By Vincent Heeringa
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Friday 1st February 2002 |
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Q: What do you call a deer with no bullet is its head?
A: The one I was supposed to shoot.
Really, I'm not that much of a bad shot. I've popped off a few rabbits and possums and (I confess) sparrows in my youth. But I'll never figure out how, after the shot rang through the valley and the smoke cleared, this year-old stag stood up, flicked a startled glance at me and trotted nonchalantly into the bush. Darn vermin!
The deer on Warren Bird's 4000 acre hunting block at Retaruke, just south of Tauramanui, aren't usually so lucky. Indeed, when the price on your antlers is something in the range of $US5000 to $US20,000, you would feel more than a little vulnerable - even when there's an unco like me at the other end of the barrel. While the Department of Conservation and a coterie of greenies wish to eradicate these pests from New Zealand, entrepreneurial hunters like Bird are turning the deer into dollars.
Actually, the yearling that I - ahem - let go, wouldn't have been worth anything like $US5000. It's the sort with the prize antlers Warren and his wife Jen are offering to their mostly American houseguests: hunters with big wallets and big expectations of game. These heavy hitters have albums thick with trophies lying limp across their camouflaged thighs - African leopards, Alaskan bears, Russian wolves, Chinese sheep. You name it, they've killed it. Once they've paid someone like Bird $5000–20,000 for the trophied head to hang on the wall (you get the hide for your rug and the meat for your freezer for nothing), these hunters have the trophies officially measured and ranked in the Safari Club International Annual. Loaded, in both senses of the word, they are increasingly seeking out New Zealand to add stags (such as sika and sambar) or mountain goats (thar and chamois) to their tally. And they're increasingly coming to visit places like Retaruke.
Mud brick paradise
When the builders dragged the Motueka mud bricks up the windy valley tracks to build the Birds' immaculate home at the top of the Retaruke River, there must have been a fair amount of old-fashioned cussing. Each brick weighs 85kg and there are 5500 in total. It took a full 15 months to build, but the result is a stunning home set in near isolation.
The home and the property are evidence of a perfectionist at work. And an experienced one - a one-time sailmaker, hang-glider designer and pilot, Bird has also been a competitive sailor and windsurfer. He flies helicopters for fun. For a few years, the couple would fly their Hughes 500 from Albany - where Warren owned and ran clothing business Product Sourcing International, supplying garments to chains like Farmers - to land on the lawn at Retaruke for the weekend.
Bird bought the former beef and sheep farm mostly because he became tired of asking permission to hunt on other people's land. But he could also see the potential to tap into a luxury and quality international travel market few offer in New Zealand. The lower slopes he turned into a deer farm, largely to help control the numbers of wild deer. To the north he created a fenced hunting block; to the south, a free-range block for hunters with more time.
At $US400 a day per hunter, hosting and guiding is an attractive business. Especially when that's on top of the big prices the guests pay for a trophy stag. An added bonus is that Bird gets to go hunting for free. "To me it's pretty simple. If they want to come and spend time in my house doing things I want to do, it sounds all right to me," he marvels.
For those prices the hunters' expectations are high, not just for the quality of the prey, but for top-class food, service, company and accommodation. To maintain the quality, Jen Bird prefers to host no more than four people at a time, though has entertained larger corporate groups. The key, she says, is in providing the sort of intimate service you'd get in someone's home. And, if you ask my opinion, a pumpkin soup unequalled around the world.
As a result, the couple are attracting top guests such as America's Cup syndicate boss and multibillionaire Bill Koch. Koch and son Wyatt flew down for the weekend and shot a trophy stag. According to Bird, they were so enamoured with the place they tried to get Bill Gates to visit - thus adding more fuel to the fire that Gates did visit Auckland during the Cup. Another big-noter is Gary Bogner, one of the world's top crossbow hunters. Both now remain in contact with the Birds and, says Warren, have spread the word among their colleagues about the quality of the Retaruke experience.
In the game business, testimonials like these are the stuff of dreams. The Birds use a booking agent based in the US but it's word of mouth that really does the marketing. You can imagine how nervous Bird seemed when I left empty-handed, save for some frozen venison offered in sympathy. "You just can't afford to have hunters leave without their trophy," he said. He needn't worry. To this day I'd swear that deer was some kind of freak - fancy, me shooting it and it just walking away.
For more information contact Warren Bird at warren@retaruke.co.nz
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