The disappearance of a mob of merino wethers worth almost $13,000 from high country above the Nevis Valley has police and the stock owner mystified, but suspicious.
An estimated 160 sheep belonging to Carrick Station had "vanished off the face of the earth", Senior Constable John Chambers, of Cromwell, said.
"It's actually a full truckload, but we don't know where they went or what's happened to them," Carrick Station owner Don Clark said.
Snr Const Chambers said the fact it was a truckload was suspicious.
"Sheep are starting to be worth a lot more than they used to be, which is great for farmers but can bring on other problems when prices go up and sheep are in demand."
Mr Clark said a mob of 2800 wethers was put on the station's high country block, on the Old Man Range and Garvie Mountains, in January. When the mob was mustered in May, 200 were missing.
"If it was only short by 40 or so, I probably wouldn't have worried. I'd assume a few were dead or there were stragglers missed in the muster and they'd turn up.
"Since then [helicopter pilot] Doug Maxwell has flown over the country three or four times, and you'd think you'd see them in a mob somewhere, in a gully. But there's no sign of them and they haven't turned up."
The matter was reported to police last week. The sheep had Carrick ear tags and would be worth about $80 each, Mr Clark said. That figure did not include the loss of income from the wool or the cost of keeping hoggets to replace the missing stock.
The land where the stock went missing was near Carrick's boundary with Nokomai and Glenary Stations.
Snr Const Chambers said although police were "keeping an open mind", it was likely the stock had been stolen.
"It's open country and a mob that size would have been sighted by now."
Hunters or others travelling in the high country were asked to advise police of any suspicious activity they had seen.
Although there were no other reports of stock thefts in the area, farmers should be warned in case it became more of a problem, he said.
Asked how easy it would be to dispose of such a volume of stolen stock, a stock agent, who declined to be named, said the "paper trail" required to send stock to the freezing works, or to be sold at stock sales, would make those options unlikely.
Disposing of the stock by selling it for meat was a more likely scenario, he said.
