Percy Lyes - Portrait of a Deer Culler

New Zealand is a land where hunting, even now, is still a well respected pastime, and a place that has had its fair share of renowned hunters. They were typically tough, self reliant types that had an ability to endure the rugged terrain and appalling weather all too frequent in New Zealand’s mountainous regions. Although not a hunter, Sir Edmond Hillary is the most famous example of the rugged breed of men that are forged in the unforgiving peaks of New Zealand’s South island. Of course he went on to become a legend in the realm of mountaineering.

Within the realm of New Zealand hunting there are also legendary men. There is one whose star shines a little brighter than all the rest and whose exploits have been eagerly discussed over numerous crackling campfires for nearly 50 years. His name was Percy Lyes.

The events that set the stage for Percy’s great feats happened long before he was born somewhere around the 1850’s. About this time deer were imported by the aristocratic classes in an effort to recreate the European countryside and the royal sport they longed for. With a predictably British outlook most settlers at the time regarded deer as royal creatures and therefore they were treated with a certain veneration not extended to any other introduced species. Under the protection of this special status and a lack of predatory species to keep their numbers in check, deer numbers exploded over the following decades with dramatic environmental consequences.

Acclimatisation societies were set up to foster the health and well being of the deer, but it wasn’t long before they started to notice a dramatic drop in antler quality. The sheer numbers of deer had decimated the available fodder in certain areas causing a decline in the herds overall condition and antler quality. Deer numbers eventually stabilised but antler quality was still no where near previous earlier standards. By 1913 the acclimatisation societies realising action was needed, were asking permission to cull up to 50% of herd numbers. The IAD (Internal Affairs Department) refused their requests much to their dismay. The New Zealand Forest Service was locked in an inter-departmental battle with the IAD over the control of deer. While the government departments bickered, deer numbers continued to grow, and in 1930 it all came to a head at “The Deer Menace Conference” held in Christchurch. The result was a decision for the IAD to start long overdue culling operations as soon as practicable. A new occupation was born, the “deer culler”

While all this was happening a young boy was honing his bushcraft in the damp forests around Hokitika. In the grip of the depression many children including one young Percy Lyes, were providing valuable additional income for their families. As a result Percy had been trapping rabbits and possums from a young age, what better training for his future occupation. After some time he finally scraped together enough for his first rifle, a .22 Winchester single shot bolt action for the princely sum of ₤2/10. Armed with his new rifle he even managed to take the odd small deer on his regular forays around the Hokitika area and so his hunting skills gradually improved. Of course taking even small deer with such a calibre would be regarded as totally unethical in this day and age but it must be viewed in the context of the time and place in which the events are set.

The dark clouds of war loomed large and in 1942 Percy aged 20 enlisted for army service. With training over, Percy was just about head overseas on active service when he was pulled out and sent home to help his elderly father on the farm, as farming was considered an essential war industry. Percy was spared an unknown fate as a soldier but there was to be no lack of adventure in this young mans future. By 1945 the price of deer skins were at an all time high, and it was at this time Percy along with his brother David decided set themselves up in the Hokitika/Whitcombe area as professional skin hunters. By this time Percy was using a very popular rifle, the SMLE .303, and had even invested in a German ‘Ajax’ scope to adorn his trusty rifle. The day after buying the scope he went for a hunt in the Hokitika gorge area and shot three deer. This netted him ₤21 which covered the cost of his newly acquired scope just nicely.

The pair soon gained a reputation as skilful hunters and were making good money selling the skins and venison to eager customers. Some time later during one of these skin hunting forays the brothers had a chance meeting with two IAD field officers in charge of deer culling operations. They explained that the government was in desperate need of experienced hunters and encouraged the brothers to lodge an application for positions as deer cullers. A glut of skins on the market started to drive the price down and Percy and David could see the writing on the wall. They sent in their applications to the IAD and found a job in a sawmill while they waited for some sort of reply. Eventually a telegram arrived asking them to report to the IAD in Christchurch. They had the job, and their first assignment was the Ben Ohau Range in the Mount Cook/Aoraki National Park. This was to be a baptism of fire in some of the most rugged country New Zealand has to offer.

It was here that they met another hunter of high standing and considerable reputation by the name of Jim Ollerenshaw. He was the IAD field officer in charge and had been in the culling game since the 1930’s. He had a reputation for being an accomplished stalker and a crack shot, and was credited with as many a 20,000 head of deer to his name. Jim was as tough as they came but the Lyes boys were no shrinking violets either and they soon measured up to Jim’s standards. The other cullers on the team were also to become hunters of repute; they were Rex Forrester and Des Blanford. The Lyes boys job was to concentrate mostly on tahr with the odd chamois and red deer as opportunistic targets. Tahr had been introduced in 1904 and after a slow start were found to be flourishing by the 1930’s and so became earmarked for culling along with the other introduced species. The silhouette of a bull tahr perched upon a rock has to be one of the most majestic sights one can see in the mountains, but unfortunately for the culler it was just another target species.

