Thread: New to hunting

Hunt really early morning and late evening, to do this you really have to camp overnight to get the best chance of seeing something. Be very aware of the wind, deer smell you on the wind easily so always try and travel upwind so they cant smell you. Be very careful creeping over ridges etc, the amount of deer I have spooked being careless when travelling over a ridge! Be careful and very quiet when coming around a corner or something. Scan around with the naked eye for a while before getting the binos out and having a good close look around at likely areas. Ive seen guys get the binos out straight away while there is a deer trotting past in the foreground that they would have seen if they had looked first. Lewis pass area is infested with deer. This time of year is a bit harder to hunt as deer dont move around so much. Might be ok if you have experience with winter hunting but I find its much easier to bump into deer spring, summer, autumn. The first deer is always the hardest and it takes most a lot of frustrating trips before getting on to something unless you have someone experienced showing you how to do it. Once you get that first one, the pressure is off and there seems to be deer everywhere after that. There is a very detailed book called Red Deer in New Zealand by Lentle and Saxon that I found quite helpful. Look for hoof prints and poos for evidence that deer have been through. If you see no sign at all it might not be a very frequented area.