The creek turned out to have shingle bed pretty much all the way up to the top. Not my favourite kind of ground when you're carrying a 17-20 kg backpack and a borrowed rifle with an expensive scope...

The bright spot in the lower part of the picture is where the picture above was taken from.

A bit closer to typhical chamois country...

...but still not quite there...To make a long story short; I walked a bit further (towards the end of a creek) and climbed a hill where I could glass the surrounding hillsides with my binoculars (for an hour). The only game I spotted was a dead "billy goat" (male goat), which was everything but good news. First; you seldom find chamois in the same area as goats. Second; the goat was killed not more than a day ago, meaning that someone had been hunting recently in this area before me. As it was getting late in the afternoon, I decided to walk down to the car and sleep in the DOC hut for the night. So I did. 

I woke up Monday morning to cloudy weather and decided to get out of the valley before the rain would fill up the fords and make it a bit more difficult to drive across the river on my way back.

I arrived at Dave and Jo's place just before noon, and spent the rest of that day giving Dave a hand with the deers on the farm. The soil where the deers were grassing had a low constituent of  cobber, which made it necessary to give a major part of the deers a copper subsidy twice a year. So during the day we gave somewhere between 60-80 deers their copper subsidy, in form of a large capsule down their throat. Most deers were managable, but there were some old stags who demanded special treatment:-) We also sprinkled some chemical on their backs against ticks. Altogether, interesting work and a fine experience! On the picture some deers (stags) are gathered in the fencing before treatment.

Most of the deers were taken inside the building for treatment. These two hinds are finished and are ready to get out to the fencing.

And out we go!