Crack hunters, wild cattle and the one that got away
Looking north from near Big River. Cattle escaped from farms along this Kahurangi coast to become the wild herd that frequented the lighthouse area. Photo: Gerard Hindmarsh.
No Kaimanawa horse sentimentalities here. Last month, two Bay of Plenty-based crack shooters with dogs, on contract to DOC, were brought in to shoot four bulls and five cows thought to be the last remnant of wild Hereford cattle wandering the regenerating pasture and coastal bush around Kahurangi Point.
One cow did manage to get away unscathed. Seven of the nine cattle killed were boned out, and much of the meat was given away. Boning out the largest bulls involved crawling inside them, such was their size.
Five years ago, about 50 cattle beasts, all farm escapees from up the coast, were thought to exist around Kahurangi Lighthouse. Two and even three kilometres into the bush along the ridgetops, their pugged tracks were like braided roadways through an eaten-out understorey.
Nearby Turimawiwi landowner Dave Harwood says the escaped wild cattle were breeding quite successfully south of Big River, as evidenced by the fact that he managed a few years back to round 73 of them into his yards and truck them out. Once he drove 50 Friesian crosses out there, hoping that the remaining, wiliest Herefords would join them, then all could be rounded up and taken out together.
"But the wild ones walked right through my Friesians," says Dave. "They didn't even want to know them."
After that, Dave resorted to shooting the wild cattle whenever he saw them. Thirty-one he shot. Late last year, his estimate was that there were no more than nine or ten left, exactly what the extermination team got, including the cow that got away.
Attempts to score some prime beef have routinely seen various locals go down to Kahurangi to hunt the cud-chewing beasts - on foot, with four wheel motor bikes, 4WDs, even a microlight. Their combined efforts resulted in a small reduction of the population but not fast enough for DOC, who wanted the destructive animals eradicated completely. Their choice of crack hunters was expedient, for sure. They flew into Kahurangi by helicopter, arriving at the same time as some local hunters who hoped to get a day or two's advance on the professionals. But that team, working with dogs, had their beasts before the local lads had even got out of the sack the next morning.
The end of Kahurangi's wild cattle? Maybe. But it's tempting somehow to think that one bull still lurks up in the bush, and has now been joined by that one cow that got away.
Gerard Hindmarsh
