Tough work to bag Big Four

The weigh-in at Te Puna attracted a huge crowd. day attracted a crowd. Photo / Geoff Thomas

Any motorist on the main road running through Te Puna, north of Tauranga, a couple of weeks ago would have wondered what was going on as a procession of utes and trailers adorned with stags' antlers and wild boars' heads lined up along the road.

It was serious four-wheel-drive stuff, and the drivers were all decked out in bush jackets and camouflage gear, with large knives hanging from their belts.

The vehicles came from all over the North Island and the occasion was the weigh-in for the inaugural Quarry Tavern Big Four contest. This was a unique variation on a popular theme where hunters and fishermen set out to bag various combinations of animals and/or fish. It may be a stag, boar and trout or a hapuku, stag and boar.

Some involve youngsters and are held in rural areas to raise funds for local projects, and often involve the young hunters competing for the heaviest possum and eel.

The contests developed from the original Big Three challenge, which was held in the early 1970s and was set up to gain publicity overseas for our hunting and fishing. A well-known American sportsman and baseball legend, Ted Williams, was brought to New Zealand with the aim of bagging a trout, a deer and a game fish within 24 hours.

With the help of guides, charter boats and a float plane he caught a thresher shark at Mayor Island, a trout at Lake Taupo and shot a deer in the nearby hills. The clock started when the game fish was hooked and he completed the Big Three in 10hr 30min. Local sportsmen subsequently took up the challenge and a Whakatane man, Rod Bellerby, got it down to 4hr 12min, which will probably never be bettered.

The Quarry Tavern event was born over a jug when members of the pub's hunting club came up with the concept of creating the biggest such event ever held.

"Then it really took off," said organiser Ken Griffin and outdoors sportsmen from all over the North Island bought tickets at $250 for a team of four.

"We finished up with $65,000 worth of prizes, which probably makes it the biggest in the country."

The competition ran over four days and bagging all four categories was a big challenge. Not many teams managed to weigh in a trout, cock pheasant, wild boar and stag.

Many of the teams involved a specialist for each category. The winning team comprised a farmer from Taupo who, with family members and a friend who was a trout-fishing guide, did a lot of homework and ensured each of the quarry was covered as well as it could be.

Phillip Ward and his son, Rory, were responsible for the stag and boar while his daughter, Debbie, hunted the pheasant. Trout fisherman Chris Brennan was the obvious choice for the trout section.

Points were awarded for the size and condition of the different species and, with pheasants, the length of its tail, determined by the number of coloured bars on the longest tail feather, and the body weight both counted.

Trout were judged on their weight and condition while stags were awarded points for body weight and the antlers under the Douglas score. For boars, the body weight and tusk length determined points. Only one specimen could be entered in each category.

On the final day, vehicles were lined up down the road and one team drove all the way from Wairoa to enter their catch but missed the weigh-in time.

The 769 points gained by Ward's team won them a $20,000 Polaris Ranger all-terrain vehicle. The second-placed team of Len Nathan, Greg Evans, Hamish Prier and Steve Mihare won a portable building from Modcom Portable Buildings; the third-placed team of Luke Dolman, Pihiraki Koopa, Sid Carter and Jonathan Anderson won $7500 worth of products. A Toyota HiLux ute done up in camo livery was drawn from all tickets and went to Ken Brake.

There were about 50 entries in all four categories. The heaviest stag of 128kg (gutted) was shot by Phillip Ward from the winning team, and the best Douglas score went to Mike Buchanan for a head scoring 2977/8 points. The heaviest boar weighed 119kg (Duncan Robertson) and was shot locally. The best pheasant had a tail feather with 42 bars (Sid Carter), the heaviest trout was 4.24kg (Brandon Burgess) and the best trout had a condition factor of 57.2 (Andrew Robertson).