Possum Skinning!

Possum skinning trip
The owners of the Blue Moon are cool people. They host a few of their guests for free (food and accommodation) in exchange for about 4 hours of work a day. Today is my last day, and I've probably done 4 days of work? Yeah, that sounds good. That is about $100 for rent and 3 good meals a day for free. That all really adds up people.
Anyway- they know this guy named Billy. Long story short, he is a possum hunter. Possums kill the native bush and directly and indirectly kill the native (sometimes flightless) birds. They are the definition of an introduced pest animal. New Zealand's answer to the possum problem is to sell the possum skin overseas, and to mix it with merino wool for high fashion garments. Billy is the first step in this equation. He goes into the bush (forest/jungle) and "does a line". That means he finds a spot where there are lots of possums, and then walks through it a few times. The first time he goes in with a bag of flour that icing sugar in it. He puts the flout, which stands out really well, on rocks and on trees along the route. He also flag the line with pink spray paint. He does this for a few days and then on the third day, on top of the flout mixture, he puts a glop of cyanide poison. It is green and comes in an overlarge toothpaste bottle. The poison is only fatal if ingested and it breaks down when it gets too wet. That night, the possums come down for the meal they're now used to, and then die within a few feet of the poison. Cyanide slows the heart rate down, so really they just goto sleep. Billy shows up the next morning (early) and walks the line a final time. He picks up the first 4 or 5 possums and when he gets to the next one, he sets them down to skin it. First off are the ears, then the nuts. Neat cuts are made around the feet an then between the back legs. After that, he ties the to a tree and pulls. I've made a video of it, and that will really show you what it is like. I did one and it is obviously something that takes skill and practice.
So, Billy never needs help skinning the possums, but since this was such a big line, in harsh terrain, he needed help carrying them out. Since Sam and I weren't doing much, we decided to volunteer. What a painful action on my part. We were off at 5:30 and on the hill within minutes of Havelock. One of us had to walk with him the whole day, and the other had to walk only a few hours to a cache of skins Billy had collected the previous day, then walk back to the truck and pick us up in 10 or so ours. Sam got the easy job and I got the hard job. Did I mention that this was the day just after the Nydia track? Well it was. And we were tired as shit. Billy's line was unusual b/c it didn't follow the ridge line, but wen over about 4 of them. So those pretty mountains and hills you see in my pictures, we went over them. Just up and over. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in New Zealand, and for a long time. At the end of the day I was fighting cramps and trying desperately to keep up. Did I mention Billy is a marathon runner, and a seasoned bushman? Well he is. He was blazing away and I was trying no to embarrass myself with my slow motion ascents. We were doing well until after lunch, then it got slower as the weight of over 110 possum skins took their toll. On me mostly. I carried only 28, but they felt like an oven in my pack. The worst part was the slipping. New Zealand "bush" is really what I call jungle, and it is wet all the time on the jungle floor. That mixed with rotted out trees and ferns up to your head, it is hard to see where to put your foot. Especially if you're a yankee ass tourist like me. If we had been in the States, I'm sure I would have kept up better, because I know where to put my feet. It was frustrating, but I never lost my cool and I didn't complain. Which I think went a long way to saving face. "Just keep going" I told myself. I thought: "what would my ultimate team say?" (especially Deana). They would say what I kept repeating: "EYE OF THE TIGER SEAN!"

It was a hard day, but very worth it. I learned how to skin a possum (the skins sell for $6-7) and got a little of the lazy hostel rust out of my system.

Please ask any questions you can think of about the possum thing. It was such a long day that I'm sure I left out some important details. I'll try and map the route we took on Google Maps. Be on the lookout for that.

possums