In the late seventies, Prince joined
the team at a cost of about $NZ1000.
This black Lab pooch
(crossed with something else which
could have been
a Pointer) was worth his weight in gold
when we were skimming around the
beautiful but freezing
Lees Valley mountain sides in the
enveloping gloom of first or last
light.
Slouched in the
bell47G 3B1 RH front chin bubble – Prince could spot a
deer out on the blurry dank snowline tussock
slopes a kilometer away when Weasel
and I were still having trouble
seeing even the helicopter skids
because of
the freezing alpine slipstream trying to ram itself
through the
open doorways.
During daylight hours,
Prince earned a bonus dog biscuit
whenever I dropped him and his
devoted master out onto the top of a tree or
rock to track down a deer which had
managed to out maneuver us after we
shot a tranquiliser dart into it and
it had then ran
down into the thick scrub on the
snow/tree
line.
I could hear and home in on the
continuous beeping of the dart in my
locater headphones but couldn’t
always see the animal in the Alpine
forest or snow grass and we had to
get to the deer ASAP.
If the drug
took effect and the animal went down
on the ground facing downhill on a
steep slope, the deer, being
a ruminant, could choke on its own
bile and suffocate.
Once
tranquilised the deer are placed in
a wool bag and loaded onto the
helicopter cargo rack to then be
flown back to either a holding
paddock or the deer farm.
Weasel always had two similar
battered old Thermos flasks beside him – one to hold
the 0.5 inch
tranquiliser darts (filled with the
tranquiliser Fentaz) to stop them
freezing and also to keep each dart’s radio
transmitter batteries warm enough to
work in the below zero temperatures;
another for his coffee. He needed
the coffee desperately some days
after a night at the local pub
followed by my flying having a dramatic effect on
his constitution.
On those dreadful
days after a pub night, predictably about an hour
after sun up at about 5000 Ft Above Sea Level,
awful smells permeated through the
cockpit.
Even though the suspected
source of the odours in the RH seat had an official
“It wasn’t me” look on his face, the
lack of other human passengers who
could have been the source meant
that I had to land quickly on a
mountain ridge for Weasel to jump
out, divest himself of his faded
mandarin coloured motorcycle wet
suit and perch on a ledge to fire
off a load.
I sat thankfully in the machine as
it clattered away at ground idle
drowning out the sounds coming from
behind the machine associated with
Weasel’s call of nature.
Weasel
"enjoying" nature from our parking
spot on a cliff top. Note the radio
tracking aerial out the lower front
for tracking a tranquilized deer via
the dart's transmitter.
Those in
the know reckon
the sound he made was similar to a
number of those huge 5 metre long
Tibetan monk horns all blasting
quickly at once.
Whenever Prince sat up, barked and
pointed we knew the action was on –
there was a deer in the direction he
was looking.
Things then happened
quickly as we went into capture mode
and Weasel usually had one last swig
of coffee.
I always worried and
had to have a quick look that he had grabbed the right thermos as I had
seen him nearly drink a couple of
sharp darts by mistake more than
once in the past.
The closest I have ever come to
becoming incapacitated and crashing
happened after a prolonged period of
heavy rain.
For five days I cleaned,
polished and did every maintenance
job I could find on the machine.
For
five days Weasel was stuck in the
bar in the pub making up for the
days he had missed.
For five days
Prince had to look after himself as
Weasel couldn’t.
For five days
Prince ate offal.
I could hear the rain clear on the
tin roof at about 5 am on the
Saturday morning. It was still pitch
black and the cloud was low but the
sound of the wind coming up meant
the warm front was pushing the bad
weather away.
I phoned, waking up
Weasel and discussing with him for
his opinion that
maybe the deer
would be out on the tops later than
normal.
ETD was agreed at 0700 if the
weather cleared. It did and we
departed,
though Weasel and Prince were very
very quiet and didn’t quite seem
“normal”.
The cloud was still on the high
winter snow covered mountain tops
so I decided to “beat some bush” in
a couple of gullies.
This meant
starting down in the creek bed and
working in a semi circle from side
to side as we gradually advanced up
the mountain.
The idea being to force
any deer to run up the bush on the mountain side
and then onto the open slopes where we could
capture them.
All went well until the real tricky
part.
Maybe it was the five days of
inactivity; maybe it was the
helicopter being hit by the wind
gusts as we worked the gully – who
really knows what caused it to
happen.
The gully had flattened out as it
neared the open tussock tops at
about 5000ft above sea level and the
head water was surrounded by a stand
of beech
trees.
I caught a glimpse of a red
deer hind trapped by trees and the
cliff and small waterfall at the top of the
gully.
I yelled out to Weasel that I
was going in further under the tree branches
so he could get a shot with the
tranquilizer gun or even use the net
gun if possible.
Inch by Inch I calculated and
recalculated rotor clearance and the
firing angle for Weasel to get a
clear shot as the machine crept
slowly up the creek.
Leaves swirled
around and through the bubble, in
one door, out the other.
My radar
head went constantly from side to
side, looking up on the second
sweeps to check for dead or dodgy
looking tree branches which might
fall on us.
It was tight work; I was
concentrating so hard that I was
sweating.
Then it happened.
A sudden awful gut wrenching
indescribable smell invaded the
cockpit.
Realizing that it was in
some ways familiar, I looked quickly
to the right. Both Weasel and Prince
were staring accusingly at each
other with the “It wasn’t me” look.
The nearly lethal cocktail of
simultaneous man
and animal made odours made me gag.
My eyes watered and blurred my
vision, I couldn’t breathe, my hands
clenched the controls, the machine
rocked around and I thought that I
was going to heave up my breakfast and loose
consciousness all at once.
It was a miracle that we managed to
extract ourselves by backing out from under the
trees. The accidental little branches didn’t
even mark the blades and the rocks
in the creek
only left small scratches under the
skids.
We urgently landed in
a tight confined area and Weasel and Prince disappeared for a
long time into the scrub while I
kept my hands warm holding them
close to the
turbocharger trying to stop them
shaking from the cold.
Never again did this amazing
phenomena of coincidental
instantaneous emissions happen as
the rains had finally stopped for the
season.
I still have to find
anyone as good as the respect I have
for this bloke - a great shot with a
rifle, tranquilizer pistol,
tranquilizer rifle, net gun and
nimble athlete - who could get out and
into the helicopter in any situation
(into tree tops etc) while also
having the gift of being able to
work with wild animals as well as be
very patient with me. It was a
privilege to fly with him.
True story
TC
