Your Hosts: Chris & Bronwyn McCarthy

The Family and our Lake Hawea Base

Bronwyn and I live at Lake Hawea, South Island, New Zealand with our twin girls Emily and Lilly and their little sister Gretchen. The McCarthy's moved to the Hawea region in the 1860's when gold was discovered in the nearby Cardrona valley. After the gold rush the family settled at Hawea Flat and established a sheep and cattle farm. Five generations later we still have the farm with my parents Yeverley and Bill living in the old stone homestead on which construction began in 1892.

In 2011, 119 years after the homestead was built, Bronwyn and myself were very excited to begin work on a new house on the property. The house was to provide two functions, the first being a home, the second being accommodation for our hunters. Nestled beneath the towering bluff systems and peak of Mt Grand we have our own little piece of paradise. I look up behind the house each evening with the last of the sun shining on Mt Grand and I know, up there 1000m above, a small resident herd of Chamois are at play.

The Hunting Season - all hands on deck

When our hunting season begins in March, everyone pitches in to make sure our hunters have the best possible New Zealand experience. While myself and our guides are out there giving it our all for clients in the tough weather and terrain of the Southern Alps, things are just as busy back at base. Bronwyn is busy cooking meals, re-stocking supplies, picking up and dropping off hunters from either Wanaka or Queenstown, making sure 3 kids get to school and day care on time and then working nearly full time doing book work for many local businesses and organisations. Bron is certainly working just as hard as the guides in the hills!

Yeverley also helps out, cooking up wild venison, rabbit, tahr, chamois or lamb and hogget from the farm, making it into portions for me and my guides to take into the hills as meals. Bill's woolshed turns into a skinning and salting room and his freezers reserved for farm use begin filling up with all sorts of wild game meat.

If Warren and Pauline (Bronwyn's parents) are in town they generally can't even use their own holiday apartment as we often have hunters staying there too. Warren and Pauline often end up helping cook for our hunters and they always end up helping out with their Grandchildren.

So it's a big family effort to make sure everything runs smoothly and I'm well aware of the background help and support that goes into the ultimate goal of providing the best kiwi hunting experiece for our clients. Its the little things that make the difference, liked camped in the middle of the southern alps and pulling out Yeverley's home made plum sauce, or garlic breakfast sauce, or the early morning satellite phone call from Bronwyn who's just checked the latest web weather forecast, so 100kms away back in the mountains we can plan our day.

New Zealand Hunting - as it should be

We like our hunters to feel like they've hunted New Zealand, not just skimmed over it. With a family that's been here at Lake Hawea, in the New Zealand mountains, for over 150 years and a Guiding and Outfitting service that has been operating since 1993, we can make that happen.