Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Hunting camp pics

Post em if you've got em.

Here's a few camps and cabins I've used at different times.


Field hut on the bush edge just below the top of the range. First hut built in the Tararua ranges in the thirties, two story place with bunks and fire etc downstairs and more bunks upstairs.
About 3 hours walk, all up hill and steep, but during the roar and in the late spring there can be some good hunting on the open tops above the hut. Not much decent firewood round there and it gets cold if the snow blows though.



Cone hut, a Totara slab hut built in the fifties. Some decent hunting round here, on the flats at the change of light if the wind's right or up the sides on either side of the valley, and a five minute walk to the river for fishing (a good pool right where the track comes down and crosses the river usually holds two or three fish) About 2.5 - 3 hours walk over the ridge or a five to seven hour walk up the valley. The ridge walk is good during the roar, get up on top before daylight and you can normally get one or two stags roaring back at you.



Cone hut fireplace.



The sleeping platform at Cone hut, just rough adzed totara slabs nailed down. Not the most comfortable.



Inside Tutuwai hut. Fireplace on right, benches and table on left, some of the sleeping platforms in the background. One of my favourite spots, reasonable hunting (Reds on the river flats in the morning if you're lucky or easy bush terraces back from the river), a good river and a comfortable hut about four to six hours into the bush.



Our bunks at Tutuwai.



Smiths creek shelter, real basic shelter. No door and an opening big enough to drive a pickup in. Nothing in the windows and no fireplace.

[img]http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll288/she-dragon3/Hunting%20Easter/IMAG0021.jpg[/img]

Me inside Smiths creek. I normally wouldn't stay there but there's good hunting close, mainly Red deer and I have heard of Sika being shot there too, and some fishing in the river, mainly brown trout, about a two hour hike from the road.

[img]http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll288/she-dragon3/Hunting%20Easter/IMAG0022.jpg[/img]

A distance shot of Oamaru hut taken from down by the river. Good Sika country round there, lots of sign just up behind the hut on the left on an open clearing in the Manuka scrub. One of our group shot an eight point stag the week we were there despite the weather packing up and sending us rain then snow then more rain and more snow.

[img]http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll288/she-dragon3/hut.jpg[/img]

I'm afraid that's all I can dredge up right now due to a PC deciding to die on us around new years.

Three different hunting camps I've shared in Texas (one far east, one in the hill country and one north)







[img]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b297/Shoalcove/Texas/c.jpg[/img]

could be this...




or this with a cot behind the truck using the bumper as a nightstand...



Or the hilton...




This was my great grandpappy's at the turn of the century in Az...


[img]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll237/kentpowellp/IMG_0001_NEW_0001.jpg[/img]

My room at our camp in Mississipi



Skinning shed Ryan & I built



Ashly & Richard in the kitchen.

A couple NM and CO. I have a bunch more, but not here on this computer.

Here's few elk hunting camps in Colorado.

This is my first elk camp from 1978.


I decided I would sleep better if I setup a better camp.


That worked pretty good but a wall tent works even better.




Then we bought a cabin.





Sold the cabin so we went back to setting up the wall tent.
[img]http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww288/KCKeen/Camps/DogRun.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww288/KCKeen/Camps/IM001255.jpg[/img]

It seems like we have to go further in now to get to the elk and last year we rented horses. This photo is similar to what our elk hunting camp last year looked like.
[img]http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww288/KCKeen/Camps/OlympicPeninsula.jpg[/img]

KC

Is that a guide in the pic?

Here are few camps in Alaska.

Kahiltna Glacier 1994. Climbing Denali.




Float hunt for moose on the King Salmon River 2004.


Little Grant Lake, 2004.


Kugururok River Caribou Hunt, 2007


Anisak River Caribou Hunt, 2009.



KC

John:

That photo was taken on a recreational backpack trip on the Olympic Penninsula, circa 1994. I included it just to give an idea of what my elk camp last Fall was like.

KC

Whitetail and Turkey camp.

Maarty,

I think New Zealand must one of the bezst hunting destinations in the world given the type of game available and the access hunters have to it..

With regards the Huts, unlike the ones shown by our American friends, would I be correct in thinking that many of the Huts are on publically huntable land and are essentially open to all on a first come first served basis?

I was reading somewhere that the NFS were demolising a lot of "unofficial" huts and bivvies and it was causing a huge uproar by hunters and trampers...Some of the huts had been operation for years and were well a known and much loved part of hunting lore..

Love to see more if you have any further pictures..

Regards,

Peter

Couple more camp life pics.

An assortment of "camps" mostly on different deer leases I been on over the years.

Due to the short term nature of leases over here, plus the planning laws, people tend not to build cabins that much instead using things like static trailers/caravans or even coverted shipping containers..

Thats a motely collection of hounds in your grandpa's camp...

Love seeing how the old timers do it...

Here are some pictures of our back country elk camps






[img]http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b231/cole_smith/PIC_0018.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b231/cole_smith/PIC_0014.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b231/cole_smith/PIC_0012.jpg[/img]

This is a West Texas hunt camp that belonged to a friend of mine. I hunted hogs there with him.



There were several groups that shared this lease and each group had its' own camp. One group's "camp" was the old school bus that you can see in the background. There were a couple of wooden shacks that other groups had built. My friend didn't stay on this lease very long.

Eventually he bought 100 acres in West Texas brush country and has done a lot of work to improve it with water, stands and feeders.

KC

You're right they are all public huts, the price to stay ranges from $5NZ per night to $15 for ones like Oamaru where pretty much everything is provided including cut firewood and coal. Tutuwai is $10 per night and has gas for cooking and two two burner stoves bolted to the benches.
The Department of conservation runs most of the public lands and is supposed to maintain the huts but there's more money spent on the great walk huts and tourist car parks than on all the rest of the huts etc in the country and they seem to forget that the land belongs to the people of New Zealand and they only manage it for us.
A lot of iconic hunting camps that were set up on public land for years have been removed in recent years. The goal up until the 80's was to have a hut or bivvy 2 hours apart on every track in every park, that was so Government hunters could cover the land easily and safely, and so the public could access the back country safely. In the last 30 years a lot of huts have either been destroyed, allowed to fall apart or downgraded to shelters (like smith creek)
I'll try to find some pictures of an old log hut that had stood for fifty odd years till the DoC decided not to do anything about the fact the creek was cutting closer and closer to the hut, last year it got destroyed when a flood undercut the bank completely. All it would have taken was a weeks work by a group, and plenty of hunting groups offered, to move the hut further back to a safe point. Hunting heritage gone, history that helped shape more than a few peoples lives allowed to be wiped out because DoC likes the tree huggers and greenies more than anyone else. The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society (twig and tweet to hunters) won't be happy till NZ is returned to having no land mammals in the wild at all.
As you may have guessed the agencies involved in controlling hunting lands are no more popular here than anywhere else.
I guess we can't really complain though, we can still hunt for free any time by just going and asking for a permit (or if the local officers know you, ringing them up)
I'm lucky, where I live there's huntable populations of Red deer, Sika, Sambar, Fallow, Goats and Pigs all within a couple of hours drive, the closest hunting is about 20 minutes drive away, and reasonable fishing within spitting distance of my door.

Sheep camp for a 10 day hunt in the Brooks Range. I'm kicking back against my "Barney's" recliner...