Thread: First South Island Fallow Buck

I used to do a heap of pig hunting around North Canterbury and always saw a reasonable amount of deer sign, I was told there were a few Fallow in this particular area although I never saw any while pig hunting, that wasn’t a surprise though as I was never especially looking for Fallow, or deer in general while running the dogs.
So on this hunt I decided to leave the hounds at home to search for some Venison, I didn’t care what species as long as it was red meat. I left at the crack of dawn and had a fairly slow walk due to early morning fog, by the time I got to the top of where I was hunting it was well after sunrise, time to sit and wait for the sun to burn off the fog, while I was enjoying the view I made a game plan, I had no idea what area to hunt down into, one valley was as good as the next I figured, to be honest I didn’t think my chances would be fantastic as its public land and gets a bit of a pasting most weekends by pig hunters, I figured deer would be very spooky and may not stick around with dogs running about. Still I was here and the weather was improving greatly as each minute ticked by.
It didn’t take long for the cloud and mist to bugger off, with that I was off down into a valley with ideas of hunting the bottom where I figured grass would be a bit wetter and greener. It probably took me an hour to get down into a small stream, it looked like the part, green grass, good cover and amazing weather, how could I fail I thought? The breeze was in my face so I continued to do the sneaky thing and pay close attention to each little clearing I came upon, there was very little in the way of sign but I figured I’m here now, keep going.
I must have gone about 400 yards along the valley floor and was becoming very disheartened at the lack of sign, I sat down on the edge of a clearing and started thinking about a possible plan B, just at that moment I saw movement at the furthest edge of the clearing, it looked like fluffy Toitoi flowers waving around in the wind, “what the fuck is going on here” I thought, it was not windy at all so this struck me as highly unusual, looking through my scope I saw a set of antlers waving about, “shit here we go, it’s on now” I couldn’t see a body so hesitated, for all I knew it could be some silly bastard hiding in the bush with a deer strapped to his back, I watched for probably what was 20-30 seconds, then two big brown eyes came into view, blinking eyes! followed by a nose, a mouth, yup that’s a Fallow Buck staring at me, it was slowly lifting its head up, now about 6 inches of its neck was exposed, one more check just to be sure, black nose twitching, eyes blinking, ears flicking, I lined up the centre of his face and squeezed the trigger, “Boomf” Mr Buck disappears without a trace, I was sure I hit him but he vanished so fast, could I have missed? I went over and checked the area, here he was stone dead, the bullet entered his snot box and out through the back of the head, “yep that will do it”. I was over the moon, my first South Island Fallow, back legs off and his noggin tied to my back, now the very long walk back home.





The walk down to the valley bottom


The lucky, (or unlucky for Mr Buck) furthest end of the clearing