Despite the beauty all around, there was precious little time for sightseeing. The work of a culler was one of the toughest jobs going. It was a job that ruthlessly sorted the men from the boys in no uncertain terms. For starters there was the arduous walk in to the main camp from the nearest road access with distances of 20 to 30 miles not out of the ordinary. If they were lucky they would have a few pack horses to take the majority of the load otherwise it was all on their back in the very uncomfortable pack frames of the day, known as “kidney rotters” for obvious reasons. One of the first tasks at the start of the season was to set up the main camp, which consisted of felling trees, splitting logs into slabs and constructing a rudimentary hut, all with the most basic of tools. This hut in most cases was not actually a hut in the normal sense but just a slab wall with a walk-in chimney and a basic fireplace on which to attach a large canvas fly, suspended by saplings, under which a 4 person canvas tent was pitched. This semi-open walled end of the fly was used for cooking and eating and known as the ‘galley’ by most cullers. In some places when possible, a more elaborate semi-permanent hut was built if time and materials allowed. Also the auxiliary or ‘fly’ camps further up river had to be built with materials that the horse team had subsequently dropped. All the while they were track cutting as they ferried supplies back and forth between camps. So for the next six to eight months they spent their time between the main camp and fly camps working their allocated block. In later years air drops became the common way of suppling cullers but this had its own problems too. Items to be dropped including ammunition were packed in wool bales stuffed with chaff as filler. On more than one occasion the bales either came apart in mid air or exploded on impact showering the countryside with tinned food and military surplus 303 ammunition. But there was no free lunch; due to the post war shortage of silk, the parachutes had to be packed out to the nearest road head as soon as possible for reuse on other drops. Nothing is seems was straightforward in this game.

A cullers day usually entailed dragging his aching body out of a perpetually damp and lumpy kapok sleeping bag, and scratching up some porridge or a serve of the ‘never ending venison stew’. Then a cup of tea with milk and sugar, if they hadn’t run out, to fend off the cold. Grabbing the trusty rifle and a small pack, they pointed themselves towards the nearest steep incline and headed off. Then to the actual business they were here for –culling. With due consideration given to the feeding patterns of the deer and of course wind direction they sought out likely areas of deer activity. In some blocks that had seen little culling activity and were over run by deer, they were not always very hard to find. That’s not to say a culler didn’t still have to walk vast distances every day and in steep country that would give a mountain goat vertigo just to get his daily tally. They were the sort of distances that would wear down all but the toughest of bodies, and they did this day after day 7 days a week for up to eight months of the year. Shrewd cullers would often spread a good days tally over several days in the pages of the tally book in order to get a few days off to rest or visit another team of cullers in a neighbouring block.

Even though the main aim of culling was to reduce deer numbers the government still thought that culling should generate an income to offset the running costs. Consequently, cullers were required to collect and prepare skins which were later graded and sold. In very rugged or steep blocks cullers were allowed the luxury of tailing due to the extreme difficulty of recovering and ferrying out the heavy skins. It was clear to everyone concerned that tallies were higher in areas where only tailing was required due to the time and energy saved not having to collect and transport skins. This was bureaucratic penny pinching at its best, which gave no consideration to the working conditions of the cullers and totally lost sight of the whole point of the culling campaign in the first place; to reduce deer numbers!

Generally cullers collected the skins of hinds and yearlings in preference to stags, as the government paid the same price per skin regardless of the size and weight. A young deer could be skinned in three to five minutes by an experienced culler; the tough old stags were definitely not worth the extra effort. Of course not skinning the stags was against IAD policy, but cullers did it if they thought they could get away with it, anything to ease the workload. A heavy load of up to a dozen green skins were then collected as they made their way back to camp in the afternoon. Any extras were hung for collection at a later time. Of course the majority of the work had still to be done with the fleshing and drying of the skins back at camp and then finally packing them out in 100 pound loads to the nearest road head.

The season’s tallies were carefully recorded in tally books with columns for “Skins”, “Tails”, “OK’s”, “Mice” and “Comments”. OK stood for “Other Kills” which were deer that were shot but could not be recovered due to steep terrain for example. “Mice” was for miscellaneous meaning wild cattle, pigs, sheep and goats that were often encountered in the course of a culler’s day. One of the greatest one day tallies was recorded in the Whitcombe catchment area when Percy teamed up with another culler of repute named Max Curtis. Max and Percy’s personalities seemed to compliment each others and they got on quite well. They were both considered top hunters in their day and together they were an unbeatable combination.

