—they can be had from the secretary of an [62]acclimatisation society for from one to three pounds; but the number of stags a man is permitted to shoot in any one district varies from two to six. To get these, weeks of physical labour and self-denial may be required. On the other hand, trustworthy guides may be engaged, and colonial hospitality may vary the rigours of camp life. Then, too, may be counted the delights of a mountain life, the scenery of which excels Scotland, while the freshness of the upland air is brilliant and exhilarating in a fashion that Britons can scarcely imagine. And to counterbalance loneliness, the hunter has the sensation of undisturbed independence and freedom from the trammels of convention, as he looks round him in a true wilderness which the hand of man has not yet gashed or fouled.
Wild-fowl shooting ranges from tame butchery of trustful native pigeons and parrots to the pursuit of the nimble godwit, and of that wary bird and strong flyer, the grey duck. The godwit is so interesting a bird to science that one almost wonders that ornithologists do not petition Parliament to have it declared tapu. They tell us that in the Southern winter it migrates oversea and makes no less a journey than that from New Zealand to Northern Siberia by way of Formosa and the Sea of Okhotsk. Even if this distance is covered in easy stages during three months’ time, it seems a great feat of bird instinct, and makes one regret that the godwit so often returns to our tidal inlets only to fall a prey to some keen sportsmen indifferent to its migratory achievements.
[63]
The only excuse for molesting the wood-pigeon is that he is very good to eat. The kaka parrot, too, another woodlander, makes a capital stew. Neither victim offers the slightest difficulty to the gunner—I cannot say sportsman. Indeed the kaka will flutter round the slayer as he stands with his foot on the wing of a wounded bird, a cruel but effective decoy-trick. Another native bird easy to hit on the wing is the queer-looking pukeko, a big rail with bright-red beak and rich-blue plumage. The pukeko, however, though he flies so heavily, can run fast and hide cleverly. Moreover, in addition to being good for the table, he is a plague to the owners of standing corn. In order to reach the half-ripe ears he beats down the tops of a number of stalks, and so constructs a light platform on which he stands and moves about, looking like a feathered stilt-walker, and feasting the while to his heart’s content. Grain-growers, therefore, show him no mercy, and follow him into his native swamps, where the tall flax bushes, toé-toé, and giant bulrushes furnish even so large a bird with ample cover. When, however, a dog puts him up, and he takes to the air, he is the easiest of marks, for any one capable of hitting a flying haystack can hit a pukeko.
Very different are the wild ducks. They soon learn the fear of man and the fowling-piece. They are, moreover, ca............