Thread: How often are you successful?

Some awesome advice in this thread. All depends on outlook & what you consider success, but put the yards in, pay attention & never feel like you’ve learnt enough & you’ll find your ‘luck’ improving.

I got lucky on my first ever deer hunt. A buddy took me into a public block he’s hunted hard so knows very well. He had access through the neighbouring farm to be able to drop in at the back on the DOC block. After that I started putting in the yards in that block myself. Never been back to the area he took me as I felt like that’d be abusing his generosity a bit as I know he’s spent years learning that area. But found a new part of the block to spend my time in & started putting what I learnt off him to use in the new area. Took me quite a few trips in there & almost a year, but I finally got my second deer. Now in that area I see animals almost every trip & was recently even able to take a mate out and get him his first deer. But I still learn more every trip.

Then I just moved up to Welly from the Deep South a couple months ago & now have to put the hard yards in again to learn some new areas/country. First trip out to the Orongarongas I saw a few goats & took one. Then I’ve just done a couple of trips into a different block- saw 2 deer the first trip, & a couple of pigs the last trip in (plus I almost hit a couple of deer that ran out in front of the car on the drive in to the DOC carpark). A couple of my colleagues tried offering their condolences that I’ve been out for two hunts & haven’t come back with any meat, but I quickly informed them that both trips were successful & that it takes time to learn a new area. I was bloody happy to have even seen animals my first two trips in there as it means I’m onto the right spots.

Plus, I might not shoot (or even see) anything on every trip, but the alternative would’ve been sitting at home on my arse wasting the weekend away before dragging myself back to work the following Monday.