Bushwalk Australia

Predator plague cycle
this autumn there will be an explosion in the rodent and stoat population in beech forests due to a bumper beech seed release
if you are camping in or above beech forest any time from autumn to next summer, you may experience problems with an abundance of mice and rats, especially once the seeds germinate next spring and the hungry rodents are looking for alternative food sources.

http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/res ... gue-cycle/

Mouse year. Bug fush. Might have to book a trip.

and have some chups with your fush...

We Aussies should help you guys out and send over some of our best rodent eaters.

They come in all sorts of colours, brown, black, tiger, red bellies etc.

photohiker wrote:We Aussies should help you guys out and send over some of our best rodent eaters.

They come in all sorts of colours, brown, black, tiger, red bellies etc.

unfortunately, most of the year they'd be rather inactive from the cold...

i ran into a hunter with massive bags stacked onto a pack frame, either he was incredibly strong or the bags were light.
so how do you work out how many seeds the beech trees will drop?
simple. you shoot the beech trees... take a high powered rifle and shoot..... the branches off, gather the branches and take them away for analysis...

the hunter may have been very lucky or unlucky depending on your point of view. he was dropped off by helicopter at the top of mountains in fiordland and worked his way down to the valley shooting branches off beech trees and collecting them....
he stood on a rock he didnt realise was covered in moss and took a slide,,,, over a bluff.....
he'd damaged his ankle, but managed to walk down to the river and a hut where he got on a radio before continuing his walk out... later on when his boss got wind of his accident, he was thoughtful enough to send a chopper for him to save him the walk out..

I remember walking up the Hawden River one year in Arthur's Pass NP and the mice were everywhere. Never seen anything like it. Had my daughter with me at the time. she was far from impressed.

K