I never thought I would have to use the emergency beacon and it was the 1st time I had ever carried one with me. I headed out for a morning hunt and headed up the creek. I got to a point where the creek was getting a bit hard to follow so I climbed up the hill through the thick broken bush from last year’s snow fall. This was hard going to I thought I’d stick to the top of the ridge and drop back down onto camp that way. Where I got into trouble is where I climbed onto the ridge was where 3 ridges all met. My thought of keeping the downhill on my right then failed me as I went down the middle ridge and after a while of bush bashing came out onto another block. I then followed the creek down thinking it would meet into the creek our hut was on and I could follow that back up. By this point it was getting to about 2 pm. As I looked up I thought I had made it to where I thought was just below our camps Heli pad so I started climbing up through the scrub. This took me an hour and a half to climb 150 meters. From this point I looked around and recognised absolutely nothing. Even the bush was type of bush was different and there were none of the big beach trees on top off the ridges like where our camp was. It was getting to just before 4 and I was very distressed and disorientated by this point. I was exhausted. I fired 3 shots from my rifle in the hope someone would respond so I could get a sense of direction but no such luck. At this point I realised I was in trouble and the bad weather was starting to come in. I hesitantly activated the EPIRB and stayed put. Around an hour and a half later a rescue helicopter arrived and I was winched and returned to my camp a little over 2 km away in the opposite direction I was going.