The pair were working the Prices Flat area and on that particular day by 9am Percy had taken 30 odd deer and it was looking to be a fruitful days shooting. It was then that Percy’s rifle had a cartridge separate and the rifle ended up with a cracked action. A culler without a rifle is not going to get very far so Percy decided to head straight out to Hokitika to obtain a replacement. By the time Percy returned to camp through heavy snow the next day, he was greeted by a beaming Max who proudly displayed his tally of 101 tails. This was the first recorded number of kills over 100 taken by a foot shooter in one day. The pair continued to work the area and yet another record was broken with the pairs combined one day tally of 141 deer- Percy 66 and Max 75. A good example of the sort of tallies the top cullers were reaching was Percy’s for the 1948-49 season which was 1558 tailed kills and about 150 OK’s. These figures are quite extraordinary in themselves but this wasn’t the reason Percy was labelled ‘Superman’ by the people of the district. That came about by sheer accident.

It happened in the Taharoa area while doing some private skin shooting. Percy found himself far from camp with night rapidly approaching and heavy rain starting to fall. With no natural shelter to be found Percy was lucky to shoot a large nine point stag which he duly skinned to use as a survival blanket. The now soaked skin became frozen overnight and Percy had to spend the early hours of the morning jogging on the spot to keep from freezing to death. The next day he made it back to camp but was in a sorry state. He had arranged for a local sawmill owner to pick his load of skins at the roadhead but time was rapidly running out. He divided the massive load into three and proceeded to shuttle each load to a half way point and then again to a point about 10 minutes from the pickup point. Desperate to get back to civilisation and now running late he somehow managed to shoulder the three loads together and proceeded to sway off down the track. As the truck diver approached he spotted Percy staggering under his mammoth load and quickly stopped to help. Percy collapsed into the truck totally spent hardly able to speak. Needless to say the story soon got around the local pubs and took on a life of its own, thus Percy was dubbed ‘Superman’ and the legend grew bigger.

The rifles used by the cullers were invariably SMLE’s (Short Magazine Lee Enfield) or sporterised versions thereof. These were virtually the only rifles issued from the IAD store along with the fact that 303 British was the only ammo the IAD supplied. As it turned out the SMLE couldn’t have been more suited to the job of the deer culling. In areas that had not been heavily hunted the deer were not very ‘gun-wise’ and a ten shot magazine was like a gift from heaven. This incident best describes the situation-

“The two hunters split up and while Percy remained in the main valley, Max headed up the spur that separated Vincent Creek’s left and right branch and was soon on to a mob of deer, of which he got twenty. While giving his rifle barrel a spell to cool down, he proceeded to fill his two 10-shot magazines and while he was at it, heard Percy opening up.

Ten shots.

Silence.

In his minds eye, Max could see Percy inserting his spare magazine.

Another 10 shots.

Silence again; then another eight shots, and once more silence.

But not for long as Percy once again opened up on another mob of hapless animals”.

From this it seems apparent that the battle proven SMLE was as well suited to the rigors of the culling trade as it had been in the mud of the Western Front in WWI or the sands of North Africa in WWII.

In the early days of culling it was more common to be issued with the Boer War era Lee Enfield Magazine Rifle Mk I or ‘Long Tom’ as they were known but as time went on the more modern SMLE gradually became the standard. That didn’t stop the tight-fisted IAD storeman from making sure he got rid of all his ancient ‘Long Toms’ before he felt obliged to start reluctantly issuing SMLE’s. Once again the welfare of the culler was always a secondary concern for the government bureaucrats. Of course these rifles were not free and the sum of £2 for a ‘Long Tom’ and £4 for a SMLE was deducted from the culler’s earnings. Also the cost of excess ammo above the standard amount allocated was also deducted from their pay.

Percy’s 14 point Red Stag

Anyone that has carried a pack on a long distance hike or hunted the alpine areas of New Zealand will have some appreciation of the strength and endurance of these men. In the days before choppers, Gortex and dehydrated meals there was no other way to get the job done except through sweat, muscle and sheer guts. When you add it all together- the hunting, the skinning, the ferrying of loads, the track cutting, the hut building and just generally living rough, and doing this for months on end, the term ‘Superman’ is not far from the mark. When you consider they also had to contend with the soaking wet and bitter cold, the mosquitoes and sandflies, the monotonous camp tucker, the separation from family and general loneliness, it's apparent that it was as much a mental challenge as a physical one. There is no doubt that these men were the toughest, fittest and most skilled bushmen of their time and every bit the equal of the iconic ‘Mountain Men’ and the early fur trappers of American folklore.

In the early years of culling in the mid 1930’s, with the depression in full swing, there was no shortage of unemployed men willing to give culling a try, but it was very telling that few lasted a single season let alone came back for another. The ones that stayed season after season were a rare breed. Those that stood out amongst the long term cullers became the stuff of hunting legends. Such a man was Percy Lyes.

Photographs and quotes courtesy of Halcyon Publishing and Hans Willems author of ‘The Hunting Tales of Percy Lyes’ See accompanying book review for more details.