The hut on High Peak Station echoes my childhood.

Two old NZ hiking huts tacked on either end of a cabin main room, the walls and ceilings are larch planks. On the floor, an elk’s hide instead of a carpet. The chandelier over the tiny table, predictably, is made of antlers. Above it, unpredictably, is perched a stuffed wallaby clutching a beer can.

Smithy and I arrived first and started a fire in the stone fireplace. I went around back and chopped some kindling, while he filled the room with smoke on his first try. The sky was streaking pink when Dick and Simon rolled in, victorious: they’d found the missing rifle magazine.

We discovered it was missing at an inopportune moment. 

The two stags were munching grass on the top of the ridge above the track.

The guys, in whispered tones, were assessing their value and plotting their stalk. Craig was getting his cameras and getting into position, and before I could ask any stupid questions, we were off.

The general plan was to creep across the lower edge of the hillside, under the rocks, and keep low enough that we wouldn’t be seen and then hike up the gap to the top of the ridge and come in on them with the wind in our faces, to avoid being sniffed out.

Simon sneaked around to the back of the truck and dug out his rucksack. Dick eased the zipper down the rifle case and pulled out the weapon. That’s when we discovered it: the magazine was missing. The whispered analysis revealed that Dick had laid it on the bumper after the last stalk and Simon hadn’t picked it up. It was dropped somewhere on the miles of track weaving through the 25 square mile range.

Simon sighed, “Well, we can go find it. What do you want to do, Dick?” 

Dick shrugged, and chambered a round: “We’ll find it later. It should only take one shot anyway!”

He winked, Simon smiled and I shook my head.

Leaning into the mountain so I’d fall in and up and not roll down like a stone if I fell (spooking the deer in the process- big party foul) I followed the men up the steep slope. I’m not great at estimating distances, but it was quite a climb over rough terrain, rocks and tussocks of hard grass. I could hear Dick breathing hard over the blood pounding in my own ears and wondered, in passing, how his sexagenarian heart was holding up. I suppose every hunter would love to go in pursuit of their ultimate trophy, but I prayed to the god of red stags that today would not be that day.

We paused, dropping to our knees in the scrub and the dung. 

“How’s your heart?” I whispered up hill to my Uncle.

He panted, smiled, raised his eyebrows in signature fashion and whispered back, “If taekwondo and spin class don’t blow my gaskets this sure as hell won’t!”

Simon waved us forward and we continued up the hill.

What we couldn’t see from our vantage point, Craig watched from below.

Red stags are wily creatures and, to quote my Uncle Dick, “They don’t get old by being stupid.” This pair had us made before we’d even left the truck. The even peeked over the edge of the hill and watched us for a while before sneaking off to our left from above and disappearing down the hill.

We sat at the top and laughed.

Other than cutting the kindling (which I got to before they noticed) they wouldn’t let me help. I spent the evening stretched out in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine listening to stories of Alaskan sheep hunt, Texans on their first international hunting trips, rock-n-roll tales, and embroidered upon versions of “the one that got away.”

Craig and Simon cooked up a feast of paua grilled in butter and lemon, followed by steaks from the High Peak Station farm. We dined like kings by candle light and the possum waited outside the door for our leavings.

“Well,” Simon said as we headed to bed, “Stags three, hunters zero,” referring to our triumvirate of unsuccessful stalks, “We’ll have another go at the dos amigos tomorrow, but at least we found the magazine!”