I arrived at Nelson Airport at 8.10 AM the 15th of February and was met by Dave. We drove directly to Dave's friend Roger, and had a cup of coffee and a chat (guess what the topic was about) with him and his wife Beth. Roger and Beth are really good people and it was very nice to meet them. After discussing all the problems with the NZ governments way of administering nature and wildlife resources on the island and other topics, we headed for some goat hunting in an area Roger had disposal of. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera for this session, but the result of the hunt was 5 goats. Later that afternoon we bought some supplies and drove home to Dave and Jo's place to prepare our gear for the next days chamois hunt. We left early the next morning and drove down to Leatham (about 120 km), followed Leatham Road along the Branch River, took off after 6 km and followed Leatham River. We parked the car at one of DOC's huts (red circle on the map), and started to walk up Boulder Stream (red dots on the map). After have walked for 3 hours, we camped (black square on the map), had a cup of tea, and then walked further up along the stream. We did see goats at several occations, but wouldn't shoot any, as the sound of rifles could alert any chamois in the surrounding area. We walked up to the end of the stream (a pretty hard walk, I can promise you..) but unfortunately there was not a single sign of the chamois. We walked down to the camp and had an early night. Next morning we walked up on a hill above the camp and glassed the surrounding area without luck. We did shoot a couple of goats for dog food, though.

The gear is organized, packed in the car, and we're ready to go.

The first km was easy walking, but then the stream got a bit steeper, got more curves and vegetation, which made it hard to keep up the speed...

After a while we saw the first mob of goats, but decided to leave them alone.

As mentioned, the stream was getting steeper and steeper...

Boulder Stream Camp!

Kahn, our four-legged companion for the trip.

Picture taken during the walk up the hill above our camp (located among the trees in the bottom left corner of the picture) on day 2 of the chamois hunt. Since there were no signs of chammy, and the weather was getting worse as well, we organized our gear and walked back to the car.