Barry Stott’s decades-long dream of holding a hunting competition in Piopio has come to fruition, with a cracker day at the Cosmopolitan Club earlier this month.
From the morning onwards, large numbers of the community’s utes drove into the cossie club carpark to weigh deer, goats, pigs, possums and anything else it was possible to eat, then hang, on a purpose-built scaffold.
The competition was a “huge” success and there was no leftover venison, club president Waide Jones told King Country News.
It “all disappeared very quickly”.
“The whole thing went off. A lot more animals than what I thought there were going to be. Very, very good crowd, a big crowd, everyone was well behaved; it was just an awesome day, all round,” he said.
“Thank you to all the sponsors and all our helpers. Everybody got involved. The whole club, the committee, and definitely our sponsors.”
A minute’s silence was held for club members who would have loved to be there, but had passed away in the past year. They included Piopio identity and hunting aficionado Peter Holbrook, who had been passionate about deerstalking until his death in 2022, aged 86.
Barry said he had heard very positive feedback.
“Ewan McKenzie, the Ridgeline judge … he’s one of the senior judges. And he just said that he hadn’t had the pleasure of doing such a good competition for a long, long time.
“[He] hadn’t judged as many animals … and he was just rapt with the [level of] organisation.
“We would have had 300 people there, adults and children.”
The kids had loved it.
“When we had the roaring competition, there were more kids than adults,” Barry said.
And the shepherds’ whistles donated by Wrightsons were a big hit.
“Some of the kids could even use them.”
VENISON all round – hunters brought in some epic carcasses
to be weighed.
Photo Sigrid ChristiansEN
