Alan is Rachel’s father and was born and raised in Leithen Valley.
Leithen Valley has been in his family for three generations, from when his father returned from World War 2 to a small parcel of land that was the original homestead on Leithen Valley farm. Rachel’s kids will be the fourth generation.
Alan grew up on the farm and learned quickly that the only way to get ahead is to ‘give it your all’ daily (‘hard yakka’ as we call it in New Zealand). Alan worked with his team of dogs and his horse all over the Southern Alps on farms and stations gathering up sheep and cows for farmers (this is called mustering).
All the money he earned went back into the farm. Alan and his wife Sue have always been visionaries and their ideal was to run more animals and build Leithen Valley after years of ‘hard yakka’. And it worked. Alan and Sue have turned a small farm into an impressive hunting operation. Not only that, Alan has passed the hunting genes and operations onto daughter Rachel. Now he can slow down from the hunting and return to his dogs, horses, and the farming he loves.
Alan has hunted the South Island extensively and has travelled to all corners of the earth to acquire trophies that others can only ever dream of. Alan still remains the only New Zealander to have achieved the North American Grand Slam. Alan and Sue Stewart are the reason Leithen Valley is what it is today, a breath-taking hunting destination in the South Pacific with great service and outstanding trophy quality. It is up to the rest of us to continue this tradition and to keep Leithen Valley the unique and lovely place it is.
We hope this amazing paradise we call Leithen Valley, and our clients from all over the world get to come and visit, is still here for another 100-plus years with our family running and loving it. We work very hard to ensure that all our hunters come as clients but leave as friends.
Dream big, work hard, and anything is possible.
