Thread: Advice for new hunters?

Any help/advice would be much appreciated.

So my fulla and I are new at hunting. We have done a lot of small game shooting which is fine. But now we are really trying to learn get out and hunt bigger.
We had one successful trip down at Tekapo on DOC land getting some wallaby we both managed to get 2 each. But since then...nothing.

We have tried about quiet a few different spots ( some multiple times due to seeing a decent amount of animals tracks and crap) to try and find something but seen nothing.
The thing that's a bit of a bummer for us is we have a few people who we know who go out and have been getting pigs, goats and deer, however when we ask for suggestions on places that might be good or a bit of advice/help they say 'oh its my secret spot' etc.

Just wondering if anyone could give us some helpful advice in re-guards to starting off. We are not looking for amazing trophy hunts etc, just something better than a rabbit ;P.
Are there certain books/guides that are more useful to follow than others. Really anything would be amazing. We are feeling a bit shiat trying to find info/advice and getting shut down a-lot.


sorry for the long post here is a pic from the one successful trip

Planning, and patience is a big one. Chose an area you want to hunt, and from that area pick the areas you think are likely to hold animals, sunny faces, slips, clearings etc, and use a bit of reverse logic if you're hunting big open country you want to look for areas that provide shelter and water, scrubby guts with creeks, fingers of bush etc, planning ahead is important so you dont waste time bumbling around the least likely areas. Hunt the mornings and the evenings and use the daytime to move about and scope out likely areas to check out at those morning and evening times.
Don't just think to yourself "there's no animals in that area" because you haven't had any luck previously, if you're seeing sign then you need to look at your game plan. Glass heaps, get into position and spend evenings and mornings glassing, think about what the wind is doing and remember if the day is warming up your scent will carry up hill and if it's cooling down it will carry downhill. Think of every trip as a learning experience even if you don't spot any game.
I hunted heaps with my dad when I was a young fella and when I started hunting by myself I was a typical young fella that thought I knew best and I would bowl up and down hills and all over the show with no real game plan, glass places for five minutes then get bored and carry on and I never had much success untill I decided maybe there was some merit to the way dad taught me to hunt.

your wearing the wrong colour nail polish it takes quite q while to get a feel for it for some people the how to of deer hunting in new Zealand with alex and tim gale is a dvd worth watching its got some good tips in it and a good book to try and hve a read of is called hunting the seasons by lentil and saxon I think then a spot x book should help as well good luck and keep at it nd

thanks for those tips! will have to check out that dvd and books this weekend i reckon. Might have to head back to one of the spots we thought seemed promising with animals signs and glass around a bit more and see if we can get a better idea of where they may be.

There will be a game trail follow it and try and get an idea of the movements

Jump onto the DOC website http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-rec...to-do/hunting/ find out the location of hunting areas which hold the animal you're trying to hunt, and then jump onto.......

This website. https://www.topomap.co.nz/ Type in the hunting area into the search box, and it'll come up with a topographical map. Study that map until your eyeballs are about to pop out. :0)

Let it be your best friend - and if you don't quite understand topo maps, do some research, and then get back to that website and study whichever hunting area that interests you.

Use it in conjunction with everything you learn about wind, weather, animal feeding patterns, animal locations during different time of year...etc, which you'll find out about in these two books (one of which was mentioned by northdude):


Buy both of those books - essential reading. And then get out there and make a tonne of mistakes and learn from them. :0) I'm still trying to figure it out myself.

Originally Posted by Frodo

Jump onto the DOC website Hunting: Things to do find out the location of hunting areas which hold the animal you're trying to hunt, and then jump onto.......

This website. https://www.topomap.co.nz/ Type in the hunting area into the search box, and it'll come up with a topographical map. Study that map until your eyeballs are about to pop out. :0)

Let it be your best friend - and if you don't quite understand topo maps, do some research, and then get back to that website and study whichever hunting area that interests you.

Use it in conjunction with everything you learn about wind, weather, animal feeding patterns, animal locations during different time of year...etc, which you'll find out about in these two books (one of which was mentioned by northdude):


Buy both of those books - essential reading. And then get out there and make a tonne of mistakes and learn from them. :0) I'm still trying to figure it out myself.

Good feature of the topo maps site is you can use the slider bar at the top to fade from topo to satellite imagery

Try going up mt peel now that it is open. Tahr and deer. Anywhere up the rangitata is full of tahr. You need to do plenty of walking. The spot x book that you can get at whitcouls is pretty accurate in giving you an idea of what areas have animals and in what abundance and how to acces these areas. The doc web gives you some info to. The hunting shows on tv like nz hunter adventures will also give you some good tips There is a lot of animals up through the passes if you are prepared to walk.
The other good way to learn your area is to join your local Nzda and head out with one of the more experienced members. Even do their hunts course.

Originally Posted by Ryan_Songhurst

Good feature of the topo maps site is you can use the slider bar at the top to fade from topo to satellite imagery

Yeah.

Google Earth is pretty amazing too (especially with their 3D feature). https://www.google.com/earth/

Crazy tools at our disposal...

What Frodo said and remember that the wind direction is most important - if a deer smells you it is almost always bolting outta there

i've been only hunting a couple of years- mostly unsucessfully- but of late I am having a lot more success. The main change has been now try and get up high, sit and use binos to look over slips/clearing/scrub instead of bush stalking. It let's your eyes do the walking and you can cover so much more ground than stalking really slowly.

You can use google earth to find slips and clearing in the area you hunt and try find a spot on google earth that has an easy walking access that you can sit and watch over many different open bits.

Bush stalking is way more fun though and once you have filled the freezer on clearings go back to the bush stalking with no pressure and try get good at it then.

awesome thank you all so much for the info and tips! will have to head out and try these.
just another little question if thats okay. We usually get up and head to the place early morning and try and get up the hill by sunrise. could this be our downfall doing only day trips? should we he camping out a bit more?

Yep do a full weekend. Quite often there will be nothing there in the evening but you will see animals in the same place in the morning, or vice versa.

I your serious about hunting then you need to spend as much time as possible to know the area and patterns of the animals. Check the 3 day weather/wind forecast as a plan not to camp or hunt up wind from the animals, try not talk in the area, whispering only unless your hunting and camping km’s away sound travels a long way on the tops. If it’s been raining hard with strong wind for a few days I go out on the last day of the rain because soon as it stops like the next morning the deer will be out in the open sunshine first light drying out and feeding. It’s a lot more relaxing camping out than trying to rush it in a day and doing big walks in and out with a headlamp mornings and evenings. Going bush Friday arvo your got 3 evenings and 2 mornings to get a deer camping out for the weekend if you trust your girlfriend to be left alone that long.

Sit and glass. That is one piece of advice I'll always give someone. Find a nice valley or gully and a vantage point downwind and watch it. Animals will be there. Last week a friend and I watched one smallish basin (2km x 1.5km) for 9 hours non stop, most would have a quick glass and move to the next basin up valley. We saw over 20 deer in this one catchment over the course of the day as they stood up/sat down/moved to feed/came out of the bush etc. When we first arrived, we saw one spiker in the open...all the others were sitting down out of sight...

This week I watched another creek head, for a couple hours in the evening, and saw 10-12 animals, including a chamois and several deer. Five stags were roaring in the bush, I knew they would follow hinds out into the scrub and tussock, so sat back and watched. Ended up seeing four of the five stags, and shot one reasonable one right on dark.

The funny thing is that I know that those creek heads and basins have been hunted several times already this roar, I've spoken to the guys who have "had a look". They all reported that they saw bugger all...I'd bet my last dollar they had a look for a few minutes and went looking for "greener" grass in the next catchment.