A Wild Obsession
Synopsis
Grab hold of your strides and get ready to thrash your way across the country at breakneck speed, from one misadventure to another. Along the way you’ll hear the exhilarating roar of a rutting stag and the blow and crash of a charging boar.
On your misguided journey you will experience first hand the anticipation of the chase and the excitement and chaos of the capture.
Hard on your heels will be Ellis Emmett, our vertically challenged narrator, his sidekick Andrew Ashley, and a few other stark raving individuals. Then there’s Jan, the unsuspecting victim surviving many a failed brush with death and always coming out with the shitty end of the stick. Then throw in a pack of keen, but good natured hunting dogs who frequently outrun and outsmart their bosses in the madcap search for wild game.
Kick back and enjoy the rugged bush humour, with a hearty serving of madness, in this candid tale of A Wild Obsession.
The Journey
When Ellis Emmett decided he wanted to write a book ‘A Wild Obsession’ he was 23 years old. He was a passionate outdoorsman and had been a keen hunter in New Zealand’s backcountry for many years. He had travelled all over New Zealand exploring dark corners of our wilderness and discovered many of life’s lessons from spending a great deal of time in the rugged outdoors.
Ellis was so inspired by our natural playground of New Zealand and the challenges and secrets that it held, that he wanted to share his experiences with others. Also the many friendships bonded together by shared adventure, and ultimately the humour in the knowledge that the hunters most often came off second best. His goal for his writing was to inspire young people to get out there and live life to the fullest.
Once committed to his goal of writing his book, Ellis spent the next three years and hundreds, if not thousands, of hours documenting his personal and quite often humorous accounts of his adventures – or more often the case misadventures!
Having no formal writing experience or training he allowed himself to be guided by his passion and enthusiasm for story telling, he wrote from his heart allowing his natural good humour to flow into his writing.
These days Ellis no longer hunts – he gave up many years ago. He gave up his rifle and pack of wild dogs for a still camera. He is very much a naturalist and now experiences the same thrill of the hunt by stalking in on a wild animal and capturing in fraction of a second the magic and natural beauty of life.
However, while Ellis no longer chooses to hunt, he advocates for a young man growing up in rural New Zealand, hunting is a great way of discovering yourself, and learning many of life’s most basic and rewarding lessons.
About The Author
Up on the tops - Southern Alps, New Zealand.
Ellis Emmett was hatched in September 1972 in the Cheviot Maternity Hospital. He was the last birth at that facility. The hospital closed its doors immediately after this momentous event and some staff are still having therapy. He is the baby of the Emmett’s three children and his parents Aileen and Robin have done their best to prepare Ellis for the world.
Unfortunately, no one has bothered to prepare the world for Ellis!
His years in Cheviot School were hard on his teachers. Their despair at their failure to teach anything to the cute, diminutive youngest Emmett child is legendary and a number have opted for career changes when their counselling has been completed. However, he left school with one major achievement under his mop of blonde hair, and that is the amazing ability to survive his own escapades, even if he has occasionally had to do his own repair jobs such as stitching an axe wound in his hand at ten years of age. My theory is that he was terrified the doctor would hurt him!
Ellis abandoned his family nest at the ripe old age of sixteen and began his working life with the Pest Unit of Canterbury Regional Council. Like all previous authority figures in Ellis’ short life, his boss Steve had no idea what this innocent looking new staff member was going to mean to the Unit or Steve’s hairline. He did survive Ellis’ employment but only by taking evasive action. He moved out of the district!
Climbing out from the bottom of a bush gully with a medium size wild boar. Only two more hours to the truck.
With the relocation of his superior Ellis talked his way into the position of Foreman and since that time has overseen various staff for short periods. These people have all moved on to less challenging professions, for instance one is a crash test dummy and another works at the local game park in the lions’ enclosure.
Ellis has a compulsion to take everything to the limit and must always be chasing a challenge. He had an ‘interesting’ stint of Moto X racing where he continuously outrode the gripping ability of his tyres not to mention his own skill level. If Ellis had ever managed to stay upright for more than one lap he would have been a real threat to the racing professionals. Instead it is his motor bike which trembles with terror every time he approaches.
However, it is not only physical challenges that Ellis takes on. One of his recent adventures involved relocating and rebuilding a house on a few acres in the local district. The fact that his building and redecorating skills were almost non-existent didn’t daunt him in the slightest and he thundered around, maul and wrecking bar in hand for months. When the building stage began, what he lacked in skill he made up for with ingenuity, which left the building inspector speechless.
When Ellis took up this latest challenge I’m sure he had no idea just what he was committing himself to in terms of time. Numerous hours during the day and night over the past 3 years have been spent inside on his butt working over and over his manuscript of hunts and misadventures until finally he was semi-satisfied with the results – all the while suffering major withdrawal symptoms from lack of spare time to spend outdoors.
I have spent the last ten years with Ellis and to date have only required one round of major surgery, although there have been some minor scrapes, a dislocation, an acre or so of missing skin and the odd stitch or two. But my therapist has a lovely new house just off Merivale Lane in that very exclusive area of Christchurch.
I look at life with Ellis as something akin to being shut in a small room with a berserk super-ball. Physically exhausting and just a ‘little’ bit risky. Always ticking, his brain resembles a time bomb. Plots and schemes, often hair-raising, and the ever present motto ‘what the hell can possibly go wrong?’ mean life is never dull or peaceful and survival is never guaranteed!
– by J. C.
Deep in the heart of Fiordland. A nine hour carry back to base camp with a good wapiti bull.
