Dundas Hut in the Tararua Ranges, built 1961. If you've ever spent time in NZs national parks chances are you have stayed in a hut originally built by and for government deer cullers. The network of huts these men built has enabled hundreds of thousands of outdoors folks to enjoy the BushLife in a way not possible in the rest of the world. There is no feeling like that, when you finally see the hut after a tough day on the hills. The next time you stay in a hut spare a thought for what it would have taken to build it way out in the back country and those that built it. How many lives must they have saved...
For Fathers Day this year we ran a photo competition.
The quality of the entries was very high and it was tough to pick a winner. Congratulations to Melissa with her picture of her partner and their kids on a hunting trip, they won $50 to spend on the website.
We enjoyed hosting the competition and will be running another, next year we will be much better organised so start taking pictures you can use to enter, we should have some more prizes as well.
Comment below which is your favourite picture.
It was tough but we had to pick a winner and in the end this was our favourite.
New Zealand hunting legend Percy Lyes starting learning bushcraft in the forests near Hokitika during the depression. He started trapping rabbits and possums for the pot before getting his first rifle, a Winchester single shot .22 which he used to good effect, even managing to score the odd small deer. During WW2 Percy enlisted in the Army but was discharged, before he could deploy, so he could help his elderly father on the farm, as farming was considered essential to the war effort. By the end of the war deer skins were in hot demand so Percy and his brother David did the obvious thing and started hunting professionally. When Percy upgraded his trusty .303 with a German Ajax scope,...
My wife and I recently completed the PracMed NZ Stop the Bleed workshop in Palmerston North. As someone whos done a bunch of different medical courses over the years I was really impressed by it and wanted to do a quick review. Living in a rural area far from help and using tools like chainsaws and firearms its a good idea to be proficient in some core medical procedures, stopping bleeding being one. Even if you are a true city slicker its still a good course. The fact is we are most likely to use these skills on the road, by the end of June 195 people had died on our roads just this year. The course is run by...
Bread Making the NZFS Way. Camp-oven bread is often spoiled through poor preparation, and the following tips will assist in making a good loaf: • Ingredients must be kept warm but not too hot or too cold, otherwise the yeast will be destroyed. Blood heat (98"F) is ideal. Yeast is a living organism and must be treated as such; hence the importance of warm temperatures which allow it to multiply (work). • Too much kneading will cause split crusts. • Too little kneading causes holes in the loaf. • Too much salt will result in slow rising of the dough. • Too little salt will result in the loaf rising too quickly and forming holes in the loaf. • Too...
