316 TUTIRA 



the wanderer must have passed through regions uninhabited by the 

 larger domesticated animals. It is, in fact, as certain as any matter 

 of this sort can be, that the first red-deer on Tutira reached the station 

 by the ranges connecting the Wairarapa with Hawke's Bay. 



The distance of the journey, about 150 miles, gauged even in 

 mileage, is respectable ; in regard to difficulties surmounted it is little 

 less than marvellous. Loose rock, snow, pitfalls camouflaged by herbage 

 uncropped and unburnt, want of water, entanglement and poisonous 

 plants such as tutu and rangiora (Brachyglottis rangiora), must have 

 at different times imperilled every mile of the distance. Only those who 

 know by experience the enormous percentage of loss among heavy 

 beasts running on country previously unstocked, can fully appreciate 

 the risks of the long journey, the small chance of ultimate survival. 

 Though nothing further can now be known, the identity and 

 age of the stag, the exact course of his trek, the time taken in 

 the journey, are interesting subjects upon which to speculate. It 

 is difficult, for instance, to believe that the progenitor of the North 

 Island herds should have deserted his hinds. It is more likely that 

 the Tutira stag may have been the first-born male of the Windsor 

 Park importations the first red-deer calf born in New Zealand 

 either expelled by his sire, the master stag, or a voluntary wanderer 

 in search of a harem of his own. Excepting likelihood, however, there 

 is nothing now upon which to base theories. Those who saw the 

 stranger were fully occupied with their own affairs ; they had other 

 matters in mind than the noting of his horn growth ; he was merely 

 the stag that had wandered from the Wairarapa. He was, moreover, 

 apparently undetected during his journey ; had he been anywhere 

 seen by bushmen or shepherds, so curious an occurrence would have 

 come to the ears of the run-holder near whose country he had been 

 spotted, the fact would have obtained circulation at shows, race-meet- 

 ings, county clubs, acclimatisation society meetings in short, wherever 

 country folk do most consort. 



Although, however, the details of the journey can never be pre- 

 cisely known, there is one fact in connection with it worth recording, 

 it is this, that when forty years later rabbits in alarming numbers 

 reached Tutira, they appeared in greatest profusion on the very same 

 locality as that tenanted by the stag : it is probable that they had 

 followed the same general line taken by the deer, threaded the self-same 



