Wild moose chase: face to face with NZ moose

Hunter Fred Stewardson liked to get a decent trophy in his sights but the best shot he ever took was with his camera.

That was nearly 60 years ago, the day Fred and his mate came face to face with three moose in deep, dark Fiordland.

Fred says the two men almost smacked into the trio of moose - a cow, bull and calf - in a clearing by a river.

"We never stalked the moose, just stumbled across them."

His cobber hissed "don't shoot... photos, photos!"

Back in the April of 1953, 21-year-old Fred, off an Otago farm, was as keen on photography as hunting. He remembers his hands shaking as he got his trusty 35mm Agfa Super Sillette from its leather case and fumbling as he set up his telescopic lens. He got several photos of the three enigmatic animals and they're pure gold, say the moose-brigade. Fred and his hunting mentor Eddie Young hadn't been on a wild moose chase. They'd been dropped off by a charter boat from Port Chalmers in the remote upper reaches of Wet Jacket Arm and were after red deer, wapiti maybe. "It was a shocking place, and I didn't like it," Fred recalls. "You've never seen anything like it... the rain, mud and mosquitoes as big as your thumb. In two weeks we had half a day of sunshine."

So there they were this day, in the dense, dripping, primeval forest and coming into riverbank area that had been heavily chewed out by red deer. Fred was so scared of getting lost he "stuck to Eddie like a little terrier" and they were only a few steps apart when they looked up saw not deer, but moose.

"I couldn't believe my eyes," Fred says.

The large animals - the calf the size of an adult red deer - didn't become immediately alarmed.

"They didn't even know we were there. We had cover from the noise of the river and the wind must have been in our favour, too."

After a few minutes the animals got skittish and took off, and Fred's photos show them splashing their way across the river.

He remembers Eddie telling him to keep his mouth shut and not tell a soul what they'd seen.

"'If you do'," Eddie warned, 'Fiordland will have loads of trigger-happy clowns out for the slaughter who won't give a damn if moose survive or not'."

Eddie died long ago. Fred isn't too chipper these days either which is why, after nearly 60 years, he's pulled his old photos out of the mists of time. "If I croak the story's gone forever," he says.

Fred's photos are a bit faded but New Zealand's top moose "hunter", Ken Tustin, says they are the best shots he's seen of live moose in the remote southwest.

Tustin should know; he has triggered literally thousands of camera shots trying to snap a descendant of the 10 moose liberated in the area in 1910. Since the 1970s he has surveyed the region extensively, written books, made documentaries and championed the existence of those lost Fiordland moose.

Their history, mystery and mythical elusiveness have fired up hunters for over 100 years. In a handful of photos of these large, unusual beasts taken between 1910 and 1950 most were dead with a triumphant hunter posing beside them. Fred's was only the ninth "live moose photo event" since 1923.

Those first imported moose didn't produce a sustainable population. But Tustin is sure there is a small population there, in that deeply inaccessible place. He hasn't seen one, hasn't caught one off camera, but only a week ago he saw fresh moose sign, including a recently cast antler.

Tustin is disappointed Fred's photos came to him too late to be included in his latest book, published last year, A (Nearly) Complete History of Moose in New Zealand. "Fred's photos knocked my socks off," he says.

It was one of the last sightings of moose in Fiordland until 1971 when, a story surfaced of a moose being shot. A year later Tustin led a Forest Research Institute survey to Dusky Sound and Wet Jacket Arm. After a 70-day search he concluded there was enough fresh sign to indicate a small number of moose survived. But Tustin's report wasn't considered definitive.

Some years later he and his wife Marg went back to film their doco A Wild Moose Hunt, watched by over 600,000 people when it screened in 1998.

When interviewed, Tustin had just returned to his Otago home after a "pick-up" of cards and a camera battery change from a set of remote self-triggering cameras on deer-trails in the Fiordland bush.

He'd pored over 2500 photos, mainly of red deer and not one moose. But he did find sign of them - "on the other side of the tree," he quips.

"The hope is that a moose will take a photo of itself for us. This is the best way, we believe, since stalking and carrying hand-held camera equipment is just so difficult in the wet, the mud, the heavy forest... let alone getting close to an alert, extremely rare wild animal at home and on the point of bolting. That's what makes Fred's amazing photos just so special."

Some people, who themselves have never seen, shot or photographed moose, are dismissive. Sceptics say the grassy clearing where Fred's moose were "shot" is not in Fiordland, that moose graze on trees not grass and that they don't live in family groups.

But 1953 was known as a tough year when food was severely compromised by untold thousands of red deer, Tustin says. And March/April is rutting season, when a bull is likely to find a cow with last year's calf still at foot. As for the photo that shows the bull apparently grazing, a Canadian expert says the dipped head is not feeding but a sign the animal has become agitated. He described the moose as being in good nick, with "well rounded backsides", the male young but mature, probably about 4-years-old.

Fred long ago left the southern mountains he loved and moved north to hunt game fish instead.

He can't go far from his Hikurangi farmlet these days. As for the wild moose chase, "if they're there, let them be. They're not pests, they're not hurting the place."

He's just happy his faded photos have seen the light of day and are now part of a New Zealand wildlife story of grand proportions.