Wildside- Moleworth Goose Shoot

Special weekend together

© Zane Mirfin, Wildside Column, Special weekend together, Nelson Mail, 6 November 2010

Ten-year-old Jake accompanies his father on his first big hunt to continue a Mirfin family tradition.



Adventure: Jake, left, and Zane Mirfin in the mountains of Marlborough.

The annual Fish & Game spring goose shoot is an eagerly anticipated event on the Nelson- Marlborough sporting calendar.

For over two decades, keen local waterfowlers have hunted Canada geese in the mountains of Marlborough on organised group hunts. Hunting blocks are drawn by ballot and teams allocated areas covering St James, Rainbow and Molesworth stations.

The spring shoot is always oversubscribed and while some hunters miss out through the ballot system, there is always the autumn and winter hunts for those who are really keen.

The spring shoot or cull is the most popular because it is a pleasant time of year and the goose tallies tend to be higher due to an influx of nesting birds into the areas hunted.

These hunts are a win/win scenario all around because hunters benefit through organised access, goose populations are controlled, and the Fish & Game organisation gains kudos in a region where superior waterfowling opportunities are few and far between for local hunters.

Over the years, the Mirfin clan has been fortunate to have had some truly epic hunts into the blocks of Molesworth Station with some fabulous tallies of geese shot.

This Labour Day weekend just gone was a perfect opportunity to take my boy Jake (10) on his first big hunt, much like my father did with me when I was a boy.

Jake was very excited the week before the trip. On Friday morning, with gear loaded to the max, we headed off. At the rendezvous point at Rainbow Skifield entrance, we caught up with a large group of fellow local outdoorsmen. From there on in, it was a convoy of vehicles heading up the Rainbow Valley for Molesworth and St James. We joined a great team of brothers Bill and Ken Ringrose, father and son Malcolm and Geoff Irvine, friends Steve Holmes and John Stewart. The men were all great with Jake, making a fuss of him, and going out of their way to be helpful in teaching and explaining outdoor things to him. Jake gathered firewood, opened and closed gates, cooked sausages, washed dishes, learned bushcraft skills, and a dozen other camp routines.

We set up plastic milk bottles outside camp for target practice, where he got to shoot his single barrel .410 shotgun that grandad had bought some time ago for the grandkids to learn hunting and gun safety with.

Under the tutelage of our group, Jake’s firearms skills went from strength to strength. We all agreed that the best time to drum in gun safety is when boys are young and they will still listen and take instruction well.

Jake loved it when we got two vehicles bogged in deep mud and had to use our third vehicle and a long recovery strop to salvage them. He walked all day long enjoying the views, crossing rivers, and climbing steep banks despite the lack of geese.

That first night Jake and I slept in the same tent that my parents had bought me for my 21st birthday, half a lifetime before.

On the second day Jake spent most of his time with Grandad walking riverbeds and stalking hares. That evening after dinner, Jake wanted to go fishing. It was a biting easterly wind but he threw good casts with his spinning rod right across the river to within a whisker of the far bank.

At my insistence, Jake took his last unsuccessful cast before getting into dry footwear after about 12 hours of wet feet. Like I told him: ‘‘When the wind blows from the east – the fishing is least.’’

On the last day we split up into groups to hunt two valleys. Our party stalked the valley, seeing a few more geese although most took to the sky well out of shotgun range.

Jake thought the highlight of the day was seeing four chamois – three high on the hill above, and one which ran through the river in front of us.

It was a long day but one to be cherished because son, father and grandfather days in the mountains are not going to last forever.

Our final group tally of 10 geese was pitiful when put in the context of 2000 geese shot that weekend, but it didn’t matter.

Maybe it was fatherly overimagination, but Jake seemed to stand a little taller after that special weekend together.