They say that confession is good for the soul. And I have to confess that I’m probably one of the worst correspondents in the world. Which is a bummer if you make your daily bread by writing for an outdoor magazine.
I’m on my annual flight from summer’s heat. Trading back and forth across the Southern Hemisphere where it’s crisp, brisk Autumn. I meant to start a series of dispatches to chronicle the trip for Sporting Classics, but I guess I just got busy.
I’ll bring you up to date on the first leg of the trip when I stop again. Suffice it to say for now that Patagonia is beautiful this time of year. We did red stag, trout and California quail at Quem Quem Treu near San Martin de Los Andes, with Will and Lauren Cowan. They run Hookfire Adventure Travel & Safaris and book for the ranch among many other great locations.
After Argentina, I flew from Buenos Aires to Auckland, New Zealand, to meet up with my old friend Steve McGuire. Steve runs Southfort Labs from Cambridge, on the North Island. Southfort supplies barrels and stocks for the guys at The Best of The West who build hyper-performance, long range rifles from their Wyoming digs.
Which, in a circuitous way, brings us around to why I’m sitting on the top of a mountain looking down on Godley Valley, just above the point where the river of the same name runs into Lake Tekapo on the South Island of New Zealand. Steve and I are on the world famous Lilybank Station, hunting tahr, which I think, at this point, may prove to be the greatest test of rifles in the world.
I don’t have one yet, but we’re workin’ on it. Anyway, I’ll bring all of you up to date as I can. Right now, I’ve gotta figure out how to get down from here by nightfall! Damn, that’s a long ways!